Flaherty Screening #1 – Lillian F. Schwartz & From Zero
Posted in Blog on April 12th, 2012If you haven’t seen the work of pioneering computer artist Lillian F. Schwartz you’re missing out, her early forays into using the computer and programming as an artistic medium are some of the most relevant early experiments into computer rotoscoping and investigations into the relationship between artists, engineers and scientists. While most of the writing on her work focuses on her image development, the audio work is just as interesting – from Moog sound by Gershon Kingsley in Pixilization to music by F. Richard Moore the sound/image dynamic is essential to the success of her work. See some of her work here.
From Zero, a film about John Cage though based on a interesting structure predetermined by Cage and the filmmakers, the resulting film plays like a fractured Cage pithy quote-a-thon. He’s shot mostly in close-up and is shown only momentarily working as an artist. I don’t mind films that love their subjects, but maybe because either of the predetermined structure or the filmmaking this film falls short of the mark as a film, while reminding us of how charming and poetic Cage was, the moments that most struck me in the film came from Cage’s academic pursuits rather than his music which is rendered chaotic and fractured in the film. I was glad to be reminded of the conversation between the jailed Thoreau and Emerson – where Emerson asks Thoreau jailed for protest “what are you doing in there” to which Thoreau answers, “what are you doing out there” and his idea that we “want an anarchy that works.” Hope to see you all in two weeks for Laura Kissel and Tan Pin Pin films – it’s your only chance to see these films in Kansas City.