Len Lye

This book explores music- and sound-image relationships in non-mainstream screen repertoire from the earliest examples of experimental audiovisuality to the most recent forms of expanded and digital technology. It challenges presumptions of visual primacy in experimental cinema and rethinks screen music discourse in light of the aesthetics of non-commercial imperatives. Several themes run through the book, connecting with and significantly enlarging upon current critical discourse surrounding realism and audibility in the fiction film, the role of music in mainstream cinema, and the audiovisual strategies of experimental film. The contributors investigate repertoires and artists from Europe and the United States through the critical lenses of synchronicity and animated sound, interrelations of experimentation in image and sound, audiovisual synchresis and dissonance, experimental soundscape traditions, found-footage film, remediation of pre-existent music and sound, popular and queer sound cultures, and a diversity of radical technological and aesthetic tropes in film media traversing the work of early pioneers such as Walther Ruttmann and Len Lye, through the mid-century innovations of Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Lis Rhodes, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and studio collectives in Poland, to latter-day experimentalists John Smith and Bill Morrison, as well as the contemporary practices of VJing.

Introductory overview of New Zealand artists who began working in film and video between 1970 and 1985, following their work up to 2010 and beyond.  This piece was originally titled A Place Near Here and  published in Illusions #35.  It has been significantly updated since then. Back issues of Illusions are available from PO Box 6476, Marion Square, Wellington, New Zealand.

Im Zentrum stehen frühe Konzeptionen von Film als Symbiose optischer und akustischer künstlerischer Ausdrucksformen, die sich auf experimentelle Weise der Frage von Synästhesie und der Schaffung eines intermedialen Gesamtkunstwerks annähern. Dabei werden auch die Einflüsse einer sich über alle Bereiche der Kunst hinweg verbreitenden und in einer radikalen Veränderung der ästhetischen Theorie mündenden modernistischen Denkrichtung ab dem ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert auf das Verhältnis von Künstler, Werk und Betrachter erfasst.

Seit seinem ersten Auftreten zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts hat sich der Begriff der Visual Music inzwischen zu einem Sammelbecken für viele unterschiedliche Spielarten früherer und zeitgenössischer audiovisueller Medienkunst entwickelt. Im Zuge dieser Arbeit soll die Visual Music jedoch zu ihrem historischen Ursprung in der Anfangsphase des Films zurückgeführt werden, als dessen Positionierung innerhalb des Gefüges der etablierten bildenden Künste erst noch verhandelt werden musste und zahlreiche Experimente zwischen Optik und Akustik stattfanden. Entlang einzelner Werkbeispiele abstrakter Filme von Walter Ruttmann, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling, Oskar Fischinger und Len Lye werden im Folgenden verschiedene künstlerische Ansätze gegenübergestellt, deren gemeinsames Ziel in einem Exzess der Sinne bestand.

Cette théorie propose de reconsidérer la problématique du montage (les liaisons comme les disruptions, la dépendance comme l’indépendance des plans) à partir d’un principe générateur. Il s’agit de saisir son essence au-delà des fonctions syntaxiques, sémantiques, narratives, discursives, rythmiques ou plastiques ; au-delà des contingences historiques, géographiques, des critères de genre et des politiques d’auteurs. Son horizon : comprendre ce qui se joue entre les images, quelles que soient les formes de montage, des plus communes aux plus singulières, des toutes premières aux plus contemporaines.
L’hypothèse de départ est simple et douée d’une force heuristique : les plans sont porteurs d’une énergie – dont les manifestations sont variées – que le montage prend en charge, actualise, active, polarise. Ceci implique l’analyse des forces en action dans les plans et les transformations et métamorphoses qui en découlent.

Report on a symposium organized around themes of direct and digital moving image making. Adapted and updated from an earlier version published in Illusions Magazine in 2006.                              Back issues of Illusions can be ordered from PO Box 6476, Marion Square, Wellington, New Zealand.

Summary
This article was written in response to a passage in Contemporary English Poetry: An Introduction, by Anthony Thwaite, first published in Japan in 1957. In Mr. Thwaite's book, he assesses briefly the career of Robert Graves and the part played in it by Laura Riding [now Laura (Riding) Jackson]. In the passage to which I refer, facts about Mrs. Jackson's literary work-relationship with Mr. Graves are plainly wrong, and statements misleading. I supply corrective critical and chronological information, and attempt to show by close verbal analysis the workings of Mr. Thwaite's bias of attitude in favour of Mr. Graves. As a preface to the discussion, the article considers another critic, Douglas Day —whose work on Robert Graves, Swifter Than Reason, devotes chapters to what he calls 'the Laura Riding years', and exhibits a bias similar to that of Mr. Thwaite's. I show how statements in these chapters are self-contradictory and against the literary record. Noting how widespread such mix-statements are in current books, periodicals and newspapers, I seek to account for the bias by turning to Mr. Graves's own statements about the work-relationship. I demonstrate how Mr. Graves has attempted to revise the name 'Laura Riding' out of the successive editions of works of his, published work of hers under his own name, taken collaborative works —such as A Survey Of Modernist Poetry, A Pamphlet Against Anthologies and the magazine Epilogue (in which he was associate editor, only) —and accorded Mrs. Jackson the status of second author whereas she is by right the first. I give instances of how reliance on authority stemming from Mr. Graves has helped to mislead critical, biographical and bibliographical writers on such matters. By citations and comparisons of poems and prose, I attempt to make clear the essential differences between the work of Robert Graves and that of Laura (Riding) Jackson while at the same time indicating how much Mr. Graves depends for substance on Mrs. Jackson's work, in ways ranging from straightforward plagiary to adaptations of her thought for large-scale literary purpose.

Catalogue accompanying the 2015 exhibition at the Len Lye Centre.

Taking inspiration from the musical elements in Lye’s work, Len Lye’s Jam Session presents well-known and well-loved works alongside lesser known and rarely considered material from the Len Lye Foundation Collection and Archives.

This book explores music- and sound-image relationships in non-mainstream screen repertoire from the earliest examples of experimental audiovisuality to the most recent forms of expanded and digital technology. It challenges presumptions of visual primacy in experimental cinema and rethinks screen music discourse in light of the aesthetics of non-commercial imperatives. Several themes run through the book, connecting with and significantly enlarging upon current critical discourse surrounding realism and audibility in the fiction film, the role of music in mainstream cinema, and the audiovisual strategies of experimental film. The contributors investigate repertoires and artists from Europe and the United States through the critical lenses of synchronicity and animated sound, interrelations of experimentation in image and sound, audiovisual synchresis and dissonance, experimental soundscape traditions, found-footage film, remediation of pre-existent music and sound, popular and quee...

In selecting moving image works for Mind Games, it seemed essential to search for works that utilise the distinctive qualities of the moving image medium as an innovative exploration of surrealism. Given the self-taught and independent status of much surrealist art practice, it was also important to search for artists and work operating outside of institutional solely Fine Art or commercial contexts. This led to spreading the word amongst underground arts communities, door-knocking to approach music video makers, foraging amongst dusty archives, lifting the lids from a few dormant super8 and 16 mm film canisters, and inspiring the enthusiasm necessary to bring some of these projects back to life in a digital format. This exciting journey has taken the form of accidental redirections and chance encounters, leading to particular themes becoming evident across the body of work.

A central concern of surrealism is to explore and illustrate the unconscious mind. Many surrealist filmmakers sought to remake reality in order to create an unbridled expression of their fantasies. However surrealist art was not restricted to the realm of fantasy. For some, surrealism provided the foundations for unleashing internal turmoil, unconscious repressions, confusions and frustrations. These elements of surrealist art have found an ideal mode of expression in the moving image, as is evident in films such as Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel and Dali, 1929) and Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren and Hammid, 1943). The latter is one example of a number of films that have been described as ‘psychodrama’. It is this category of surrealist moving image work that takes a prominent place in Mind Games. Surrealist psychodramas share a concern for the sub-conscious and can be understood as a gateway to (or outlet for) the internal life of an artist’s psychological state or dream imagination. This process is enabled by the spatio-temporal manipulations made possible by the moving image. These manipulations of space and time allow the manifestation of imagined worlds where psychological struggles can be ‘played out’ or purged - often in defiance of the laws of physics and logic. Such works include characteristics such as; dream imagery, expression of psychological disturbance, explorations and manipulations of subjectivity, subject fragmentation, logic disturbances, and spatial dislocation. Some of these psychodramatic characteristics are particularly evident in Circadian Rhythms (1976), Kitchen Sink (1989) and The Moth (2007).

The predominance of animated work in Mind Games is significant when considering the ways in which surrealism has been explored by moving image artists in Aotearoa New Zealand. By igniting static images with motion, animation breathes life into imagined worlds, objects and creatures. Through processes of anthropomorphism and metamorphoses, animation manipulates our experience of time, subverts the laws of physics and creates imagined dreams. For surrealist filmmakers working in relative isolation, and with limited funds or institutional support, animating has often been accompanied by a ‘number-eight-wire’ philosophy and a heightened endurance for creating a film over an extended time-frame. This innovative approach to animating with whatever materials are available and extended periods is evident in the creation stories of several of the animated works featured in Mind Games.

Len Lye's scratch film has a particular significance in terms of cinematic colour, and his painterly approach to the medium has influenced several generations of experimental film practitioners in New Zealand. This chapter of the monograph Len Lye, published by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, edited by Tyler Cann and Wystan Curnow, pays special attention to Lye's colour film in relation to the practices of Lisa Reihana, Veronica Vaevae and Nova Paul.

This chapter appears in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics edited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis (2013).

Animators and visual music artists have long experimented with technological devices to explore the image–sound relationship, often innovating new ways of composing motion in time and space. For Len Lye this involved pioneering methods of animation and exploring the material qualities of organic materials such as film and metal, creating a substantial body of handmade animations that continue to affect audiences and inspire contemporary practitioners. Lye’s work provided the inspiration and raw materials for the development of Zig Zag, an homage to Lye, which integrated traditional musical instruments with digital media, remixed and projected visual imagery, and improvised theatrical performance. This complex process of remediation is discussed in relation to the extracinematic animation of both Lye’s sculptures and the theatrical performances. Extending the term “animation” is fundamental to understanding the way Zig Zag is a reanimation of the latent material life force embodied in Lye’s resting sculptures.

Report of an exhibition framed within Hollis Frampton's notion of a meta-history of all visual arts, a place where painting, cinema, and photography would all be seen as branches on the same tree. Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. February-May, 2014.

The New Zealand–born American artist Len Lye (1901–1980) is recognized as a pioneer for his experimental films and his “Tangible Motion Sculpture.” More than thirty-five years after his death, Lye’s artistic legacy is increasingly dependent upon the Len Lye Foundation to reconstruct and realize his sculptural works, particularly the engineering of larger-scale iterations of extant models. In this paper, curators Paul Brobbel and Simon Rees discuss the making of Lye’s sculpture in the twenty-first century and the exhibition of Lye’s work at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

Abstract animation is commonly positioned as a conceptual modern art genre. The cognitive demand of this media – from this position – is one of exclusivity; demanding an informed consumer. When considered from an inclusive perspective, however, it becomes a more accessible set of media. The consideration of potential user engagement as opposed to the intentions of the artist is typical to Inclusive Design. Targeting accessibility, it is commonly applied in areas such as Industrial Design and Architecture. Use in other areas, such as animation, permits considered perception and practice. In creating a new methodology for analysis and creation of media, a new genre is also possible – one of inclusion. As example, this paper will incorporate studies of works in abstract and visual music genres by creators such as Norman McLaren, Oskar Fischinger, and Mary Ellen Bute. This interrogation targets a set of qualities that permit accessible viewing. These attributes are then ready for application in creating accessible media, whilst functioning within abstract genres. This is the conceptual foundation for practice by the artist, and process will be discussed.