Spheres
(1969)is a play on motion, against a background of multi-hued sky, by animation artists Norman McLaren and René Jodoin. Spheres of translucent pearl seem to float weightlessly in the unlimited panorama of the sky.
The spheres do have music in this film, as animation artists Norman McLaren and René Jodoin expose a dancing ball to the magic of Johann Sebastian Bach played by pianist Glenn Gould.
The background is the limitless depth of sky, multi-hued, changing in mood from midnight blue to the rose of dawn, and, against this, the McLaren-Jodoin play on motion.
A ball of translucent pearl appears to float freely into space and to multiply like a distant galaxy brought suddenly close. But the free movement of the sphere is only momentary. Music, balance, symmetry begin to bring them to order so that they form patterns, grouping, regrouping, with mathematical precision, at times dancing about in airy circles or colliding and multiplying like some stylized burst of the atomic chain reaction.
This airy dance has its moments of whimsy when a butterfly flutters briefly from ball to ball, a symbol of winged caprice in a universe of sound and motion where the discipline of art is supreme.
Source: National Film Board of Canada