CINEMA AURICULAR

SEEING SOUND: LIGHTENING STRIKES THE OPTIC NERVE
Barbican Cinema 3 ­ Wednesday 17 October 2001 ­ 7:30pm

Optical sound on 16mm film ­ a lightbulb reads a strip of amorphous black emulsion on clear celluloid and it somehow makes sound sense. Since the 1930s artists have examined and exploited the possibilities of drawing or printing a soundtrack. Two senses combined and confounded, both musical and cacophonous. Can you see what you hear ?

ORNAMENT SOUND Oskar Fischinger, Germany, 1932, b/w, sound, 7m
DOTS (POINTS) Norman McLaren, Canada, 1948, colour, sound, 3m
SOUNDTRACK Barry Spinello, USA, 1969, b/w & colour, sound, 10m
LINEAR DREAMS Richard Reeves, Canada, 1997, colour, sound, 7m
BLACK AND LIGHT Pierre Rovere, France, 1974, b/w, sound, 8m
DRESDEN DYNAMO Lis Rhodes, UK, 1974, colour, sound, 5m
EXIT RIGHT Chris Garrett, UK, 1976, b/w, sound, 3m
MY MOVIE MELODIES Jun'ichi Okuyama, Japan, 1980, b/w, sound, 7m
MUSICAL STAIRS Guy Sherwin, UK, 1977, b/w, sound, 10m
L'ARRIVÉE Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 1998, b/w, sound, 3m
SHUTTER Taka Iimura, Japan, 1971, b/w, sound, 22m

PROGRAMME NOTES