Visual Music Archive

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Giant Steps 

(2001) 

- Michal Levy translated John Coltrane's jazz standard into an animated visual – a geometric structure that stretches and careens to Coltrane's sax. Levy illustrates the architectural thinking behind Coltrane's work.

Michal Levy illustrates the architectural thinking behind John Coltrane's work, in which a musical theme defines a space.

What began as a graduation project, became a world renowned short film, winning 'Honourable Mention' at such prestigious events like the JVC Jazz Festival Juried Exhibition in New York (2002) and a 2004 animation event sponsored by Hazira, Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, and The Israel Film Archive.

Even though the film has created several years ago it is still winning over fans. In 2005, Giant Steps won the Animation Award from the BehindTheCurtain.org community.

 

Source: FlasherDotOrg

 

 

Giant Steps, vierecke, jazz, Video Clip

Reading

Optical Poetry (2004) by Dr. William Moritz is the long-awaited, definitive biography of Oskar Fischinger. The result of over 30 years of research on this visionary abstract filmmaker and painter. In addition to Moritz's comprehensive biography, it includes numerous photographs in colour and black and white (many never before published), statements by Oskar Fischinger about his films, a newly created extensive filmography, and a selected bibliography. (John Libbey Publishing)

Notation. Calculation and Form in the Arts (2008) is a comprehensive catalogue (in German) edited by Dieter Appelt, Hubertus von Amelunxen and Peter Weibel which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Academy of the Arts, Berlin and the ZKM | Karlsruhe. (ZKM)

Notations 21 (2009) by Theresa Sauer features illustrated musical scores from more than 100 international composers, all of whom are making amazing breakthroughs in the art of notation. Notations 21 is a celebration of innovations in musical notation, employing an appreciative aesthetic for both the aural and visual beauty of these creations. The musical scores in this edition were created by composers whose creativity could not be confined by the staff and clef of traditional western notation, but whose musical language can communicate with the contemporary audience in a uniquely powerful way. (Notations 21 Project)

Links

 

SEE ALSO

Scratch Pad (1960) - The brilliance of Hy Hirsh's films often arises not so much from their technical originality as from their canny coupling of imagery with music that perfectly matches its mood. Hirsh knew Norman McLaren and Len Lye before he scratched and painted directly on film, but his Scratch Pad has a witty jazz expressionist personality different from his predecessors. Len Lye had used the optical printer for synthesizing surreat clusters of imagery, but again Hirsh's complex interface of imagery in his final four films create a more radical and ironic world view. (William Moritz "Hy Hirsh." in "Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in America", Boston: Harvard Film Archive, 1995)

ryad // metempsychosis (2009) by Turkish drummer, producer and visual artist Volkan Ergen. (Vimeo)

Gumbasia (1955) by Art Clokey, consisting of animated clay shapes contorting to a jazz score, so intrigued Samuel G. Engel, then president of the Motion Pictures Producers Association, that he financed the pilot film for what became Art Clokey's The Gumby Show (1957). The title Gumbasia is an homage to Walt Disney's Fantasia. (Wikipedia)

Art Clokey (1921-2010) was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, beginning in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California. (Gumby Dharma)

Funkstörung: Dirt Empire (2004) by Funkstörung somewhat breathes the air of 1960s psychedelic music and so the images in the video too quote the 60s psychedelic art. From a vague anticipation of blurry haze in the beginning graphical patterns evolve into more and more concrete forms. In the course of the video by Mate Steinforth these shapes form parts of contemporary architecture. (Vimeo)