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Immersive and Expanded Cinema

By Holly Willis
December 2, 2009
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What the heck is "raumlichtkunst"? Literally, the word means "space light art," but Cindy Keefer, director of LA's Center for Visual Music, knows its origins and implications, and she'll share her ideas tomorrow night at SCI-Arc when she presents a screening and illustrated talk, "Raumlichtkunst to Vortex: Early Expanded Cinema Experiments of Oskar Fischinger and Jordan Belson." According to Keefer, the term "raumlichtkunst" comes from acclaimed artist and filmmaker Oskar Fischinger who explored ways to combine music, painting, film and performance starting in the 1920s. Fischinger paired visual and aural experience in a series of exhilarating films that still astound today due to their use of color, expressiveness and sheer exuberance. Keefer has presented the visual music films by Fischinger and Jordan Belson, as well as other visual music innovators, all over the world, most recently at the Tate and Guggenheim museums. Why are are these films suddenly in such demand? "In this early expanded work of Fischinger and Belson, we can find the origins of immersive media environments, 1960s psychedelic Light Shows, and multiple-projector cinematic work," explains Keefer. "These types of work are influencing experimental film and videomakers today who are rediscovering multiple projector work, and also developing large-scale, site specific media installations." She continues, "Of course, many contemporary media artists are unaware of this rich history, and that is why Center for Visual Music's programs and archives are so well-received by contemporary artists newly discovering this work." Find out more, and see a broad sampling of visual music shorts, at Keefer's presentation.
the details
Immersive & Expanded Cinema of Visual Music
Thursday, Dec. 3, 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
W.M. Keck Lecture Hall
Southern California Institute of Architecture
Image: Firebird (2007), by Scott Draves

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