Ideas in Search of Light

To the toccata portion of Bach's "Toccata and fugue in D minor," we watch a play of sorts. Blue smoke forms a background; a grid of black lines is the foreground. Behind the lines, a triangle appears, then patterns of multiple triangles. Their movements reflect the music's rhythm. Behind the barrier of the black lines, the triangle moves, jumps, and takes on multiple shapes. In contrast with the blue and the black, the triangles are warm: orange, red, yellow. The black lines bend, swirl into a vortex, then disappear. The triangle pulsates and a set of many of them rises.

Abstract horror short about a girl's face.

With 8 Switches, Tim Wright presents six black-and-white microcinematic vignettes of retina-searing, hard-edged, epilepsy-inducing sound and vision; digital hallucinations drained of colour, synchronized to a soundtrack that is relentless and unsentimental. Each new section presents a variation on the same sleek, kinetic minimalism. As each section progresses, the razor-sharp line between a host of binary oppositions—black/white, figure/ground, silence/sound, here/there, on/off — dissolves through sheer velocity. The rapid-fire alternation between these binary oppositions acts like the flicker of film frames, accelerating until sound and sight are wed into a synchronous whole in which neither the visual nor the sonic takes primacy. Instead, each acts as mutually constitutive literalisation of the other. — Joseph Clayton Mills

An interactive flash animation from Dutch digital artist Han Hoogerbrugge.

An abstract audiovisual poem by electronic musician and composer Ralph Lundsten.

In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

Bizarre abstract stop-motion animation questioning traditional values in a period of great social upheaval.

A film unmade-- That is, Survage's film was never realized in the traditional sense-- At the time, such a project was beyond technological possibility. His pioneering efforts to combine luminous, expressive painting and the moving picture were further curtailed by the outbreak of WWI. Some have taken it upon themselves to 'animate' his watercolor plates in attempts to set his dream into motion.

Polish avant-garde animation with changing colors and shapes that suggest birth followed by heavy distortion and building to a face in the swamp.

Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.

An attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. It shows the filmmaker’s blood as seen / heard with the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. He affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. Additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used.

2001 Joan C. Gratz animated short

The weird hand creatures undergo different transformations in synchrony with the music.

Abstract Day is a semi-abstract animation film by Oerd van Cuijlenborg based on a story which is told in sound. We witness a day in the life of a couple, who fight, make love and escape the hot and crowded city. It is a simple story in which the visuals and sound are produced together to merge into a unique world.

Abstract animation by Boris Labbé

Abstract animation by Boris Labbé

Abstract animation by Boris Labbé

Deluge is a 2010 post-apocalyptic short film directed by Australian musician Lulu Collard.

Short film by Tomonari Nishikawa

The mutating forms of Tensai Banpaku, or “Genius Expo” create a stunning abstract orchestra.