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Lichtspiel: Contemporary Abstract Animation and Visual Music

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Lichtspiel: Contemporary Abstract Animation and Visual Music UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS November 9: J. Hoberman: The Making and Unmaking of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures December 14: Native Visions: Two Documentaries on Indigenous Mexican Culture 2501 Migrants: A Journey by Yolanda Cruz and Day Two by Dante Cerano LICHTSPIEL: CONTEMPORARY ABSTRACT ANIMATION AND VISUAL MUSIC November 3, 2009 8:30pm presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts LICHTSPIEL: CONTEMPORARY #37 (Netherlands, 2009, 35mm Cinemascope, 31 min., color, sound) by Joost Rekveld ABSTRACT ANIMATION AND Music by Yannis Kyriakides VISUAL MUSIC Joost Rekveld’s latest in his ongoing series of films imagines a multi-dimensional universe – one inhabited by particles that act on their neighbors and organize themselves into Tuesday, November 3 | 8:30 pm constellations with varying levels of symmetry. The constellations produce simulated Jack H. Skirball Series diffraction patterns, which in turn constitute the film’s images. The International Film Festival Rotterdam has hailed #37 as “an undeniable masterpiece.” Rekveld describes his body-of- Co-presented with Center for Visual Music work as inspired by the lesser frequented by-ways in the history of science and technology. More recently, his fascination with the spatial aspects of light and complex organization has Los Angeles Premieres prompted him to explore, in addition to his filmmaking, such new fields as cybernetics, artificial life and robotic architecture. Since 2008, the Dutch artist has headed the ArtScience This ravishing “play of light” explores rhythmic abstractions in the tradition of Oskar Interfaculty of the Royal Conservatory and the Royal Academy in The Hague. Fischinger and visual music animation. The centerpiece of the program is the Los Angeles debut of Joost Rekveld’s #37 (Netherlands, 2009, 35mm CinemaScope, 31 min.), a Curated by Center for Visual Music with Steve Anker stunningly beautiful study of the propagation and diffraction of light through crystalline structures. Sure to bend more than a few minds, the lineup also offers award-winning Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels animated shorts from around the world, most of which are screening in Los Angeles for the first time. Featured artists include Scott Draves, Robert Seidel, Steven Woloshen, Thanks to Suzan Pitt Bärbel Neubauer, Thorsten Fleisch, Bret Battey, Michael Scroggins, Samantha Krukowski, Mondi, Devon Damonte, Scott Nyerges, Vivek Patel and Yusuke Nakajima. Highlighted as Please note: Dutch filmmaker and installation artist Joost Rekveld will also appear in person well is the final film by the late CGI wizard Richard “Doc” Baily. at the first West Coast retrospective of his films, entitled Light Matters, on Nov. 8 at 7 pm at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. The retrospective is presented by Center for Lichtspiel showcases a variety of animation techniques, from handmade camera-less Visual Music and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Four of Rekveld’s films will screen at (hand-painted, taped and scratched) films to traditional drawn animation to live-object UCLA, but not #37, which will screen exclusively at REDCAT. animation to microphotography and state-of-the-art 3D computer graphics. Visual music styles are just as varied, with some artists like Draves and Baily writing computer code to Center for Visual Music is a Los Angeles–based archive dedicated to visual music, realize their visions, while others draw inspiration from the pioneering work of Fischinger experimental animation and avant-garde media. CVM is committed to preservation, curation, or the cosmic meditations of Jordan Belson. education, research and dissemination of the film, performances and other media of this tradition, together with related historical documentation and artwork. CVM’s archives and library hold the world’s largest collection of resources on Visual Music, including the original In person: Joost Rekveld, Michael Scroggins, Devon Damonte, Samantha Krukowski papers of Oskar and Elfriede Fischinger, and film historian William Moritz; and a major and Yusuke Nakajima collection of preserved films. CVM is currently preserving films by Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson, Charles Dockum and others of the genre. www.centerforvisualmusic.org PROGRAM true wishes and desires… [taking] shape over time and [getting] clearer… followed by the next longing… Innuendos, artifacts and… rough synchronization add subtle emotions to Program notes are adapted from the descriptions by the artists and Center for Visual the uncertain process that builds the morbid tableaux of all possible futures.” Seidel, Music. Screening formats are digital unless otherwise noted. There will be an intermission who is Berlin-based, considers his work to be an exploration of “organic-digital graphics.” before the final film in the program, #37. The program will conclude with a Q&A with the artists in attendance. Kronos (US, 2005, 4:20 min., color, sound) by Mondi Welcome Licht (US, 2009, 35mm, 2 min., silent) Kronos is the seventh in a series of 10 films predicated on spherical harmonics. Its creator by Devon Damonte and Cal Arts alumnus, Mondi, lives and works in Stockholm, using custom tools and A camera-free, direct-on-film invocation made especially for the occasion that summons software to explore the intersections between disparate forms of expression. the Light/Licht, assumes the position of Play/Spiel, and calls to order assembled deities for a transcendent, incandescent screening. Devon Damonte is a Washington state-based Mercurius (UK, 2007, 6:09 min., color, sound) artist who has specialized in making, teaching and showing direct animation for over 20 by Bret Battey years. Volatile and unstable, Mercurius shifts rapidly between multitudes of seemingly conflicting states. A sound-synthesis process and nearly 12,000 individual points are continually Adagio for Jon and Helena (US, 2009, 5 min., color, silent) transformed and warped, restrained and released, without cuts, to form sonic and visual by Michael Scroggins curtains and vortexes evoking both unity and destruction. Using special algorithms, artist Using instruments to compose abstract animation in real-time has been at the heart of Bret Battey creates electronic, acoustic, and multimedia concert works and installations Michael Scroggins’ work for over 30 years. The pioneer of absolute-animation performance that emphasize continuous flow and transformation, an aesthetic inspired in part by his and CalArts professor dedicates this “continuous-take digital recording from a live solo practice of Vipassana meditation. Battey has earned numerous honors, including the liquid light projection performance” to his “liquid light teachers Jon Greene and Helena prestigious Prix Ars Electronica, for his work. Lebrun.” “I developed the unique techniques used in this performance in 1968,” Scroggins explains, “and have recently revisited them in order to enjoy the immediacy of this particular Morphs of Pegasus (Germany, 2009, excerpt of work-in-progress, approx. 7 min., color, form of direct physical expression…. [I]t is the affective power found at the edges of gestural sound) control and indeterminate chaos that motivates me.” by Bärbel Neubauer Considered one of Europe’s leading experimental animators, Austrian Bärbel Neubauer INCREASE (Japan, 2009, 6 min., color, sound) is as adept making handmade films, painting and scratching directly onto celluloid, as by Yusuke Nakajima she is creating 3D digital abstract animation. The prolific artist has also composed music This video by the Osaka-based Yusuke Nakajima explores the visual illusion of objects and her own soundtracks since 1991. Morphs of Pegasus, she says, “is a journey through seeming to enlarge in their afterimage. planet-like worlds and objects of phantasy. There are no cuts; the spectator moves inside the space from one place to the next.” xtacism (US, 2005, 6 min., color, sound) by Richard Baily with John Buchanan - Intermission - Music by Richard Baily Xtacism was created with SPORE, the extraordinary CGI program developed by the late page 6 visual effects luminary Richard Baily (1953-2006). Baily called SPORE, a The Firebird (US, 2007, 4x3 version, 4:15 min., color, sound) “software/aesthetic development project that [grew] out of a proprietary ultra high- by Scott Draves speed particle renderer.” He said of xtacism: “There is no middle, beginning, end, it is Music by Kenji Williams like the river, it just keeps on going...” A CalArts alumnus, Baily founded his own visual This homage to Igor Stravinsky’s 1910 symphony is itself an excerpt from Dreams in High effects animation company, Image Savant, in 1992. His work can be seen in feature films Fidelity #2 – re-rendered at 2400x2400 resolution for full-dome projection, but scaled ranging from Fight Club (1999) to Superman Returns (2006), as well as in numerous title down from the planetarium version. Graphics were created by the open-source Electric sequences, commercials and music videos, including for Madonna and Janet Jackson. Sheep, a cyborg mind consisting of 60,000 computers and people communicating with a genetic algorithm, developed by Scott Draves in 1999. Draves also created the Flame Miserlou (US, 2005, 3 min., color, sound) algorithm in 1992 and the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1994. His work is by Vivek Patel permanently hosted on MoMA.org. Music: Aaron Kula; performed by the Klezmer Company Orchestra “Miserlou uses abstract elements to create a sensual show. Visual elements
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