Spirals

Oskar Fischinger / Germany / 1926 / 4 min.

synopsis

Images: © Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles

Spirals is one of Fischinger's early experimental films. The visual variations on the expressive devices and formal parameters of music, such as tempo, rhythm and melody, are based on complex geometric patterns that create a sense of depth and infinity when in motion.

“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. Once the ideal most simplified Technik is found, then one can work with it and doesn't need to experiment with it.” – Oskar Fischinger

Source: CVM

biography

Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967), a pioneer of abstract animation and visual music, developed a new visual language of abstraction in film which influenced generations of animators and filmmakers. Working in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Los Angeles, he’s known as the Father of Visual Music. He made some of the first music videos in the early 1930s, influenced John Cage’s theories of percussion and the style of Disney’s Fantasia. Fischinger studied music, organ building and engineering. He began making silent films in Germany in the 1920s, and a multiple projector show called Raumlichtkunst (1926), then moved to Berlin. Paramount Studios brought him to Los Angeles in 1936, where he had difficult encounters with Paramount and Disney, but managed to make Allegretto and Motion Painting no. 1 with support from the Guggenheim Foundation, New York. In his later years he made a few commercials but couldn’t find support for further films. He focused on painting, drawing, and a light-play instrument.

Source: Cindy Keefer, CVM.