Movie: Musical Stairs

  • HomePage

  • Overview

    One of a series of films that uses soundtracks generated directly from their own imagery. I shot the images of a staircase specifically for the range of sounds they would produce. I used a fixed lens to film from a fixed position at the bottom of the stairs. Tilting the camera up increases the number of steps that are included in the frame. The more steps that are included the higher the pitch of sound. A simple procedure gave rise to a musical scale (in eleven steps which is based on the laws of visual perspective. A range of volume is introduced by varying the exposure. The darker the image the louder the sound (it can be the other way round, but Musical Stairs uses a soundtrack made from the negative of the image.) The fact that the staircase is neither a synthetic image, nor a particularly clean one (there happened to be leaves on the stairs when I shot the film) means that the sound is not pure, but dense with strange harmonics. – G.S.

  • Release Date

    1977-06-14

  • Average

    0

  • Rating:

    0.0 starts

  • Tagline

  • Genres

  • Languages:

Similar Movies

Ruminative Meditations
100%

Ruminative Meditations(en)

2017-06-17

Say Om as you reach home only to realize you never really left/stopped saying Om.

Ai Rotoli
0%

Ai Rotoli(en)

1996-01-01

A visit to the Rotoli cemetery in Palermo, while film director Carmelo Bene reads a fragment of Antonio Pizzuto's book "Signorina Rosina".

Listlessness
55%

Listlessness(en)

2016-01-16

1 minute experimental film.

Another Sunset
55%

Another Sunset(en)

2016-01-18

4 minute experimental film.

Unknowable
55%

Unknowable(en)

2016-01-19

Perception becomes reality, forcing reality to lose perception, crash, and burn.

Ennui
55%

Ennui(en)

2016-01-28

"a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement."

Eternal Funeral
55%

Eternal Funeral(en)

2016-01-30

5 minute experimental film.

Cyclical
55%

Cyclical(en)

2016-01-31

4 minute experimental film.

Élysée
0%

Élysée(en)

2016-03-21

Set in the French President’s office, Élysée embarks on a personal reflection on the aesthetics and representation of power. The film reactivates the concept of the King’s Two Bodies, first theorised by historian Ernst Kantorowicz, positing the idea of a power continuum going well beyond its physical incarnation in a single person.

Sleep Has Her House
67%

Sleep Has Her House(en)

2017-01-01

The shadows of screams climb beyond the hills. It has happened before. But this will be the last time. The last few sense it, withdrawing deep into the forest. They cry out into the black, as the shadows pass away, into the ground.

23rd Psalm Branch
82%

23rd Psalm Branch(en)

1967-01-27

Made during the height of the Vietnam War, Stan Brakhage has said of this film that he was hoping to bring some clarity to the subject of war. Characteristically for Brakhage there is no direct reference to Vietnam.

Somniloquies
76%

Somniloquies(en)

2017-02-12

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

H*art On
50%

H*art On(cs)

2017-10-20

H*ART ON dives off the deep end of modern art. A film about the yearning to create, to mould everyday emotions into a meaningful life and, most of all, to live beyond one's death. A struggle that gets to the existential core of each of us. How do you find meaning in everyday fear, love, sex and loneliness?

The Bomb
70%

The Bomb(en)

2017-06-10

Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.

Rytmus
80%

Rytmus(cs)

1942-11-06

An experimental film from Jirí Lehovec, mixing the sound process with animated rhythms.

Roadz2Home
55%

Roadz2Home(en)

2017-02-21

3 minute experimental film.

Highlights
55%

Highlights(en)

2017-02-17

Lights flicker & fade as focus shifts from artificial to natural light, ending on a second artificial light speeding through the blackened miasma of the night sky.

Rey
42%

Rey(es)

2017-11-29

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.

The Big Departure
47%

The Big Departure(fr)

1972-11-15

This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...

Sermons and Sacred Pictures
0%

Sermons and Sacred Pictures(en)

1989-03-25

"An experimental documentary on Reverend L.O. Taylor, a black Baptist minister from Memphis, Tennessee who was also an inspired filmmaker with an overwhelming interest in preserving the social and cultural fabric of his own community in the 1930′s and 40s. I combine his films and music recordings with my own images of Memphis neighborhoods and religious gatherings" -Sachs