Abstract animation

The abstract film or absolute film is an experimental film movement of the avant-garde that emerged in the 1920s. He broke away from the narrative structures of the embossed literature and photography action film and presented a purely visual effect by rhythmisierende structuring of color and abstract shapes in the foreground. Therefore, the influences came mainly from the painting and out of the music. The best known representatives of the absolute film were Oskar Fischinger, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann. The contributions of French cinema to abstract film were known under the heading of pure cinema.

History

Beginnings and culminating in the 1920s

The allure of changing optical structures led in the 18th and 19th centuries favored stage art devices such as the kaleidoscope and the color organ. Around 1910, Arnaldo Gina and Bruno Corra took on momentum from the art of the cubists and futurists, in whose works movement was represented by color and form organization. Hans L. Stoltenberg (colored film, 1911) and Léopold Survage ( Rythmes colorés, 1912-1914 ), the idea of ​​cinematic abstraction developed continuously until Eggeling, Richter, Ruttmann and Fischinger early 1920, with Kandinsky as an important influence of the painting, Genre applied to first flowering, first with pure animated films.

Henri Chomette described the film as Cinéma Pur abstract and called one of his artistic autonomy, detachment from reality authentic figure and all dramaturgical means. In his films, the Jeux de la vitesse et reflets (1923 ) and Cinq minutes de cinéma pur ( 1924) he accordingly showed only the rhythm of reflections spinning crystals. Ralph Steiner and László Moholy -Nagy worked in a similar manner with the pure visual power of light.

Stagnation and continuation in the New American Cinema

In the 1930s, stagnated the development of abstract film. Only the English filmmaker Len Lye gave it new impetus by pointing through experiments with different film developing and printing processes as well as direct staining and scratching of the film strip to the materiality of the medium. Fischinger and Ruttmann used their techniques to produce commercial films. After Fischinger had emigrated to the USA in 1936, he worked at the " adaptation" of classical and popular music. He is regarded as a key driver of the figurative elements reducing, are counted to the Harry Smith, John and James Whitney, Hy Hirsh, Jordan Belson and Pat O'Neill New American Cinema.

Post-war period

After the Second World War European film artists took to the interrupted tradition of abstract film and put their attention back even referring to the material character of the film. Filmmakers like Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren and Werner Nekes manipulated the material by exposure experiments, scratching of the film, peeling of the layers, multiple copying or filming of the rotation material. Kubelka turned with Arnulf Rainer ( 1958 to 1960 ) a film that consisted of alternating black and white squares; by the flicker of a precursor product Flackerfilms 1960s with his perception experiments. The advent of video technology and image processing by the computer led to new visual practices, but as an independent, self-consistent, developing film movement was the abstract film in the 1980s to an end.

Motives and forms of representation

The desire to combine elements of music and of painting in the medium of film is reflected in the statements of the artist, the absolute film should " music for the eyes " ( Eggeling ), "Painting with Time" ( Ruttmann ) or " visual rhythm " ( be the judge ). While Eggeling (1923/1924) worked in Diagonal Symphony in the room with static, changing in itself figurations of white lines, Ruttmann emphasized in his rhythm films (1921 to 1925) the spatiality of the film image by itself in the depth of moving geometric surfaces and figures. Ruttmann gave his objects often organic looking appearance and movement, let them act somewhat like water bubbles and approaches among the abstract filmmakers most likely to figural representations to. Judge again went the opposite way and abstracted real Abgefilmtes, about eyeballs and faces.

Similarly, Man Ray worked in France, the objects such as nails and needles directly exposed lying on the film strip. He thus moved into the carrier medium, and thus the creative process rezipierbar one in the movie. Fernand Léger alienated everyday objects such as kitchen appliances by reducing light and movement to the point of abstraction. The filmmakers of the New American Cinema took advantage of the advanced capabilities of the American animated film, and set up tools such as oscilloscopes. The abstraction shifted in the 1950s and 1960s increasingly on the film post-production, to editing, sound and manipulation of the filmed material.

Since the late 1960s, the experimentally -abstracting aspect also related to the projection of films. In Hans Scheugl ZZZ Hamburg special from 1968, a string was projected on the screen about instead of a movie. Screenings found in the idea of ​​expanded cinema without canvas on three-dimensional objects, or was accompanied by performances. The character illustration of abstract film has been used since the 1980s in many video clips, especially in the fractals and mandalas of many techno videos.