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When the sound is the image Around Sound

When we think about the cinema, we think of image and sound. However, the truth is that most films are built on words, on dialogues, as if it were theatre. Images and sounds can be more or less attractive, but they do not mean anything by themselves; they are at the service of a textual narrative.

 

There is another type of cinema, in which the image and the sound are not mere space holders, but rather a language in its own right that is both form and content. Even in this case, it is rare to find films that are at the same level. Unfortunately, most directors are more concerned with the visual rather than the sound.

 

But what happens when the visual and the sound are exactly the same, when images and sound interrelate so intimately that they appear to be fused instead of complementary? That is the question that we try to answer with this selection of films.

 

Blanca Rego, curator of When the sound is the image

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When the sound is the image

When we think about the cinema, we think of image and sound. However, the truth is that most films are built on words, on dialogues, as if it were theatre. Images and sounds can be more or less attractive, but they do not mean anything by themselves; they are at the service of a textual narrative.

There is another type of cinema, in which the image and the sound are not mere space holders, but rather a language in its own right that is both form and content. Even in this case, it is rare to find films that are at the same level. Unfortunately, most directors are more concerned with the visual rather than the sound.

But what happens when the visual and the sound are exactly the same, when images and sound interrelate so intimately that they appear to be fused instead of complementary? That is the question that we try to answer with this selection of films.

Blanca Rego, curator When the sound is the image

NUMAX

Length: 75m 36s

Tickets

Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer

Peter Kubelka

  • 1960
  • 06:46
  • USA
  • EXP
  • B/W

An experimental short from Peter Kubelka in which the film flickers between periods of light and sound.

Time piece

Time piece

Jin Henson

  • 1965
  • 09:00
  • USA
  • FIC
  • COL

A surreal stream of consciousness montage about time and related bizarreness.

Dresden dynamo

Dresden dynamo

Lis Rhodes

  • 1971
  • 05:06
  • United Kingdom
  • EXP
  • COL

It was perhaps the question of sound – the uncertainty of any synchronicity between what was seen and what was said that began an investigation into the relationship of sound to image. Dresden Dynamo is a film that I made without a camera – in which the image is the sound track – the sound track the image.

Synchromy

Synchromy

Norman Mclaren

  • 1971
  • 07:29
  • Italy
  • EXP
  • COL

The film's soundtrack is an original musical composition produced with synthetic sound - through photographing unusual geometric shapes and running them through an optical sound head. The images are an artistic rendering of this soundtrack.

UFOs

UFOs

Lilian F. Schwartz

  • 1971
  • 03:03
  • USA
  • EXP
  • COL

Blasting off into cosmic visual abstraction, pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz’s recently restored UFOs is a kinetic tour-de-force whose innovative pixel pigmentation predated advances in stereoscopic technology by decades.

10 drawings

10 drawings

Steve Farrer

  • 1976
  • 20:00
  • USA
  • EXP
  • COL

This is a collection of ten short films. For each film, 50 x 18" strips of clear film were laid side by side to make a rectangle 18' x 36'. A geometric shape was drawn on each rectangle, and the strips of celluloid were joined to make a film. The sound is created by the image carried over into the optical sound track.

Outer space

Outer space

Peter Tscherkassky

  • 1999
  • 09:58
  • Austria
  • EXP
  • B/W

A premonition of a horror film, lurking danger: A house - at night, slightly tilted in the camera's view, eerily lit - surfaces from the pitch black, then sinks back into it again. A young woman begins to move slowly towards the building.

Dialogue

Dialogue

Judith Poirier

  • 2008
  • 04:14
  • Canada
  • EXP
  • COL

From the starting point of the alphabet as a series of abstract symbols, a visual representation of the spoken word, this film explores the acoustic and visual rhythm of type. Poirier utilises an aleatoric approach to animation, generating intuitive compositions governed by elements of chance and surprise.

Moon blink

Moon blink

Rainer Kohlberger

  • 2015
  • 10:00
  • Germany
  • EXP
  • COL

Exclusively generated by code, this is a video that highlights the unique aesthetic decisionism of its narrative model. Initially, it is the motion that is irritating. Although the undulating, disordered sequences of lines stabilize into strictly regulated, ascending patterns of movement in the form of thick white lines, the increasing acceleration divests the gaze of its certainty and ability to differentiate.