'Tones from Out of Nowhere' and Other Non-sensedness: Re-membering the Synthetic Sound Films of Oskar Fischinger and Làszló Moholy-Nagy. (July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Egan, Kelly FW
• Is Part Of: Animation. Volume 15:Number 2(2020:Jul.)
• Page Start: 160
• Page End: 178
• Publication Date: 2020-07
• Subjects: abstract animation -- animated sound -- language -- Làszló Moholy-Nagy -- materiality -- meaning -- Oskar Fischinger -- perception -- synthetic sound film -- translation; Animation (Cinematography) -- Periodicals; Animated films -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 791.433405
• DOI: 10.1177/1746847720938230
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1746-8477

Abstract

Synthetic sound film, a genre in which sound is directly animated onto the soundtrack of a filmstrip, is an avant-garde practice which remains seldom theorized and too often neglected. Expanding on Thomas Y Levin's canonical work on the genre, '"Tones from out of Nowhere": Rudolph Pfenninger and the archaeology of synthetic sound' (2003), this article argues that there is a fundamental divide amongst the artistic approaches to synthetic sound film between filmmakers seeking to create specific aural objects through a new form of visual representation, and filmmakers focused on the graphic object and its direct translation into a new/unknown form of aural representation. Concentrating on the latter group which begins with Oskar Fischinger and Làszló Moholy-Nagy, through a materialist framework, this article shows how their produced sounds re-member the objects from which they emerge and, as such, are bound to a material encounter defined by this sensorial return to objectness.