On Generation and Corruption

Borrowing its title from a treatise by Aristotle, the latest film by Makino Takashi is an abstract work that finds its drive in the clash between light and darkness. Entirely composed of superimposed images of Tokyo’s landscape and water sites, the film takes its rhythm from the cycles of repetition that are the pillars of life and civilisation. As light emerges from the chaos, Jim O’Rourke’s ambient drone sets the tone for what is to come.

Not Even Nothing Can Be Free of Ghosts

Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.

Flow

Flash projection from dutch visual artist Han Hoggerbrugge

Keep on Turning

In Wiertz and Verbeek's kinetic, kaleidoscopic opus Keep on Turning (1974, 3 min, 16mm, sound) cubes convey, rotate and shift in tandem.

D'art moderne

Trans/Figure/Ground

A film about uncanny valleys and the space between. Painted 16mm film undergoes a monstrous transformation becoming neither analog nor digital.

Enigma (謎)

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

Full Moon

Designed for continuous single or multiple monitor display (as well as video projection), the tape is a collection of computer animated sequences of celestial images spanning time and cultures, moving objects and images in harmonic choreography and spatial play.

Don't You Wish You Were Here?

The very first film in which Maya Yonesho tried to show her thoughts. Even just circles may be able to show emotions as a person in animation. The main circle (character) is slightly pinker than the other grey circles (people) and she thought she was very special. But she is very grey in a colourful world. She will find out that grey is not just a boring colour.

No. 11: Mirror Animations

Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.

Jazzimation

A jazzy film in which the spectator is forced to look with the ears and listen with the eyes. An abstract film drawn directly on the computer.

Gassy's Gas 'n Stuff

Lulu the dog gets a job at the local convenience store and stays up all night cleaning the back room. Short created for Adult Swim Smalls.

VIVAldi VVinter

A deep dive into a snowstorm of structural chaos and a blizzard of exploding gestural animation.

Fehérlófia

A horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.

Rubin's Incorporia

Rubin chats with two friends.

Two Space

Two Space systematically explores symmetries used by Islamic artists to create abstract temple decorations. The two dimensional patterns, like the tile patterns of Islamic temples, are generated by performing a set of symmetry operations (translations, rotations, and reflections) upon a basic figure or tile. Two Space consists of twelve such patterns produced using each of nine different animating figures (12 x 9 = 108 total). Rendered in stark black and white, the patterns produce optical illusions of figure-ground reversal and afterimages of color. Gamelan music from the classical tradition of Java adds to the mesmerizing effect.

3/78 (Objects and Transformations)

Sixteen 'objects', each consisting of one hundred points of light, perform a series of precisely choreographed rhythmic transformations. Accompanied by the sound of a Shakuhachi (the Japanese bamboo flute), the film is an exercise in the visual perception of motion and mathematical structure.

Dimensions

A mathematical play on one repeated movement. It imparts a sense of possibilities: that something simple can produce complex and unexpected patterns. As with an atom, the variety of possibilities from a base movement is potentially infinite.

Rectangle & Rectangles

This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

Rythme coloré

A film unmade-- That is, Survage's film was never realized in the traditional sense-- At the time, such a project was beyond technological possibility. His pioneering efforts to combine luminous, expressive painting and the moving picture were further curtailed by the outbreak of WWI. Some have taken it upon themselves to 'animate' his watercolor plates in attempts to set his dream into motion.