Machination 84

If Viking Eggeling had been able to redo his well-known film entitled Symphonie Diagonale (1924) in high definition and 16:9 format 85 years after it premiered, the result might look something like Machination 84: This work shows a densifying forest of wavy lines flickering (at first) in a vertical direction and stylized billows of smoke that partially cover and complicate each other to the rhythm of the evocative music. The images were created in realtime while the music was being performed, and not manipulated in postproduction: This is a film without a cut, a continuous flow of abstract mutations, a kind of digital copperplate engraving. The fragile visual texture, which is at first gray, white and black, soon blazes in pastel hues that gradually become more intense, while the synthetic soundtrack by @C – a delicate web of throbbing, clicking and ringing – creates an increasingly ominous soundscape. (Stefan Grissemann)