Stan Brakhage was an American avant-garde filmmaker born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1933. He made over 300 films using many different techniques but is perhaps most notable for his work directly with celluloid film. He would paint, scratch, stick things to, heat up the physical rolls of frames to achieve a so called untutored eye effect. This the thought that this almost stream of consciousness-like abstract images form a blank state where the viewer has no conditioned visual filter to interpret it. His radical approach using ordinary materials was a method/commitment/surrender to making (art but I would interpret life as well).
In the documentary Brakhage by Jim Shedden, it is shown: In Brakhage’s early films, along with contemporaries such as Jonas Mekas, George Kuchar their method of self-exploration and inward psychological questioning about art and self, revolutionised the filmmaking world and transformed the natural mode of cinematic self-expression. He was a pioneer of first-person cinema, whereby no actor is needed to mediate emotions between director and audience. The person behind the camera becomes the protagonist. Direct thought to film.
Interestingly most of his films are silent. They possess a visual aesthetic based on rhythm which creates a minds ear soundtrack.
I personally find his work and process fascinating. The relentlessness of his celluloid work contrasted with the silence is very effecting sending you into an almost trance like state. I wish to bring forth his ideas of “when you sync something youre sunk”and the materiality of sound into my project as it challenges my initial idea a little of wanting to compose exactly to the beats of my reference film. I have realised athough they will be put together, the film and my sound are objects in and of itself that can be paired together but not serve each other.
I also wonder what the untutored ear might be. I’m inclined to say noise music, the furthest you can get from musicality, is (but of course i’d say that).