The sun’s energy circulates throughout the earth, feeding the cycle of life. Everything is connected in a natural loop, which repeats, like the circular discs of magical optical toys. This perfectly balanced rhythm is disrupted by human excess, throwing the cycle out of orbit and temporarily stopping the circulation of energy in nature.
The corner of a street is matched and mixed with the chant of a bird recorded on that same street. A symbiotic relationship is triggered: the rapid and successively repetitive montage cuts between the image of the street and the corners of the video frame itself produce new textures and shapes in our brain, whilst the sound follows the same rhythmic movements by emphasizing different “corners” (frequencies) from the bird’s singing. The energetic potency stemming from the junction of these elements creates a new image that is almost tactitle, maleable and rippling. The result is a somewhat humorous operation of the portuguese word "corner" throughout the different stages of making the piece, finally unveiling a piercing physical and kinetic experience for all the corners of our eyes and ears.
Experimental computer animation by Krzysztof Kiwerski
One of Rimmer's early 2000s video works which he made by hand-painting 35mm film, running it on a flatbed viewer, and shooting it off the screen with a video camera to then subject it to further manipulation.
Creating a universe between two small pieces of Cardboard. When Jack and Jill of Cardboard City are separated by Jill's torrid illness, Jack must think outside the box to assure they will be together again.
undressed
An experimental sampled film which shows the pleasurable art of movies about movies through scenes inside of theaters.
In 2017, a short anime film called Hypersonic Music Club was produced in Japan. It was directed and written by Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran of the industry who passed away in April 2021. For various reasons, this short anime was never released. It was made public on August 1, 2023.
This newly rediscovered short was created in Jim's home studio in Bethesda, MD around 1961. It is one of several experimental shorts inspired by the music of jazz great Chico Hamilton. At the end, in footage probably shot by Jerry Juhl, Jim demonstrates his working method.
A brief journey through the human experience as seen by the eyes of an Artificial Intelligence.
Sarah and her two cats go about their separate lives. The cats have strange dreams about their desires, and Sarah develops an unshakable paranoia that something is wrong with them. Sarah's paranoia bleeds into her social life, and her two cats have their dreams come true.
Consistent stylistic-thematic structures link and merge throughout the bewildering event chain. The distinction between organic forms and human artifacts is blurred by the visual style which is enigmatic without being ambiguous.
What could possibly be more important than feeding your daughter?
Amanda's stoner slumber party is put to a halt when one of her guests is nowhere to be found.
16mm color work by Stan Vanderbeek that takes his work away from the cutups and the commentary and lands him in the psychedelic and abstract. Opticals, repetitions, camera moves and zooms are what make up the bulk of this exploration into fluids. The results bridge that realm between hangout art piece and intersteller stoner trip.
Filmed on 16mm film, this visual expression is rooted in its archival materials and backed up by the poem by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It speaks of the forgotten people, their lives and their deeds. These two Archives have been found on the flea market in Zagreb. One is of a famous architect and the other one is of a famous composer. This film ponders on this occurrence, on the vanishing of and forgetfulness of humans.
Sabine is looking for a missing image: a day that has left its mark forever and that everyone remembers but her. But maybe this absence is what allows her to move on with her life?
A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and the 1950s. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shoshtakovich, and replete with rapidly mutating geometries, Bute’s filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high-spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies. In the late 1940s, Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute’s films were “composed upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment.” Bute herself wrote that she sought to “bring to the eyes a combination of visual forms unfolding along with the thematic development and rhythmic cadences of music.”
Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.
After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.