The visual music of Mary Ellen Bute

Craft & Design
The visual music of Mary Ellen Bute

Erica writes –

I saw a program of Mary Ellen Bute’s short abstract films a couple weeks back at Anthology and was really impressed. Bute was a pioneering and innovative female filmmaker and animator whose work is still not widely known. Much of her early films function a bit like music videos. She called them “visual music” – she creates graphics through analog means in order to accompany a piece of music.
[…]
Seems to me she would have gotten along swimmingly with Doctor Who theme composer Delia Derbyshire, whose lost experimental audio work, including a techno predecessor from the 60s, has recently been uncovered.

Maryellenbute Visualmusic

The Early Films of Mary Ellen Bute

Mary Ellen Bute: Seeing Sound

More:
Delia Derbyshire Crop
The Radiophonic Workshop

2 thoughts on “The visual music of Mary Ellen Bute

  1. Willem Koopman says:

    He was introduced to me in University. In the 1920/30 he was producing hand crafted animation that was perfectly synced to sound

    He used to look through a microscope at the record to find the beat of the music, and paint accordingly.

    he moved on to many great things including the famous marching cigarettes advert

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