Monday 12 November 2018

the shape of water

This meditative, pioneering 1929 “cinepoem” that explores water on film in a its states and excitations by photographer and filmmaker Ralph Steiner strikes me as a forerunner to those strangely alluring, repetitive autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos that galvanise some viewers with a tactile frisson. “H₂O” is one of the earliest art shorts to come out of America and is accompanied in the version at the linked article to a score by William Pearson commissioned by ร†on magazine (the original below is silent), and early works such as this have inspired whole genres of filmmaking. Learn more and find much more to explore at the link above.