Composition in Blue 

(1935) 

- original title: Komposition in Blau. Surfaces dominate in the abstract animated film Composition in Blue by Oskar Fischinger. Colorful geometric figures are set in rhythmic motion.

© Fischinger Trust/ Courtesy Center for Visual Music

 

The music from Otto Nicolai's The Merry Women of Windsor is impressively visualized through a blending of form and color. Oskar Fischinger created wooden cubes and cylinders as three-dimensional animated models, approximately as tall as a cigarette, some of them painted and others covered with fabric. At first the set seems to reveal a room. But then the floor begins to reflect the geometric figures. Cubes perfectly-aligned in a row, forming a flat mosaic-like surface, tumble apart to form a stairway. In this perpetually changing universe, a cylinder pounds at the floor and sets off a series of waves, and a decorative, flat circle flies into the empty space. The beauty of the colored, geometric forms – a yellow rectangle descends gracefully into the frame – escalates to the frenzied magic of the impossible.
(William Moritz: "Oskar Fischinger", in: Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main, Optische Poesie. Oskar Fischinger Leben und Werk, Kinematograph Nr. 9, 1993, p. 42)

 

Source: Media Art Net

 

 

Composition in Blue, choreography, 1st generation, partitur, Film

Reading

Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction (2012) edited by Cindy Keefer and Jaap Guldemond. This new monograph explores the position of Oskar Fischinger's work within the international avant-garde. The book examines his animation and painting, his use of music, his experiences in Hollywood, the Lumigraph, visual music theories, and his influence on today's filmmakers, artists and animators. The book also contains previously unpublished documents including texts by Oskar Fischinger himself, and unshot animation drawings. Essays compiled and commissioned by editor Cindy Keefer include new research and texts by Jean-Michel Bouhours, Jeanpaul Goergen, Ilene Susan Fort, James Tobias, Cindy Keefer, Richard Brown, Paul Hertz, Joerg Jewanski, and more. (Center for Visual Music)

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)

Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (2005) traces the history of a revolutionary idea: that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music. Over the past one hundred years some of the most adventurous modern and contemporary artists have explored unorthodox means to invent a kinetic, non-representational art modeled upon pure instrumental music. (Amazon)

 

SEE ALSO

Art in Cinema – Documents Toward a History of the Film Society (2006) by Scott MacDonald provides extensive and fascinating documentation of one of the most important film societies in American history. Art in Cinema presents complete programs presented by the legendary society; dozens of previously unavailable letters between Stauffacher, his collaborators, and filmmakers including Maya Deren, Hans Richter, Vincent Minelli, and Man Ray; a reprint of the society's original catalog, which features essays by Henry Miller and others; and a wide range of other remarkable historical documents. (Temple University Press)

Karl Kliem (*1969) studied at the well-known Hochschule für Gestaltung (University of Art and Design) in Offenbach. He developed real-time audio and visual systems and has designed the most diverse projects in the fields of multi-media, web design, and TV design, as well as music and audio production for films and interactive installations. Karl Kliem is a founding member of Involving-Systems (1994) and MESO (1997). (Dienststelle)

Mario Basanov & Vidis feat. Jazzu: I’ll be gone (2008) music promo by Lithuanian director Rimantas Lukavicius (KORB). Taking the simple premise of using a cardiograph (Four of them to be precise) to represent different audio lines within the track, Rimantas manages to create something truly mesmerising. It's one of those, I don't quite know why I like this so much, but I do pieces of work. (Motionographer)

Walther Ruttmann (1887-1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling an early practitioner of experimental film. His film career began in the early 1920s. His first abstract short films, Opus I (1921) and Opus II (1923), were experiments with new forms of film expression, and the influence of these early abstract films is especially obvious in the early work of Oskar Fischinger in the 1930s. Walther Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new form techniques. (Wikipedia)

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) was a Greek composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers. Iannis Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music such as applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory and was also an important influence on the development of electronic music. He integrated music with architecture, designing music for pre-existing spaces, and designing spaces to be integrated with specific music compositions and performances. (Wikipedia)