Len Lye's great animated film. The sound track got lost, so I wrote this one a few years ago.If you do your own soundtrack please let me know and I'll link to it.
@siosism This film took approximately two years to complete, since each frame was hand-painted and photographed individually. In a 16mm abstract film titled Free Radicals (1958), Lye scratched the content onto a few thousand feet of black film leader using tools ranging from sewing needles to Indian arrowheads.
@siosism Living in Samoa between 1922 and 1923, Lye became inspired by Aboriginal motifs and produced his first animated silent film, Tusalava (1929), which he created to express “the beginnings of organic life” (1.14).
@siosism His use of abstract, metaphorical images are a product of his association with Surrealism, Futurism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, as well as his affinity for jazz, Oceanic art, and calligraphy. His use of percussive music, saturated color, and organic forms had a major impact on a genre that later became known as music video.
@siosism He created it to express "the beginnings of organic life" (Krasner 2008). Krasner, Jon: Motion Graphic Design; Applied History and Aesthetics. Elsevier, Oxford, 2008
Don't know if mentioned elsewhere but Len's work was often used to accompany featured music on the B.B.C's Old Grey Whistle Test. I think his sculpture of the motorised metal band was shown in The Institute of Contemporary Art's "Kinetic Art" exhibition in the late sixties. (I think that's where I saw it!).
I'm pretty sure I've seen this film with a soundtrack some years ago. As for this one, I think you've done an excellent job. It suits the theme and importantly, doesn't distract from the animation. Well done. Len had an affinity for jazz, blues and African music so it wouldn't surprise me if the original, now lost, score contained those elements.
@siosism - this is a passage from the book Motion Graphic Design by Jon Krasner, so I've just wrote it back here for you. I think it is a very important film and your question seems fair. Revolutionary New Zealand animator Len Lye, who often referred to himself as “an artist for the twenty-first century,” pioneered the directon- film technique of cameraless animation by painting and scratching onto 35mm celluloid.
It made me think of some manner of cell and virus at the start, until it turned into a humanoid drawing on the right and the two-armed thing on the left. Then I just stood there wondering. Interesting sound choice you had for this.
Como dice @juanitaDeharo, aquí el vídeo está volteado, al menos también respecto a la exposición de CaixaForum Barcelona en LA IMAGEN HUMANA. Muy interesante por ser una obra de los años 20.
'I don't know much about psychoanalysis, but I'd say this is a dirty picture'. (Mel Brooks, 'The Critic (1963)) Spotted numbers 5 to 9 around halfway through, but waited in vain for 10.
Very creepy and weird, the music doesn't help that much either, and the weird cell organism with a head looks very disturbing, it is very advanced for it's time as it used traditional art from Australia and New Zealand however, which probably makes it one of the first films that uses art from other places as inspiration, which is amazing.
@ everyone, I urge you to visit www.govettbrewster.com/Len-Lye/Centre for more len lye info - if you enjoyed Tusalava you will love his later works as he was an experimenter and creative until he died in 1980.
Interesting. I saw this film again more recently at the Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Australia and it was as it is here. I have looked back at the video I captured at the Pompidou - and it's definitely inverted. I think this above is the right version...and perhaps the Pompidou one is the ani-matter version.
