She's holding court, she's talking art. Doesn't fruit look funny in a gallery?
All this week I've been afflicted with a recurring earworm, in the form of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's Talk About The Weather. Let's not. Let's talk about something else.
Of course, when I say "modern art", here, I'm actually talking about something that was created nearly a hundred years ago. But bear with me.
On Saturday, after the Eye and the vitally important recuperative hot chocolate in the South Bank Centre afterwards, we decided that actually, London was cold and snowy in the most unfun way, and went to hide out in the Tate Modern.
Now, I'm not a big fan of video installations at the best of times, so I wandered into Raumlichtkunst principally because it would probably be warm and have seats. And then found myself unexpectedly captivated by it.
So... in 1926, Oskar Fischinger created "one of the first immersive multimedia performances". By which they mean he used multiple projectors and music. All at once!
Inside the dark room (which was indeed warm, and had a nice comfy bench) there were three projectors-worth of images on the wall, side by side. Sitting in the centre, my field of vision was just wide enough to contain all three. They were seemingly unrelated; each one its own, dazzlingly-coloured bit of abstract animation.
Although the film has been recently cleaned up, remastered, restored and generally twiddled with it retains the scratchy, crackly quality of old film. Apparently Fischinger pioneered various animation techniques include "unique wax experiments"; I love the idea of an animator throwing media around, testing out new filters and slides, at the cutting edge and constantly trying for new effects on the film.
Some of the animations grow in a series of blocks, or lines which rise and fall with the music. Circles pulse, globes spin, and colours swirl in dark, oleaginous pools reminscent of pollution. Some are black-and-white, most are black-white-and-one-other-colour (is there a word for that?) In 1926, when film was still new, the reds and blues must have been unbelivably vibrant.
Fischinger worked for Disney as an animator on Fantasia, and this is like a weirded-out, scaled up version of all the more abstract bits from it. I'm reasonably sure that I remember the monochrome bars like organ pipes, rising and falling with the music, appearing directly in Fantasia.
And so I sat in the dark, eyes flicking from one projection to another, and for once found an immersive installation actually, well, quite immersive. The repetitive, tumbling glockenspiel notes and hypnotic images sucked me in completely.
I was quite surprised to notice, when I was finally prised away, that the music playing in the Tate is not the original accompaniment. Apparently no record of that exists and so, referring to vague contemporary reports of "percussive" and "avant-garde" music they've substituted Edgard Varese and John Cage. Given how well the animations seemed to fit the music, the choices were extremely good.
If you're in London or New York and like that sort of thing, I recommend popping along and gazing at it a bit.
A lot of the other stuff I saw in the Tate Modern was bollocks, mind. Oh, and some really lovely black and white photographs.
Of course, when I say "modern art", here, I'm actually talking about something that was created nearly a hundred years ago. But bear with me.
On Saturday, after the Eye and the vitally important recuperative hot chocolate in the South Bank Centre afterwards, we decided that actually, London was cold and snowy in the most unfun way, and went to hide out in the Tate Modern.
Now, I'm not a big fan of video installations at the best of times, so I wandered into Raumlichtkunst principally because it would probably be warm and have seats. And then found myself unexpectedly captivated by it.
So... in 1926, Oskar Fischinger created "one of the first immersive multimedia performances". By which they mean he used multiple projectors and music. All at once!
Inside the dark room (which was indeed warm, and had a nice comfy bench) there were three projectors-worth of images on the wall, side by side. Sitting in the centre, my field of vision was just wide enough to contain all three. They were seemingly unrelated; each one its own, dazzlingly-coloured bit of abstract animation.
Although the film has been recently cleaned up, remastered, restored and generally twiddled with it retains the scratchy, crackly quality of old film. Apparently Fischinger pioneered various animation techniques include "unique wax experiments"; I love the idea of an animator throwing media around, testing out new filters and slides, at the cutting edge and constantly trying for new effects on the film.
Some of the animations grow in a series of blocks, or lines which rise and fall with the music. Circles pulse, globes spin, and colours swirl in dark, oleaginous pools reminscent of pollution. Some are black-and-white, most are black-white-and-one-other-colour (is there a word for that?) In 1926, when film was still new, the reds and blues must have been unbelivably vibrant.
Fischinger worked for Disney as an animator on Fantasia, and this is like a weirded-out, scaled up version of all the more abstract bits from it. I'm reasonably sure that I remember the monochrome bars like organ pipes, rising and falling with the music, appearing directly in Fantasia.
And so I sat in the dark, eyes flicking from one projection to another, and for once found an immersive installation actually, well, quite immersive. The repetitive, tumbling glockenspiel notes and hypnotic images sucked me in completely.
I was quite surprised to notice, when I was finally prised away, that the music playing in the Tate is not the original accompaniment. Apparently no record of that exists and so, referring to vague contemporary reports of "percussive" and "avant-garde" music they've substituted Edgard Varese and John Cage. Given how well the animations seemed to fit the music, the choices were extremely good.
If you're in London or New York and like that sort of thing, I recommend popping along and gazing at it a bit.
A lot of the other stuff I saw in the Tate Modern was bollocks, mind. Oh, and some really lovely black and white photographs.