Aérobie

Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.

Two Space systematically explores symmetries used by Islamic artists to create abstract temple decorations. The two dimensional patterns, like the tile patterns of Islamic temples, are generated by performing a set of symmetry operations (translations, rotations, and reflections) upon a basic figure or tile. Two Space consists of twelve such patterns produced using each of nine different animating figures (12 x 9 = 108 total). Rendered in stark black and white, the patterns produce optical illusions of figure-ground reversal and afterimages of color. Gamelan music from the classical tradition of Java adds to the mesmerizing effect.

A horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.

Torn from their home by a hand in the sky, colorful entities seek freedom from a rigid binary in this short experimental animation.

A person living in Liberty City goes to work, have some food & gets back home.

Three memories that become one. An attempt to merge heterogeneous materials: a film sequence shot in Rome, a photo from the 1930s, a noisy soundtrack. Fragmented lines, exploding bass frequencies and flickering.

Animated work detailing the unrequited love that a line has for a dot, and the heartbreak that results due to the dot's feelings for a lively squiggle.

Rhythm and repetition plays an important role in the animated film Allahu Akbar by Usama Alshaibi. With this film, Alshaibi questions the confrontation between tradition and modernity by drawing inspiration from geometric motives of Islamic art. The artist offers a re-interpretation of these motifs through computer animation. By turning the shapes in different direction, new images are generated, freeing them from their fixed state. Traditional spiritual values feed the present and open up to a modern perspective.

A colourful "fountain performance".

Jane Conger Belson Shimane's first film, Logos, premiered in 1957 and was screened at festivals in North America, Europe, and Latin America. The animated film featured an electronic score by Henry Jacobs. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

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

Odds & Ends is a sly comment on the collage film and Beat culture. To discarded travel and advertising footage found at a local film laboratory, Belson Shimane added a mélange of animation—assemblages, cutouts, color fields, and line drawings—and faux hipster narration by Jacobs (credited via the anagram Rheny Bojacs) punctuated by a bongo backing. Strung together with doublespeak and non sequiturs, the monologue skirts the edge of nonsense as Jacobs waxes on about poetry, jazz, “reaching the public,” “having a good time,” and—although “money doesn’t count”—the “possibility of subsidy” through grants. Footage of champagne, tropical beaches, and exotic peoples intermingle with rhythmic drawings and stop-motion flights of fancy. The visuals race on through dazzling transformations, both amplifying and undercutting the patter. —National Film Preservation Foundation. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Iota Center Collection in 2006.

Confined to an endlessly burning waiting room, a dying sedentary woman experiences herself blurring in and out of her body. In her last remaining fragments she tries to make amends with her spirit before her remaining fragments either decay or create.

We watch white shapes dancing on black background, which changes when the white shape fills up the screen completely, and black lines and figures bounce around on the now white background.

A tale about a kid, a samurai mime, and a stripper who all try to defeat a warlord and an evil clown who have successfully turned a countryside into a never ending nightmare filled with horrible monsters.

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leader, using a variety of tools from saw teeth to arrow heads. The first version of the film won a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival Held in Brussels in 1958 in association with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece".

A short animation about identity.

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.

An abstract animation with a motif of a dragonfly, and a complex multi-exposure landscape of a field and a woman's naked body overlap.

Lulu the dog gets a job at the local convenience store and stays up all night cleaning the back room. Short created for [adult swim] Smalls.