AMEN: LEN LYE (VISUAL INTERPRETATIONS OF MUSIC)

Len Lye (1901–1980) created some work I was really inspired by and is a natural bedfellow with the works of Oskar Fischingher and John Whitney that I have previously mentioned. He did extensive work and pieces into movement, colour and the interplay of this with music which I found really inspiring and opened up the possibilities of different techniques with my Amen Brother piece. Below are some details of him followed by a couple of examples of his work and my thoughts and how they influenced me.

The following quote is from http://www.govettbrewster.com/len-lye/ 

He "is arguably one of the twentieth century’s most original artists; a one-man art movement spanning several countries and multiple media over a lifetime and beyond. As a New Zealander practising in London during the pre-war years, and then a key figure in the post-war New York avant-garde art scene, Lye mapped a unique course through Modernism.

Lye spent his career pursuing an ‘art of movement’, a theory he initiated before he left Aotearoa New Zealand in 1924. He wanted to affect people physically and emotionally, so that art became a full body experience. Whether this was with flashing, dancing cinematography, or thunderous, oscillating metallic sculptures, his work stimulated the senses and was unforgettable.

He was a pioneer of experimental film and kinetic sculpture, and his practice included painting and poetry, among numerous other media. The intensity, energy and excitement of his work were matched by a gregarious and restless personality; British poet Alistair Reid once described him as ‘the least boring person who ever existed’."




Kaleidoscope (1935) above is a riot of colour, line, shape, movement and occasionally text. The pace and variety are really interesting especially the way the lines and shapes keep in time with the tempo of the sound but also the editing of this to changes in it to collide one style with something quite different to create visual phrases to match the aural and musical phrasing of the piece.

Colour Box (1935) which follows it is of a similar vein still relying on line but this time also working with objects such as abstract cut out fish shapes, human figures and sail boats as well as sea waves breaking film footage greatly coloured in the background. This mis-match of style creates the same sort of effect but also creates a theme and a greater sense of story and narrative rather than just the abstract lines and shapes.




Rainbow Dance (1936) moves the techniques above further on. He has action happening on different planes and also more human figures, moving, playing and even some that are filled in with colour and shape a little like the double exposure work I have been looking into. These move and dance on the screen often duplicated to almost create strobe like movement.There is mise-en-scene in the form of backgrounds such as stylised streets, mountains. There is a weird illogical narrative embedded characters rain, clouds, person with umbrella then consumed by lines and then recreated playing a guitar! A balletic tennis player and lots of balls flying around the screen. He also even re-uses some footage from Colour Box.

The ideas I will take most from his work are the use of colour, shape and line and the cutting to the music to make the visuals and the audio link and be intrinsic to each other. I also loved the idea of the basic double exposure type work where the inside silhouettes of the human figures were replaced by colour and shape and feel this could work well with my Amen Brother piece. Possibly the album covers or music videos of the bands who have used the drum sample within a silhouette of the drummer.