Dockum Mobilcolour performance at the Guggenheim museum
Charles Dockum US, 1952, 7', 16 mmThe first half of the previous century was a golden age for the colour organs, non-cinematic instruments to project colours in music patterns. A variety of artists each made their own version of the apparatus with which it was possible to "compose" elegantly with light. Moving images of this fragile play are however very hard to find, which makes this unique registration from 1952 of a performance by Charles Dockum a very rare document. His Mobilcolour machine was commissioned by Hilla Rebay of the Guggenheim Museum (still the Museum of Non-Objective Painting at that time). It was an attempt to compete with a similar machine made by Thomas Wilfred: the "Lumia" in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Film conservation was made by the Centre of Visual Music, Los Angeles.
Fri 28/9 Kino SC 17:00