New to Len Lye and hadn't seen the film before so I haven't experienced the original audio. Taking this on its own, I was blown away. The audio paired with the visuals creates a gorgeous nightmare. I'm now curious to hear the original soundtrack but I feel creating your own without influence from the original is a beautiful art in itself.
Thanks for the great comments gentlemen! I just realized there is still some activity to the video I put some 5 years ago so I thought I'd add my comment to it: It was an exsercise of telling a random linear story to some abstract visuals by means of the sound. In many (if not most) cases sound design does exactly the opposite. In fact (blame me for that if you want) I knowingly refused to hear the original sound so that it does not influence what I was experimenting with until it was done. I by no means compare it to the amazing original symbiose since these are two opposite kinds of work: Leonard Charles Huia Lye was cutting (drawing) a film to an existing rythm of the tribe, whereas I was sound-designing (or mickey-mousing - in this case it even flatters) to existing visuals. Of course once finished I heard the original too and I looked into the details. That is also why I know something about direct animation now. Btw, @Jordan: I wonder why would you call Len Lye HER? Am I missing something?
If you want to compose your own soundscape to a Len Lye film then do it with Tusalava for which no soundtrack or score is known to exist. It's an amazing film and open to sonic interpretation; leave Free Radicals alone
I've got to say man, do your thing but.... the original soundtrack by the Bagirmi Tribe really really adds to this film - its a perfect match... by removing it, you are denying the viewer and also Len Lye of his original vision: rhythm and the 'old brain' at work.
By splicing out the music that Len Lye was intimately working with as inspiration for her work you've managed to removed the point of the film, the interaction between music, rhythm and visual. It's like drawing eyebrows on the Mona Lisa, or making monkey jesus. good job.
Jordan Hagen thank you! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.H.O.O.Q. btw, it was worth around 500.000 $… so about enough to spend a day doing it and I think Marcel did not regret drawing this no matter what others might have said about it :)
Praps not, but that's not the point. It's the principal. This kind of appropriation and remixing is taken for granted in the music world. Why should the visual art world be any different? I can't see Len Lye himself being so precious about it.
