The Multimedia Character of the Free Radicals - Movie Review Example

Free Radicals: A Film of Dancing Signifiers "Every film [I made], I tried to interest myself in it by doing something not previously done in film technique" Len Lye. 1. Introduction Len Lye was known to be the least boring person ever lived on this earth. His art too never bored anyone, for sure. He opted for film as his material surface and he painted his movies on them as it was canvas. His film works blur the distinction between popular and high culture. Len Lye was well-known avant garde artist from New Zealand. He had played his hands on many forms of art with equal rigor. In Free Radicals, he synthesizes all his artistic abilities and sensitivities in order to create a truly majestic work. This paper intends to read Lye’s doodling on film through an examination of the multimedia character of the Free radicals. Although, the paper attempts to read the Free Radicals from within, i.e. by examining its medium and content on its own, it would try to incorporate necessary theoretical insights as well. 2. The Artistic Background of the Free Radicals Len Lye was always particular in drawing the source of his inspiration from music from various (often distant and little known) cultural backgrounds. In one of his first and best animated sound films, which is A Colour Box, Lye uses Caribbean jazz in a time when it was not much known to the outside the world. Peculiarly, in Lye’s animation films, shadows, streaks and colors are easily blended to an extraordinary music with quite perfection. Color could be seen bouncing back from the screen. It is this very synchronization of colors and images with the music makes Lye’s animations more than appealing. Lye’s animated films were not only quite different from the movies produced in their respective times but also technologically advanced than other. This technological edge is one of the distinct features of Lye’s films. It was in 1926, Len Lye moved to England from New Zealand. He was attracted to the modernist movement in England and active in such circles having many friends among the stalwarts of arts and literature. Lye was also attracted into various art forms such as surrealist stories and poems and moving sculpture. He was both eclectic and eccentric. The indigenous art of Maori people in the New Zealand had strong influence on Ley’s idea of art, especially his conception of visual art. Moreover, he was extremely fascinated by the oceanic cultures from around the world. It is necessary to remember that he was expelled from the racist New Zealand for living among the Maori people. In his way to England, he had also visited many pacific islands and closely interacted with the aboriginal people. It might be because of this influence of the indigenous culture, Lye’s painted-on-celluloid art resembled a lot to the finger paintings which are common among the aboriginals. In 1944, Len Lye moved to the United States wherein he got more acquainted with the African music traditions. As his interests in kinetic sculpture grew, it was well reflected in the films he made later. 3. The Free Radicals as Doodling on the Film The Free Radical was made in 1958 and it was peculiar with its intense black and white nature. It appeared as drawings on a chalkboard. According to Kasmere, “an assured, signature work that Stan Brakhage called “an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece”, Free Radicals synchronizes etched hieroglyphs, squiggly horizontal lines and verticals of varying thickness to energetic drum music from The Bagirmi Tribe of Africa. Nothing in the film is static. “White ziggle-zag-splutter scratches”, inscribed using a variety of tools including arrowheads and saw-teeth, appear abruptly, leap, quiver, and dance alongside the beat, then vanish suddenly. Occasionally the flat picture plane is transformed into a three-dimensional space as fluid, rough-edged wiry shapes appear to rotate, as though circled by a camera/eye. At times one denotes the outline of quickly passing hill covered or jagged mountainous landscape as the line-play slips between suggestive figuration and scratch abstraction” (Kasmere). The film was created through synthesizing African drumming and songs of Bagirmi tribe into images. The film progresses through a sort of march of lines, shapes, squiggles, linearity and zigzags. In the beginning, the titles become so clear though the scribbling. The importance of the film is that it blurs the distinction between knowing and non-knowing. In other words, what it reveals that the moment we are to know something, it slips away. Knowledge is not important; it is the way interact with the signifier is crucial. Barthes’ idea of the death of author is very much present in Lye’s works. Curiously, Barthes states that “in readerly texts the signifiers march: in writerly text they dance” (6). The Free Radicals is of course a writerly text where thee is no Author-God is present and in which signifiers dance, rather than being structured in codes. Even, Lye does not attempt to give us a coherent system of signifiers through he could incorporate wisdom into a given signified. Rather, he tries to open up our channels of thinking in order to alter our psyche and to be in a free play with the signifiers. It is through the very free play with signifiers, one invents new meanings and becomes author oneself. Here, what Lye attempts is the sheer redefinition of the spectator’s gaze itself. As an experimental filmmaker, it is no exaggeration to say that he traversed the times he lived in. His art was based on what famously came to known as ‘doodling’. For Lye, doodling was very much primitive and therefore linked to the human beginnings. In other words, doodling was a form pre-rational artistic creation. It is spontaneous, natural and absolutely in tune with the complexity of human life itself. Like many of his modernist counterparts, Lye too was preoccupied with motion and its artistic possibilities. In each of his art work, he tried to synthesize motion and energy through art. Image as a form of dance is a constant theme in the Free Radicals. It was based on his belief that art is directly connected to body movements as the art is derived from genes and DNA structures. Lye also considered that selfness is at the heart of art. Therefore, the Free radicals could be seen as assembled with dancing images which expresses the self at it purest and multiplies with the song. Importantly, the song is the subject that makes the images dance, not the other way around as it is in popular movies. Apparently, according to an observer, “the connection of his art with body movement was underscored by his choice of African tribal, Afro-American or South American dance music to accompany the films, so prompting the viewer to read the image as a dance of forms and colour” (Cantrill). The dance of images in tune with the music is what makes movement possible and real in the Free Radicals. In Free Radicals, black film stock is used to create the pattern of dance. Lines and marks coupled with music alter the spectator’s consciousness into a new level. It achieves the charm of night sky full of thunderstorms and creates an extraordinary dramatic feeling. The film was most importantly made from scratching designs on black film. Also, he made use of a variety of scribers to make the film. Lye had developed a theory of Individual happiness Now (IHN) wherein he considered art as the reproduction of the artist himself. Lye invented the method of direct animation in which he scribbled films directly onto the film. In free radical, he is not making color as he is more interested in making the maximum use of light and motion. Lye was not only an experimental film maker but also an experimental art theorist. He tried to recreate movement which for him was always kinesthetic and physical. 4. Longing for the Pure To conclude, it is possible to argue that the Free Radicals was made at the zenith of Lye’s creative imagination. As a critic has pointed out that “by inventing new ways of making films without a camera, expert knowledge or extensive equipment, he initiated a field of artisanal, self-sufficient screen practice that continues to grow and thrive” (Kasmere). In Free Radicals, images are nothing but a form of dance. And, music there is not placed after the images. On the other hand, images flowers along with the rhythmic unraveling of the music. As an art work, the Free Radicals is nothing but a longing for the pure, by exploring the purest possibilities of the film surface in its crude materiality. Works Cited Barthes, Rolland. S/Z. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Print. Kasmere, Brett. “Flip Sides of Len Lye: Direct Film / Cinema Direct”, Senses of Cinema, (2007): Web. 22 Feb. 2011. Cantrill, Arthur. “The Absolute Truth of the Happiness Acid.” Senses of Cinema, (2002): Web. 22 Feb. 2011. Read More