Synaesthetic Dreams

A feast—and a frenzy—for the eyes and ears, colliding abstract music videos from across the past hundred years. Progressing chronologically from the 1920s to the present, the screening showcases early animation classics as well as more recent synesthetic works where sound and image fuse seamlessly.

The drawn animations of Mary Ellen Bute and Viking Eggeling exemplify visual music, in which pictorial elements are arranged rhythmically, melodically, and harmonically, like a musical composition. Another pioneer of the genre, Oskar Fischinger, is represented by Studies No. 5, originally commissioned by Elektrola Records and thus one of the first commercial music videos ever made.

In Lapis by James Whitney, tiny circles vibrate in kaleidoscopic bursts of color to the sound of Indian sitar music. The 10-minute animation took three years to complete using early computers. Similarly, Cibernetik 5.3 by John Stehura—created with early artificial intelligence—constructs a hyperreality of its own, a stroboscopic whirlwind of dots, lines, shapes, and neon hues. In Synchromy, Norman McLaren employed innovative optical techniques to "compose" a soundtrack of piano rhythms, which he then translated directly into multicolored visuals: what you see is, quite literally, what you hear.

Color Bars by Positronia nods to 1990s techno culture. Directed by Marko Pohjosmäki—who also composed the music—the piece exemplifies a music video operating in the liminal space between promo clip, art, and DIY culture. The screening concludes with Paris by festival guest Billy Roisz, a music video she made for the Norwegian noise-metal band MoE.

Viking Eggeling: Diagonal Symphonie (1923, 7’)

Oscar Fischinger: Studie nr. 5 (1930, 3’)

Mary Ellen Bute: Tarantella (1940, 5’)

John Stehura: Cibernetik 5.3 (1960-1965, 8’)

James Whitney: Lapis (1966, 10’)

Norman Mclaren: Synchromy (1971, 7’)

Marko Pohjosmäki: Positronia – Color Bars (1994, 3’)

Billy Roisz: Paris (2017, 4’)

In collaboration with Center for Visual Music. Programmed by Joel Karppanen.

Total length of the screening: 47 min