CVM's Fischinger pages: Oskar Fischinger Texts
Selected Statements
About the Word Experimental
My early Films from 1919 till 1928 I am accustomed to call them Experiments. The later films from 1928 till 1933 I called Studies. And the new film that was awarded your Grand Prix I called Motion Painting No. 1.
I believe the word experiment means a period of searching till a final simple Technik [sic] is found, developed or chosen - through which it is possible to produce expressions which had to be brought into reality - and were somehow deep inside as subconscious desire, ideal or image existing from the beginning.
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Once the ideal most simplified Technik is found then one can work with and doesn't need to experiment with it.
Then comes the period of application of that Technik. The period of studying the many possibilities given or offered through that Technik. Before a Symphonie cold be written by Bach or Beethoven the instruments had to be invented and developed.
Once the instruments exist the musics [sic] for it can be worked out. Here also is the period of Studying - the possible application or the possibility to make use of certain instruments. Always one has to imagine the period of Time when this basic instruments were first developed. One the other hand a painting by Van Gogh Rembrandt or Rubens or a music of Bach or Beethoven could hardly be called an Experiment.
I believe Motion Painting No. I actual [sic] did outgrow the state or period of Being either an Experimental work nor a Studie. It also is not a composition. So what could it be -
So lets see why one of the great works of art by Van Gogh is not an experiment nor a studie but just a painting.
After the warring stage of Experimenting is over and the time for Studie is past, the time arrives where Technik can be forgotten - - the knowledge about application is there - now the movement or the time arrives were [where] the artist begins to relax looses himself into something much bigger much greater than he ever could be - He begins to listen to an inner voice and the work follows an inner dictation or a higher dictation. Above all moods there is a CREATIVE NECESSITY, an inner Law. Fleeting moods express feelings of short moments waves move not up or down but waves are only departures from the middle lines the real peaceful line of clear undisturbed total round all pervading full presents [presence] consciousness -
---Oskar Fischinger, c. 1949
Unpublished manuscript, Collection of Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles, FA 300362-300365. Handwritten.
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Manuscripts, correspondence and typescripts are from the collections of the Center for Visual Music.
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