[microsound] B&W

[Tony Conrad <conrad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Arnulf Rainer is a completely different kind of work from The Flicker.
Kubelka's effort is recuperative of a constructivist ethos very much akin
to that of Anton Webern, while my film--though unhappily labeled
"structuralist" by P Adams Sitney--is much more rooted in the surrealist
tradition: it has transparency, activation of the unconscious, and effects
a radical endorsement of individual subjectivity. The Flicker also attempts
to delineate a harmonic formalism within the perceptual modality of
flicker, while Arnulf Rainer (named for an expressionist artist) is an
archly abstract expressionist temporal design.

The sound for The Flicker was conceived as a composition of pulse trains
whose frequencies would fall into the perceptual region lying between
rhythm and pitch. It was performed on a custom configuration of
interconnected mechanical devices, with a sine wave oscillator driver and
some tape echo. I thought at the time of this device as what a music
synthesizer OUGHT TO BE, as opposed to the then-recently-appearing Buchla
and Moog gizmos, which were designed by engineers to suit what they
imagined the needs of musicians to be. Unfortunately, this engineer-driven
technology has accelerated ever since, which is in part why The Flicker's
soundtrack still sounds quite distinctive.

And thanks for bringing the pirates at ubu.com to my attention.

-------------Tony Conrad



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>Hi,
>
>If there's a screening of Peter Kubelkas "Arnulf Rainer" you should see
it...
>It's made out of black and clear frames (it flickers...), the sound
>is weather white noise or it's silent. It's made 1960 and you should
>find a lot about it in the net...
>
>for example Fred Camper wrote about it:
>
>Arnulf Rainer (1960)
>
>Arnulf Rainer?s images are the most ´reducedª of all ? this is a
>film composed entirely of frames of solid black and solid white
>which Kubelka strings together in lengths as long as 24 seconds and
>as short as a single frame. When he alternates between single black
>and white frames, a rapid flicker effect is produced, which is as
>close as Kubelka can come to the somewhat more rapid flicker of
>motion-picture projection; during the long sections of darkness one
>waits in nervous anticipation for the flicker to return, without
>knowing precisely which form it will take. But Arnulf Rainer is not
>merely a study of film rhythm and flicker. In reducing the cinema to
>its essentials, Kubelka has not stripped it of meaning, but rather
>made an object which has qualities so general as to suggest a
>variety of possible meanings, each touching on some essential aspect
>of existence.
>
>(Fred Camper)
>
>
>thanks, Bernhard
>
>
>
>microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb am 15.12.03 22:43:52:
>>
>>  Hi,
>> 
>>  I just saw Tony Conrad's experimental film The Flicker, and was
>>interested if anyone knew how the sound was made. I wonder if this
>>has been discussed before?
>> 
>>  For those who don't know, it's a film made up entirely of black
>>and white frames in various strobe patterns which can potentially
>>cause epileptic seizures (didn't happen in the screening I was at,
>>but several people had to leave). The sound seems like it might be
>>using pulse generators...it sounds analogous to the visual strobe
>>effect.
>> 
>>  I found an mp3 of the sound here:
>  > http://www.ubu.com/sound/conrad.html
>>
>>  I highly recommend it.
>>
>  > thanks,Phil Curtis
>>
>

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