Norman McLaren, Synchromy, 1971
Sound striations transferred optically from track to picture
McLaren spoke in 1959 about how music and sound greatly affect his work: "An artist may be like a person who hears music and just starts to dance. He may be dancing for his own satisfaction, but what motivates him to dance, also motivates hundreds of other people to dance. The artist is only speaking some kind of common language, speaking it to himself, expressing something; and yet, other people come along and recognise it and realise that in this person's dancing, there is something new and different."
Synchromy (1971) allows the viewer to 'see' music - the film's images generate the sound. McLaren achieved this by creating a set of cards with different patterns of stripes which, when reduced into the soundtrack area of a filmstrip, corresponded in different notes in the scale. The colour was added in the printing.
