Early 20Th Century Abstract Cinema Immersive

1 Vol 16 Issue 6 – 7

“RAUMLICHTMUSIK” - produce abstract imagery and screened engineers…it was fantastic. It was a EARLY 20TH CENTURY this in their multiple projector shows giant apparatus, which was played by ABSTRACT CINEMA (and later completed films). Fischinger him and his many assistants. He built in IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS and Belson continued to extend the a special film projector for my films, and Cindy Keefer, Center for Visual Music, boundaries of cinema, projection, that topped everything. Zeiss Ikon in Los Angeles, CA. Email: audience interaction and their own Dresden helped him…it cost unheard of . consciousness throughout their careers. sums of money and was shown in all the Fischinger (1900-1967) was the most opera houses of Europe…At that time, important and influential filmmaker in Zeiss Ikon developed the unique and Abstract visual music, producing over 50 films wonderful planetarium projectors. For Filmmakers Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belson created cinematic multimedia experiments from and 800 paintings. He’s recognized as that reason, and also because of the 1926 to 1959; three of these events are predecessors the father of Visual Music, the publicity connected with it, they were to immersive environments: (A) Beginning in 1926, grandfather of music videos, and the very much interested in László’s Fischinger's multiple projector shows combining abstract films, colored light projections, and painted great-grandfather of motion graphics. Spectrum-Piano [Farblichtklavier] and at slides; (B) Fischinger's 1944 (unrealized) concept His films influenced generations of that time they put everything at his for a dome theatre with center film projectors filling the sphere, creating "endless space without filmmakers, animators and artists, even disposal that he could possibly ask for perspective" and (c) Belson and Henry Jacobs’ continuing today. [1].” 1950s Vortex Concerts at Morrison Planetarium, Fischinger began his animated film Rebay in turn discussed various utilizing multiple projectors and 38 speakers, with “no separation of audience and stage or screen; the experiments in Germany c. 1920, concepts of “expanded cinema,” color entire domed area becomes a living theater of sound inventing apparatus like a Wax Slicing organs and what we today would call and light." machine to produce unique abstract immersive cinema with Moholy-Nagy, imagery. Beginning in Munich in March Charles Dockum, Norman McLaren and Keywords: 1926, Fischinger and Hungarian other artists whom the Museum Vortex Concerts, Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson, composer Alexander László created sponsored, and thus appears to have been Raumlichtmusik, Expanded Cinema, Morrison Planetarium, Farblichtmusik,Visual Music. Farblichtmusik multiple projector, a link between Fischinger’s 1920s multiple screen performances, multiple projector work and its influence The origins of immersive media combining Fischinger’s abstract 35mm on later filmmakers. environments, multiple-projector films with projected colored lights from In 1926, a “Colorlight Dome” was Expanded Cinema performances and László’s color organ piano, and painted constructed for Farblichtmusik 1960s psychedelic Light Shows can be glass slides. Music varied from László’s performances at the Gesolei festival. A traced to the early experiments of film own compositions to Chopin, press review in the Westphalian artists Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. Three reels Landeszeitung described the changing Belson. of Fischinger’s abstract animation were light effects in the “Farblichtdome:” These filmmakers expanded their used in these performances. rising light effects for a Scriabin score, work outside the rectangular film frame László had begun the Farblichtmusik bright red then yellow then harsh green and beyond traditional screens, using shows in 1925, though without films or colors, then blue circles and spirals. Dr. multiple cinematic projections far slides. Fischinger later discussed their Jörg Jewanski explained, “From May to surpassing anything previously joint performances and László’s October 1926, a huge exhibition took attempted. They covered rooms and machinery with curator Hilla Rebay of place in Düsseldorf, Germany, named domes and planetariums with abstract The Museum of Non-Objective Painting 'Gesolei'. Nearly 7,500,000 people imagery, creating sophisticated illusions in New York. “László’s machine was a visited 174 exhibition houses. In No. 78 and combining cinema with other art technical marvel…built for him by one 'Light technique,' László performed his forms to create a greater experience. of the best and most imaginative Farblichtmusik: 8-10 performances

Fig. 1. Images from Fischinger's 1920s multiple projector performances. (©Fischinger Trust, courtesy Center for Visual Music.)

Both built machines and devices to

Page 1 of 5 Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol 16 Issue 6 – 7 Last updated on 30 September 2009 every day, altogether 1200 describing his three projector film show, extensively with Fischinger, seeking his performances, shown to more than his sliced film technique [wax advice. 40,000 people…László started his experiments footage], and his “original In 1944, Fischinger proposed building performances at the 'Gesolei' on May 22, art vision which can only be expressed a dome theatre in the new Museum: “I but first without Fischinger's films, through film.” would like to suggest to you a bigger because there were problems with the Film historian Dr. William Moritz theatre – half spherical – like a big fire brigade (nitrate films were later interviewed László, who confirmed planetarium. The Machines in the flammable and needed special he’d seen Oskar’s solo show in Munich Center. The spheric projection-surface of permission, which they didn't have) [2].” called R-1, Formspiel, using five 35mm a planetarium, produces a perfectly clear A July 1926 review by critic Rudolf film projectors and slide projectors with feeling of endless space, similar to the Schneider discussed Fischinger’s ‘wax painted glass slides. Moritz wrote: feeling which produces the star-lit- experiments’ footage used in a [Fischinger] “prepared his own multiple heaven at night. It is a cosmic-feeling of Farblichtmusik performance: projector shows (including some of the endless endless space without “Fischinger’s idea and invention is a imagery from the László shows) with perspective. Images projected in such a great advance.” The review described three side-by-side images cast with three sphere become far distant. some of his other film images: “snakes, 35mm projectors, slides to frame the The people (a few hundred) are fog, balls, rings…fantasy,” and noted triptych, and at climactic moments, two sitting in a big circle around the that Fischinger was working on a film additional projectors which overlapped projection machines. The Sound comes performance called Fieber. Schneider the basic triptych with further color (ideal) also from the center like the mentioned this new art “that Fischinger effects…Oskar used all three systems for lightbeams of the projectors, and light calls Raumlichtkunst…” [3]. colorizing (tinting, toning and hand- and soundwaves strike the Sphere and László was not generous in giving coloring) to give a wider variety of are there reflected to the people” [8]. Fischinger credit for his work, and it colors” [6]. Fischinger also suggested the appears the press gave more praise to Working with Fischinger’s films audience should recline on their backs, Fischinger’s films than László’s music. decades later, Moritz found material looking up at his abstract films The two parted ways later in 1926. labeled “R-1, Formspiel” which he projected onto the dome. Fischinger began performing his own believed was from the multiple projector Unfortunately, this dome theatre was independent multiple projector shows shows. In 1993 with support from the not built. Fischinger’s relationship called Fieber, Vakuum, Macht, and R-1 Deutsches Filmmuseum, he produced an with Rebay ended c. 1947, and her Formspiel. From press reviews and anamorphic triple panel recreation film position at the museum concluded Fischinger’s notes, we now understand with some of this footage, optically soon after. Fischinger found little these as attempts to create some of the printed onto a single strand of 35mm support in America for his film work very first cinematic immersive film [7]. after this. Among his later environments. No records have been found of experiments were a 3-D stereo film, a Fischinger described his performances of these shows by series of stereo paintings, and the “Raumlichtmusik” concept; he believed Fischinger after the late 1920s, though Lumigraph. all the arts would merge in this new art. single reels of these films were shown in In the late 1940s Fischinger invented He wrote of “Eine neue Kunst: Europe in the early 1930s. the Lumigraph, his mechanical color- Raumlichtmusik” [The new art: Room or light performance instrument, which he Space, of Light and Music]: “Of this Art Endless Space Without performed in completely darkened rooms everything is new and yet ancient in its Perspective to a variety of music. Though he played laws and forms. Plastic – Dance – Fischinger became successful in Europe it only a few times publicly in Los Painting – Music become one. The with his abstract animated films, his Angeles and San Francisco, many guests Master of the new Art forms poetical popular series of Studies, and his famous at Fischinger’s home enjoyed work in four dimensions…Cinema was waltzing cigarette commercials. With performances of the Lumigraph given by its beginning…Raumlichtmusik will be Paramount Studio’s help he emigrated to Oskar and his daughter Barbara. its completion” [4]. A critic suggested Hollywood in 1936, thus becoming the One filmmaker influenced by the name “Raumlichtkunst,” substituting direct link from the European avant- Fischinger’s abstract films and his ‘art’ for music. garde film community to west coast Lumigraph was Jordan Belson. In October 1926, Schneider wrote that experimental filmmaking. He worked Fischinger was working on a film for briefly for Paramount, Disney Belson and the Vortex Concerts multiple projector apparatus, Fieber, (Fantasia), MGM, and for Orson Welles, Belson (b. 1926) studied painting at the which had the claim to being a new type but was not successful in the studio California School of Fine Art (now San of independent art. systems. Francisco Art Institute) and received his A 1927 review of Fischinger’s Rebay and The Museum of Non- B.A. in Fine Arts from The University of multiple projector performance in Objective Painting provided support for California, Berkeley in 1946. At the Munich notes that his current film work him to make several films in the 1940s. historic Art in Cinema series at San was called Macht (Power), another film Plans were underway then for the new Francisco Museum of Art beginning in is called Fieber, and that Fischinger’s Guggenheim Museum, and Frank Lloyd 1946, he saw films by Fischinger, Vakuum has been finished and will soon Wright spent years working on designs. Norman McLaren, Hans Richter and be ready for showing [5]. In December Rebay proposed the creation of a Film others which influenced his work. 1927, an article titled “Raumlichtkunst” Center in the Museum, discussing it Belson’s first two films were shown at in Die Zeitlupe München magazine later Art in Cinema screenings and praised Fischinger extensively, briefly distributed by Cinema 16, though

Belson considered himself primarily a On May 28, 1957, the first of the directly to the senses. The elements of painter. Upon Fischinger’s legendary Vortex Concerts was Vortex are sound, light, color, and recommendation, Belson received grants performed at The California Academy of movement in their most comprehensive for a few years from The Museum of Science’s Morrison Planetarium in San theatrical expression. These audio-visual Non-Objective Painting. Francisco. Featuring new music from combinations are presented in a circular, In 1953 Belson attended Fischinger’s avant-garde composers worldwide domed theater equipped with special performance of his Lumigraph at the San curated by composer Henry Jacobs, projectors and sound systems. In Vortex Francisco Museum of Art, after a Vortex was “a series of electronic music there is no separation of audience and screening of Fischinger’s films. Belson concerts illuminated by various visual stage or screen; the entire domed area remembered the performance in the effects” according to Belson, Vortex’s becomes a living theater of sound and completely blackened auditorium, “…in Visual Director. Initially sponsored by light.” - Vortex 4 program notes mysterious synchronization with the Berkeley radio station KPFA and The The planetarium’s sophisticated sound sounds appeared soft, glowing California Academy of Sciences, five system had 38 speakers in a circular images…These irregular, always- different Vortex series were held at configuration, and an electronics expert changing shapes could flicker and Morrison through January 1959, with constructed a rotary mechanism with a pulsate, and when they swirled around, over 35 performances [10]. handle so that Jacobs could ‘whirl’ the they could leave a vague trail like a Jacobs played Musique concrète from sound around the room to achieve what comet’s tail…Sometimes the lights composers including Karlheinz was called the Vortex Effect. “The name would disappear and appear suddenly, Stockhausen, Henk Badings, Gordon – Vortex – is derived from the ability to but other times they would fade in and Longfellow, David Talcott and others move the sound around the dome in out extremely slowly – just as one color from his extensive tape collection, and either clockwise or counterclockwise might glow exquisitely in saturated his own compositions. In the blackness rotation, at any speed. Since a single duration or suddenly jump to another of the planetarium’s 65 foot dome, program source is used this is not a hue, with brilliant, tasteful Belson created spectacular illusions stereophonic sound but an entirely new timing…When the music was over, we layering abstract patterns, lighting aural experience” [12]. were plunged into total darkness again.” effects and cosmic imagery. He recalls Vortex became immediately popular. He recalled how Fischinger “could turn “working in an environment representing The attendance exceeded all even the simplest things into a luxurious, the heavens…a full-bodied experience expectations, though from the beginning magical illusion of cosmic elegance. with stunning visual effects” [11]. Morrison’s management had difficulty That was very inspirational to me” [9]. “Vortex is a new form of theater based with some of the “bohemian” attendees. Four years later, Belson would create on the combination of electronics, optics The press loved Vortex and continually his own cosmically elegant illusions at and architecture. Its purpose is to reach showered praise. the Vortex Concerts. an audience as a pure theater appealing This type of immersive environment

Fig. 2. Image from Belson's film Allures (1961), showing effect of interference pattern projectors. (©)Jordan Belson, courtesy Center for Visual Music.)

had never been created before. Vortex 4 San Francisco Chronicle: “Belson’s imagery exploring consciousness, program notes described its potential visual effects involve, as usual, transcendence, and the nature of light “for directly reaching an audience with geometric patterns of great purity and itself. His films are featured in museum unique sensory experiences.” Belson simplicity moving slowly in the center of exhibitions internationally, and his remembers, “You could create some the darkened dome, and vertiginously recent videofilm Epilogue (2005) was beautiful and terrifying sensations and rapid forms of white light that streak and funded by the NASA Art Program [17]. feelings there” [13.] reel all over the planetarium’s In 1979 Moritz wrote that Vortex As Vortex continued, the immensity…one of his visual “established the tradition of the sophistication of the visual effects compositions has the extraordinary effect psychedelic multiple-projector light increased. “Geometrically abstract of lifting the spectator right off his seat show which blossomed in the late 60s” forms, painted on slides and projected to traverse that sky-space in a [18]. Today we know these roots lie through slowly twirling prisms onto the wonderfully disembodied way.” further back in the 1920s. Fischinger’s apex of the dome, go through various Belson and Jacobs also performed multiple projector performances are the spatial evolutions” [14]. Belson utilized several Vortex Concerts at Expo 58: The forerunners of light shows, and are up to 30 projection devices including the Brussels World Fair. A Time magazine possibly the first immersive planetarium’s 13 foot starfield projector; article in February 1959 praised Vortex, environments using cinema. kaleidoscope, rotating and ‘zoomer’ discussing its popularity and the Brussels In 1959, the Vortex Presents notes projectors, strobes, slide projectors, shows. stated “The future seems to hold great rotating prisms, 16mm film projectors, a Though the Concerts were promise for this new combined art form flicker machine, a spiral generator, and enormously popular, attracting capacity with the advent of further developments four interference pattern projectors. The audiences and long lines, friction with of the cathode-ray tube and video-tape. Vortex V program notes claimed planetarium management had increased. There have already been musical scores “Vortex utilizes all known systems of Finally Morrison Planetarium cancelled composed by analogue computers and projection.” Belson didn’t screen films in Vortex. The final series (Vortex V) was ossilliscope [sic] visualizations of their entirety, only very brief in January, 1959. Belson invited John thought patterns. The separated worlds manipulated fragments and tests. In his Whitney, Sr. to contribute some of his of Science and Art are ever reaching studio, he shot interference pattern pendulum patterns; though John did not closer together” [19]. projections on 16mm film; some of these participate his brother James contributed can be seen in his film Allures (1961). his own footage and attended a rehearsal. “The visual images … consist of non- Meanwhile Jacobs worked on a References And Notes objective symmetrical patterns which “Highlights of Vortex” LP, released on move and change, expand and contract; Folkways Records. Its liner notes called 1. Oskar Fischinger to Hilla Rebay, June 28, 1942. of color effects and black-and-white Vortex “Entertainment for the Space Cited in English in Joan M. Lukach, Hilla Rebay: In effects; of fade-ins and fade-outs; Age” and stated “plans are afoot for a Search of the Spirit in Art. (New York : George Braziller, Inc., 1983). Correspondence between occasionally of the planetarium effects Vortex performance in Japan, as well as Fischinger and Rebay exists at The Guggenheim themselves – stars and comets; and of performances in Europe.” But a further Museum, New York and Center for Visual Music, combinations of all these. The images performance of Vortex by Belson and Los Angeles. are projected by a dozen specialized Jacobs never occurred. Despite its 2. Dr. Jörg Jewanski, Email to author, May 29, 2005. German scholar Jewanski has researched and devices, among them a standard film popularity, it was not to be reincarnated. published on Alexander László. See Jörg Jewanski projector (though the audience does not In October 1959 a very different, one and Natalia Sidler, eds. Farbe-Licht-Musik: get the feeling of a film on a screen, nor night event called Vortex Presents was Synästhesie und Farblichtmusik. (Bern : Peter Lang, 2006). does it hear any sounds of machinery staged at The San Francisco Museum of working) …The combination of space, Art, billed as “a concert of electronic 3.Rudolf Schneider. “Formspiel durch Kino,” Frankfurter Zeitung (July 12, 1926). light, color, and sound creates an music and non-objective film.” Using a enveloping audio-visual experience in a single 16mm projector, short films were 4. Oskar Fischinger. “Raumlichtmusik.” Unpublished typescript, n.d. Fischinger Collection, completely controlled environment” projected accompanying music. This Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles. [15]. marked the first synchronization and 5. Walter Terven. “Bei Fischinger in München,” Belson created illusions of floating in screening of James Whitney’s film Film Kurier (Jan 15, 1927). space. No images touched the edges, no Yantra with a soundtrack by Henk 6. Dr. William Moritz. Optical Poetry: The Life and frame lines were ever visible, and there Badings; plus a screening of Haut Work of Oskar Fischinger. (Eastleigh, UK: John were never frames of reference. Voltage, and an early version of a film Libbey Publishing, 2004). “Just being able to control the by Belson (later completed as Allures). 7. Several reels of Fischinger’s abstract films from darkness was very important. We could The audience was disappointed with the 1920s shows are being restored from original nitrates by Center for Visual Music in 2009, with get it down to jet black, and then take it Vortex Presents and the planned series the support of a National Film Preservation down another twenty-five degrees lower was cancelled; according to Belson they Foundation Avant-Garde Masters Grant funded by than that, so you really got that sinking- came expecting a Vortex Concert like The Film Foundation. in feeling…we were able to project the planetarium shows, but instead saw a 8. Oskar Fischinger to Hilla Rebay, April 25, 1944. Fischinger Collection, Center for Visual Music, Los images over the entire dome, so that film screening. Angeles. things would come pouring down from Four decades later, Belson refers to 9. Jordan Belson, 1971 testimonial statement about the center, sliding along the walls. At the Vortex Concerts as “a sacred Oskar Fischinger, cited in Moritz [6] pp. 169. times the whole place would seem to memory,” not possible or desirable to be 10. The author thanks Belson for generously reel” [16]. re-created. He has continued to create a sharing his time to discuss Vortex and clarify In January 1959 Alfred Frankenstein remarkable oeuvre of over 30 abstract events. Some information in this essay is derived reviewed a Vortex performance in the films, richly woven with cosmological from telephone conversations and correspondence

with Belson during 2002-2009. Thanks also to Catherine Heinrich for her invaluable assistance. In 2008, Belson remembered there were only a few dozen Concerts. No documentation exists to support claims of “over 100 concerts” in several texts. From existing documentation it is possible to verify c. 36 concerts, including Brussels, without counting a few of the unscheduled performances; an exact count is difficult as Belson confirms very occasionally a third performance was given on a night when only 2 were scheduled. Though several texts (Renan, Polt) in the 1960s refer to c. 60 concerts, and later texts (Moritz) refer to over 100 concerts, Belson does not support these accounts of 60 or over 100, nor do documents, press and program notes from the time. 11. Jordan Belson, telephone conversation with the author, December, 2002. 12. Vortex III Program Notes, January 1958. Belson Collection, Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles. Vortex Concerts and Vortex Presents program notes and LP liner notes cited are from the CVM Archives. The ‘electronics expert’ who built the rotary mechanism was probably a Stanford engineer, though Alvin Gundred of the planetarium is elsewhere credited. 13. Jordan Belson, cited in Scott MacDonald. A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 14. Alfred Frankenstein, “Vortex: The Music of the Hemispheres,” High Fidelity & audiocraft 9.5, (May 1959). 15. Harriet R. Polt and Roger Sandall, “Outside the Frame,” Film Quarterly 14 No. 3 (Spring, 1961), p. 35-36. 16. Jordan Belson, cited in Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema. (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1970). 17. Epilogue can be seen on Jordan Belson: 5 Essential Films, DVD (2007) released by Center for Visual Music (www.centerforvisualmusic.org). 18. William Moritz. “Non-Objective Film: the Second Generation,” in Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film, 1910-1975. ex. cat. (London : Hayward Gallery and Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979). 19. Vortex Presents program notes, October 31, 1959 (San Francisco: Audio-Visual Research Foundation). Collection Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.