Experimental Film
Ways of working directly on the film strip or the electronic signal without a camera, often in pursuit of an image that answers to music note for note.
Dictionary entry
- Visual Music 1920s– / Style
Film art that translates musical structure into abstract shape, color and motion. From the color organ through abstract animation to today's audiovisual work, it forms a lineage of listening with the eyes.
- Direct Animation 1935– / Technique
Images made without a camera, by drawing, scratching and pasting directly onto the filmstrip. The film stock itself becomes the brushstroke and the rhythm.
- Video Synthesis 1969– / Technique
Generating and modulating the video signal itself like an instrument. Nam June Paik and Shuya Abe's synthesizer turned the television from receiver into raw material, opening video art's technical ground.
- Guerrilla Television late 1960s–1980s / Style
A media movement in which small collectives used portable video to oppose broadcast authority and one-way communication, recording demonstrations, communities, and institutions for rapid editing and alternative circulation. Low resolution, handheld access, feedback, direct titles, and multiple viewpoints became its language.