Mary Ellen Bute wanted abstract images to possess something painting could not give her: actual duration. She turned to film and, between the 1930s and 1950s, created abstract animations in which shapes, light and movement were organised in close relationship with music. Her work also included technological experiments involving oscilloscopes and electronic imagery. Several of her films reached audiences at places such as Radio City Music Hall, an unusual level of public exposure for experimental abstraction.
What interests me from a VJ perspective is how familiar the ambition feels.
We now open Resolume, TouchDesigner or After Effects and assume that sound can be translated into movement almost automatically.
Bute was asking similar questions before digital graphics existed.
What does a musical phrase look like?
Should a visual form follow rhythm literally?
Can colour behave like orchestration?
How can movement produce something equivalent to musical tension?
The technology changes dramatically, but those questions hardly change at all.
That is why early experimental film can be more useful to a contemporary VJ than another software tutorial.
Software teaches us how to make an effect.
Bute reminds us to ask why an image should move in the first place.
