Abstronic

Mary Ellen Bute / United States / 1952 / 6 min.

synopsis

Images: © Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles

The receding, rotating and frolicking Lissajous shapes, which form curves created by combining two mutually perpendicular oscillations, closely follow the soundtrack created by Aaron Copland's composition Hoe Down (1942) and Don Gillis' Ranch House Party. The film was created with the help of an oscilloscope designed in Bell Laboratories.

“Beautiful Lissajous curves can create a choreography that inspires – and startles – the imagination. The resulting beauty and movement contain intimations of occurrences in the sub-atomic world that hitherto have been accessible to the human mind merely as mathematical possibilities.” – Mary Ellen Bute

Source: CVM

biography

Mary Ellen Bute (1906–1983) was an American animator and pioneer of electronic film. In her works, she experimented with various methods of translating the language of music into a language of abstract shapes, lines and colours. In the 1930s, she collaborated with Leon Theremin, with whom she attempted to machine-synchronise light and sound circuits. In the 1950s, she began to explore the artistic possibilities of working with electrons. In 2022, Ji.hlava IDFF screened her short film Rhythm in Light (1934).