To Do This Week
Work on your HTML Cinema Projects and the final cut of the Video Essays
Notes
View Video Essays…
HTML Cinema works…
Abstract Cinema
I. EARLY Experimental CINEMA (1910s–1930s)
Key Concepts: Pure visual music, rhythm, formal experimentation, anti-narrative
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Hans Richter – Ghosts before breakfast (1927) – a Dadaist short where inanimate objects rebel against logic through stop-motion and absurd visual gags.
Everyday (1929) – a rhythmic portrait of daily life structured by abstract visual patterns and Constructivist montage.
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Man Ray – Emak-Bakia (1926) – surrealist cine-poem blending rayographs, distorted optics, and dreamlike imagery to disrupt narrative and celebrate the free play of light and form.
- Germaine Dulac – The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928): dream logic
- Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali – Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Renowned for its dream-like sequences and shocking imagery.
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Oskar Fischinger – An Optical Poem (1938), Komposition in Blau (1935)
Precision animation synchronized with music; influence on Disney (Fantasia).
II. MID-CENTURY AVANT-GARDE (1940s–1960s)
Key Concepts: Materiality, perception, hand-drawn or cameraless film, surrealism
- Joseph Cornell – Rose Hobart (1936, shown widely in this period): poetic re-edit
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Len Lye – A Colour Box (1935), Free Radicals (1958–79)
Direct animation on film stock; energetic, kinetic experiments.
- Maya Deren – Meshes of the Afternoon (1943):
subjective loops, dream narrative
- Shirley Clarke: Bridges-Go-Round (1958)
urban documentary meets jazz abstraction
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Stan Brakhage – Dog Star Man (1961-64), Mothlight (1963)
Personal, visionary abstraction using organic materials, painted frames, non-linear poetics.
- Ken Jacobs’ Orchard Street (1955)
A silent, observational short capturing the vibrant street life of New York’s Lower East Side with painterly composition and kinetic realism.
- Jonas Mekas’ Walden (1969) is a lyrical diary film composed of handheld 16mm footage that captures fleeting moments of daily life, friends, and nature in New York, evoking a poetic rhythm of memory and presence.
- Bruce Conner – A Movie (1958): found footage montage
- Abigail Child’s Prefaces (1981) is a rapid-fire montage of found footage and jazz-infused sound, launching her Is This What You Were Born For? series with a politically charged collage of gender, labor, and media.
- Nathaniel Dorsky’s Variations (1998)
A silent, 24-minute 16mm film that presents a series of luminous, contemplative images—such as a plastic bag drifting across pavement—crafted through polyvalent editing to evoke a meditative visual experience.
III. STRUCTURAL AND MATERIAL CINEMA (1960s–1980s)
Key Concepts: Minimalism, process, duration, film as object
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Hollis Frampton – Hapax Legomena II Poetic Justice (1972)
A conceptual film that tells a narrative entirely through typed script pages filmed on a table, inviting viewers to imagine the visual world described in words.
IV. VIDEO ART AND TECHNOLOGICAL TURN (1970s–1990s)
Key Concepts: Electronic media, signal manipulation, feedback, performance
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Nam June Paik – Global Groove (1973)
Fluxus influence; collage and layering in early video synthesis. -
Bill Viola – Anthem (1983)
A video installation that layers a young girl’s scream with images of industrial landscapes and medical procedures, exploring the body as a site of pain, memory, and transformation.. link
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Steina and Woody Vasulka – Noisefields (1974)
Signal manipulation; exploring the image as electromagnetic event.
V. CONTEMPORARY DIGITAL LOOPS AND NFT CINEMA (2018–Present)
Key Concepts: Infinite loops, modular time, generative NFTs, crypto-aesthetics
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Refik Anadol – Machine Hallucinations
AI-generated data aesthetics.
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Casey Reas – Software Structures, generative loops rooted in process art and early systems aesthetics.
- Justine Enard: https://justineemard.com/works/
- Jacques Perconte: https://vimeo.com/jacquesperconte
- Inès Sieulle: https://mubi.com/en/films/the-oasis-i-deserve/trailer
- Taller Estampa – Process of Seeing (2021)
A video essay on artificial, human and filmic vision. Different artificial vision tools scrutinize images, noting their content or monitoring their actions. Instead of closing its meaning or extracting data from it, these automated voices and actions increase their ambiguity and mystery. The distance between words and images widens, resulting in new assemblages.
- Gwenola Wagon: Around the world in 80,000 clicks (2015)
https://mubi.com/en/us/films/la-antena
LA ANTENA, by Esteban Sapir
Argentina, 2007
An entire city has lost its voice. Mr. TV, the owner of the city’s only television channel, is carrying out a sinister plan to control all of the city’s inhabitants. He kidnaps a singer, the only one who still has The Voice. An inventor witnesses the kidnapping and flees to thwart approaching doom.