Disquieting Soundtracks: The Sonorities of Experimental Cinema

Abstract

This chapter places the aesthetics of experimental film sound in relation to the aural ecologies of modernity. It explores how optical, magnetic, and digital sound technologies affected the acoustic textures of experimental film. It will show that, outside the field of abstract cinema and visual music, optical sound affected relatively little the aesthetics of avant-garde film between the late 1920s and the mid-1950s, while, by contrast, magnetic sound did, consolidating practices that have remained stable even through the rise of digital sound. The last section of the essay proposes a theory of sound and music in experimental film, adopting Gilles Deleuze's conception of sound and picture as “heautonomous,” and a typology of sound uses—absolute, allegorical, and corporeal.