DANIELE CIPRÌ & FRANCO MARESCO A MEMORIA (1996)

Directors: Daniele Ciprì & Franco Maresco

Year: 1996

Time: 38 mins

Music: Steve Lacy

Eye of Sound: The Italian duo Ciprì & Maresco, known to be cynical deconstructionists, weave a fascinating film around memories of a decadent Sicily. Ruins, memories of ruins - memories are ruins. This thoroughly surrealist piece unfolds like a dream, with no clear direction but the haunting feeling of familiarity and the ready acceptance of otherness as oneness. There is no other sound except Steve Lacy's beautiful and melancholic soprano saxophone, specifically improvised for the film. But, as the directors respectfully say, Lacy's music can never be a mere "soundtrack"; there is a space between the two events, they are aware of one another, but also acutely aware of themselves. And the beauty of A Memoria resides in this powerful dialectic between picture and sound. The pleasure of ruins lies in the eye of memory.

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JOHAN VAN DER KEUKEN ON ANIMAL LOCOMOTION (1994)

Director: Johan van der Keuken

Year: 1994

Time: 15 mins

Music:

Willem Breuker - Composer, Bass Clarinet

Peter Barkema - Soprano Sax

Alex Coke - Flute, Piccolo

Nico Nijholt - Trombone

Bernard Hunnekink - Tuba

Henk de Jonge - Piano

Arjen Gorter - Bass

Rob Verdurmen - Drums

Han Bennink - Drums

Lorre Lynn Trytten - Violin

Aimee Versloot - Viola

Susanne Degerfors - Cello

Eye of Sound: Shot in several European locations, this short film is defined by the director as a "self-portrait in locomotion". It is difficult to discern a plot or a general meaning in this collection of images, except for the admittedly vague possibility of a repertoire of what keeps humans going, and an insistence on motion. Breuker has been Keuken's companion in most of his films, endowing them with his brand combination of meticulous orchestral composition and open-space improv. On Animal Locomotion features Keuken's typical free-form sensibility and quasi-ethnographic approach to the documentary genre, much in the same way that Breuker's score literally runs across fields of unsurpassable lyricism and irreparable fracturation. 

http://rapidshare.com/files/384521607/animalocomotion.avi

ERIC OSTROWSKI CYANONIDE (2003)

Director: Eric Ostrowski

Year: 2006

Time: 14 mins

Music: Eric Ostrowski

Eye of Sound: A film in five different sections, each containing a different soundscape by Ostrowski. Hand painted film, intense exposure, morphing textures and shapes into a seamless whole; geometrical games sabotaging themselves; and the incessant lure of the abstract paint drift. The soundscapes, of course, build up like fountains of picture, oscillating between contemplative sculptures with electronically manipulated strings and harsh noise attacks on our senses. Despite the use of sound as a central filmic element, Cyanonide stands as a proof of the enduring influence of Brakhage on american avant-film.  

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NORMAN MCLAREN SYNCHROMY (1971)

Director: Norman McLaren

Year: 1971

Time: 7 mins

Music: Norman McLaren

Eye of Sound: What you see is what you hear. In this 1971 masterpiece, McLaren achieved what much of the audiovisual art world has been trying for decades: a perfect symbiosis of image and sound. McLaren, who had been making experiments in electronic music for a long time by painting soundtracks directly on the film, made a radical move with Synchromy: colored pattern cards representing the optical composition were placed both on the sound and picture areas of the film, so that the spectator literally visualizes music or musicalizes vision. If there ever was one single Sound of Eye, this is it.

http://rapidshare.com/files/382216654/synchromy.avi

TOSHIO MATSUMOTO SHIFT (1982)

Director: Toshio Matsumoto

Year: 1982

Time: 9 mins

Music: Yasuke Inagaki

Eye of Sound: One of Matsumoto's last shorts, Shift is also among his most impressive works. Through the use of what was at the time state-of-the-art video technology, Matsumoto decomposes a residential building in horizontal stripes, thus tearing down its balance and symmetry. The tense and sombre electronic drones of Inagaki, frequent collaborator of the director, provide Matsumoto's puzzle-like graphics with a further layer of unrest: strategies against architecture for a pivotal piece in experimental film-making of the 80s.

http://rapidshare.com/files/381037129/shift.avi

MUSIC ON CANVAS: MORTON FELDMAN SESSION (2003)

Concept: Eric de Nie

VJ: Jérôme Sieglaer

Year: 2003

Time: 75 mins

Music:

Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus

Kees Wieringa - Piano

Eye of Sound: Dutch painter Eric de Nie pays tribute to the music of Morton Feldman by drawing on the composer's most notorious passion: painting. De Nie composes on the canvas an abstract relation of colors in vertical lines while renowned Feldman interpreter Kees Wieringa plays For Bunita Marcus (1985). Nine cameras follow the performers' movement, controlled by the elegant vision of Siegaler. The apparent simplicity of Feldman's composition, its serene contortions of time and the interplay between sound and silence are gracefully displayed in this fortunate meeting of music, painting and video-art.

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IVKO SESIC KRIK (1978)

Director: Ivko Sesic

Year: 1978

Time: 9 mins

Music: S. Habic

Eye of Sound: A very straightforward and somewhat disturbing short film. Serbian director Ivko Sesic composes a portrait of the Belgrade Zoo, built within the walls of an ancient fortress, while we listen to the dry and melancholic electroacoustic music of S. Habic. The camera focuses on details of the sturdy walls and on footage of the idle, empty life of caged animals. Animals like us, deprived of their dignity and vitality, not only for the amusement of the powers that be but also for the pleasure of dominance and control.

http://rapidshare.com/files/383197706/krik.avi

PIOTR KAMLER EMERGENCY HEART (1973)

Director: Piotr Kamler

Year: 1973

Time: 9 mins

Music: François Bayle

Eye of Sound: Polish animation genius Piotr Kamler again explores the mysteries of time, and again teams up with a leading figure in experimental music. Emergency Heart combines several animation techniques to create a world of metaphysical insight where, appropriately, most action seems to be in the hands of shadow-puppets, and where scenic platforms are suggestively nested in one another. Bayle's highly slippery acousmatic music, typical of the GRM imprint, adds to the prevailing unease with which scenes unfold while warm and recomforting at the same time. Time, history and action can be frozen, and it does take something to rescue them from complete entropy. Guess what.

http://rapidshare.com/files/382934046/coeur.avi

GREGORY BÜTTNER 23 ZOOMS (2004)

Director: Gregory Büttner

Year: 2004

Time: 64 mins

Music: Gregory Büttner

Eye of Sound: German sound/video artist Gregory Büttner collected amateur photos of people he never met and composed a disturbing incursion into their lives and privacy. These 23 photos are visually scrutinized, through his subjective movement zooms, like in a selective autopsy of lost life episodes. Each of these peeps into the private life of normal citizens - housewives, householders, children - contains a soundscape of its own, sparse and intangible electronic music paintings through which Büttner interprets and reconstructs, much like a historian, moments he never lived. Memory foregone, humanity regained: 23 zooms in which we can't but project our own experience, for we never really walk away from ourselves.

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PIERRE HÉBERT NOTIONS ÉLÉMENTAIRES DE GÉNÉTIQUE (1971)

Director: Pierre Hébert

Year: 1971

Time: 7 mins

Music: Andrée Paul

Eye of Sound: Supposed to be a didactic film for students in genetics, this work by animation genius Hébert should be rather seen as a reflection on the mysteries of biological existence. With the support of Andrée Paul's hectic electroacoustic music, we watch the unfolding of shapes and colors from a single pair of cells, culminating in footage of nature as we see it today. Nothing much is explained, except for a lingering structuralist notion of life as a system of transformations.

http://rapidshare.com/files/365494587/notions_elementaires_-_pierre_hebert.avi

HAL HARTLEY THE NEW MATH(S) (2000)

Director: Hal Hartley

Year: 2000

Time: 15 mins

Music: Louis Andriessen & Michel Van der Aa

Eye of Sound: The choreographical action hardly disguises the film's bottom line. Maths are today aiming at concepts of eternity and recurrence, a brutal disruption of our poorly built conceptions of linear time. An apple and a clock seem to signal this circularity. A dance-theatre combat between two students and a teacher over the meaning of an equation triggers the action, in contrast with Andriessen and Aa's beautiful, contemplative vocal score - as if movement within the cycle is but an illusion in the eyes of recurrence.

http://rapidshare.com/files/380246016/newmath_s_.avi

ZBIGNIEW RYBCZYNSKI KWADRAT (1972)

Director: Zbigniew Rybczynski

Year: 1972

Time: 4 mins

Music:

Kazimierz Serocki

Warsztat Muzyczny 

Eye of Sound: Kwadrat ("Square") stands as a short but brilliant essay in shape management. Starting with pixel-like black and white silhouettes, the action gradually evolves to the depiction of a human being trapped inside a square-screen, and eventually returns to the original "kwadrat" form. The excellent angular music of Serocki, accompanied by the legendary Polish avantgarde ensemble Warsztat Muzyczny, renders Kwadrat all the more compelling and impressive.

http://rapidshare.com/files/382069791/kwadrat.avi

ELIANE RADIGUE PORTRAIT (2006)

Year: 2006

Time: 15 mins

Music: Eliane Radigue

Eye of Sound: Fourth in the IMA Portraits series, this short introduces us to the life and work of electronic/contemporary composer Eliane Radigue. Radigue discusses methods of composition, the challenges and difficulties of live electronic music, as well as biographical episodes with Pierre Henry and her own goals in soundscape production and consumption. A lucid portrait of a dream manufacturer.

http://rapidshare.com/files/379883368/Eliane_Radigue.avi

SIDNEY PETERSONTHE PETRIFIED DOG (1949)

Director: Sidney Peterson

Year: 1949

Time: 18 mins

Music

Carl Austen

Leslie Turner

Hal Bronstein

Harry Reminick

Eye of Sound: An absolute classic of American avant-garde. Beautifully filmed, Petrified Dog is a surreal tale that transgresses the boundaries between day-to-day life and the realm of the absurd, merging them into a seamless whole. The brilliant concrète soundtrack walks side by side with the plotless picture, never joining hands with it. Tales of seduction, enmity and fear with a refined sense of humor and rhythm.

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