Sounding Ornaments (1932)

Sounding Ornaments (1932)

Between ornament and music persist direct connections, which means that Ornaments are Music. If you look at a strip of film from my experiments with synthetic sound, you will see along one edge a thin stripe of jagged ornamental patterns. These ornaments are drawn music -- they are sound: when run through a projector, these graphic sounds broadcast tones or a hitherto unheard of purity, and thus, quite obviously, fantastic possibilities open up for the composition of music in the future. Undoubtedly, the composer of tomorrow will no longer write mere notes, which the composer himself can never realize definitively, but which rather must languish, abandoned to various capricious reproducers. Now control of every fine gradation and nuance is granted to the music-painting artist, who bases everything exclusively on the primary fundamental of music, namely the wave -- vibration or oscillation in and of itself. In the process, surface new perceptions that until now were overlooked and remain neglected. Possibilities that are definitely significant for a scrupulous and profound creator of music, for example, precise overtones or timbres characteristic of a certain voice or instrument can be reproduced with accurate fidelity through these drawn patterns. Or, when desirable, the profile of sound waves could be synchronized exactly, wave-trough with wave-trough, so that their dead-centers would coincide, sounding in perfect accord. Or, furthermore, new musical sounds are now possible, pure tones with a precision of definition in their musical vibrations that could not be obtained formerly from the manipulation of traditional instruments.

A number of experiments that I have just made confirm the unprecedented range and significance of this method. The soundtrack on present-day films is only 3 millimeters wide, but the artist of the future will naturally require the full width of the film-strip just for his musical composition. It would be essential for a complex and distinct composition, with the abstract, diverse effect of an orchestra, to utilize several 3mm soundtracks running parallel to each other. Each track would produce a different, well-defined sound, and planning them together, the composer could design and organize overlapping and intersecting wave patterns, on the minutest level.

In reference to the general physical properties of drawn sounds, we can note that flat and shallow figures produce soft or distant-sounding tones, while moderate triangulation give an ordinary volume, and sharply-pointed shapes with deep troughs create the loudest volume. Shades of grey can also play a significant role in drawn music-ornaments. High-contrast definition of the wave form decisively creates the prevalent sound effect, but as long as one places such a "positive" (well-defined) wave somewhere in the foreground, one can simply overlay other wave patterns simultaneously by using grey shades for the secondary sound effects. Study of sample soundtracks containing these complex tonal patterns reveals that not only do the layered ornaments produce refined, intricate musical sounds but also they appear unexpectedly as attractive abstract visual images.

A combination of any chosen sound-images is readily imaginable. The potential in this area is unlimited. But there are also other possible uses for graphic sound ornaments. Personal and national characteristics should be able to be identified by their corresponding ornament manifestations. The German style of singing, for example, with its emphasis on loud and ringing chest tones, creates a much sharper visual profile on the soundtrack than the softer, more melodic French style of singing with its emphasis on limpid head tones that produce rounder optical wave undulations.

The new methods introduced here offer new, fruitful stimulation that should be provocative to the whole musical world. Perhaps through the development explained here, the creative artist, the composer, will not only find a completely new way of working, but also he himself can simultaneously produce his creative expression in an indelible direct graphic which will be definitive in that he shall not be dependent on any reproduction by foreign hands, since his creation, his work, can speak for itself directly through the film projector.

The basis of designing a graphic art that can be actuated by a beam of brightest light will be the definitive, direct building blocks of music. Now it is the task of Industry to produce practical equipment that will enable every competent person to work in this manner. Besides a camera with the appropriate apertures for such soundtracks, the new equipment must include, certainly, the ability to play back the recorded sound on some speaker at any time, as often as the composer may want. These music artists must also be concerned with combining their musical compositions created in this new manner together with appropriate optical imagery. This should result in the potential for combination of sounding ornaments with visible filmic, spatial forms and movements. With that union, the unity of all the arts is definitively, finally achieved, and has become unquestionable fact.

Oskar Fischinger

First published in the DEUTSCHE ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, July 8, 1932, then widely syndicated in other newspapers.

True creation (1949)

At the beginning of the great unknown of all beginnings there is the Idea, a knowledge profound and unconscious, a feeling, a vision of the Ideal, of a path to follow, of everything, of the conclusion and of the end -- of which there never is one.

The arena of the experimental is the arena of consciousness that awakes and stretches, the time of searching, the discovery of a method of doing things, of developing methods and techniques -- which must correspond to the meaning and harmonize with it. Unconscious vision of the beginning.

Then comes a period of studying the possibilities of a satisfactory or ideal technique, or of a method that will grow into the completeness, the recognition, the control of the means of expression until that can become a work of art. Finally comes the moment to reject all that which becomes the tool of the creator -- the humble hand through which the artist expresses and reveals himself.

If the cinema one day becomes an artform, we will owe it to poor, unknown men who have borne great suffering within them: men comparable to Grünewald, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Mozart and Beethoven. These interpreters of the creator, the artists, will be recognized through their creations, some generations later, often after their bodies have rotted and disintegrated in the earth.

We will only find true artists and masterpieces among the so-called experimental films and filmmakers. They actually use creative processes. The film isn't "cut", it is a continuity, the absolute truth, the creative truth. Any observer can verify that, and I consider myself an observer.

I worked nine months on a film, Motion Painting No. 1, without ever seeing a piece of it. All I did was check the exposure level of each roll that came back from the lab, so I only saw the film when the first color composite release print was ready. Fortunately, I was relieved to see that all my anxieties about those hundreds of "little technical devils" that could have spoiled so many months' of work were quite unjustified. I was very happy, and felt a deep emotion that I cannot describe -- but it is probably something that others feel on similar occasions.

I want this work to fulfill the spiritual and emotional needs of our era. For there is something we all seek -- something we try for during a lifetime working at filmmaking, always unsatisfied, always cheated, always taken for an idiot by the film industry, but hoping despite all that, here and there, one day, perchance, something will be revealed, arising from the unknown, something that will reveal the True Creation: the Creative Truth!

The usual motion picture which is shown to the masses everywhere in countless motion picture theaters all over the world is photographed realism -- photographed surface realism-in-motion... There is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense in it. It copies only nature with realistic conceptions, destroying the deep and absolute creative force with substitutes and surface realisms. Even the animated film today is on a very low artistic level. It is a mass product of factory proportions, and this, of course, cuts down the creative purity of the work of art. No sensible creative artist could create a sensible work of art if a staff of co-workers of all kinds each has his or her say in the final creation -- producer, story director, story writer, music director, conductor, composer, sound men, gag men, effect men, layout men, background directors, animators, inbetweeners, inkers, cameramen, technicians, publicity directors, managers, box office managers, and many others. They change the ideas, kill the ideas before they are born, prevent ideas from being born, and substitute for the absolute creative motives only cheap ideas to fit the lowest common denominator.

The creative artist of the highest level always works at his best alone, moving far ahead of his time. And this shall be our basic tenet: that the Creative Spirit shall be unobstructed by realities or anything else that spoils this absolute pure creation.

And so we must cut out the tremendous mountains of valueless motion picture productions of the past and future-- the mountain ranges of soap bubbles-- and we must concentrate on the tiny golden thread underneath which is hardly visible beneath the glamorous, sensational excitement, securely buried for a long time, especially in our own era when the big producing and distributing monopolies control every motion picture screen in an airtight grip.

So only one way remains for the creative artist: to produce only for the highest ideals -- not thinking in terms of money or sensational success or to please the masses. The real artist should not care if he is understood, or misunderstood, by the masses. He should listen only to his Creative Spirit and satisfy his highest ideals, and trust that this will be the best service that he can render humanity.

Oskar Fischinger

Written for the Knokke-le-Zoute film festival, 1949, when Motion Painting No. 1 received the Grand Prize.