Visual Music from the CVM Archive, 1947-1986
Belson, Bute, Dockum, Engel, Spinello

 

 

images from Belson's Chakra, Bute's Polka Graph, Dockum Mobilcolor film and Belson's Mandala

 

Thirteen rare films featuring pre-computer abstraction, using a variety of techniques including early oscilloscope experiments, color organs, hand-drawn sound, animation drawn directly on film, painted scrolls, and optical printing. Many preserved films and new HD transfers. Films from the archive of Center for Visual Music. "We need a new kinetic, visual art form - one that unites sound, color and form." - Mary Ellen Bute, 1936.

CONTENTS + links to trailers

Mary Ellen Bute: Polka Graph (1947), Color Rhapsodie (1948) and Abstronic (1952)

Jordan Belson: Mandala (1953), Meditation (1971) and Chakra (1972)

Charles Dockum: Mobilcolor Performance at the Guggenheim (1952), Demonstration of Mobilcolor Projector (documentary, 1966) and Mobilcolor Performance Film (1969)

Barry Spinello, Sonata for Pen, Brush and Ruler (1968)

Jules Engel: Landscape (1971), Mobiles (1978) and Play-Pen (1986)

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images from Engel's Play-Pen, Bute's Color Rhapsodie

From Bute’s ‘seeing sound’ to Belson’s nonobjective language, Dockum’s color organ imagery, the graphic choreography of Engel’s animation, and Barry Spinello’s hand-drawn sound and images, we present a selection of Visual Music from the CVM archive.

Bute's Polka Graph uses Schillinger's musical notation to generate the visual complement to the soundtrack, while Abstronic uses images produced from sound using an oscilloscope.  Mandala is one of Belson’s first films to use mandala imagery, filmed from his painted scrolls, while according to Belson, Meditation is “a poetic, abstracted account of the meditational experience.”  The Mobilcolor films document Dockum's instruments for composing and performing light as symphonies, and Spinello and Engel's films explore styles of hand drawn animation.

Contains many restored films and new HD transfers. Meditation, Chakra, and the Dockum and Engel films were restored by CVM. Engel films restored in association with NOMI Group.

 

DVD REVIEW at PopMatters: "Beauty in the Abstract - Visual Music 1947-1986"

 

NTSC, Region-free, TRT 78:30
Films are 4x3 with pillarboxing (side mattes), for 16x9 display. No windowboxing.
ISBN 978-0-9764320-0-5
Produced by and (c) Center for Visual Music, 2017