For his short film Liza, the French animator Bastien Dupriez aimed to create ‘a kind of visual transcription’ of the George Gershwin song Liza (All the Clouds’ll Roll Away) (1929), as performed by the French musician Jean-Michel Pilc. As the rollicking jazz piano builds, the frame splashes with abstract shapes and colours, as well as hints of human forms. The resulting effect is of visuals built to accompany and respond to the mood of the music, rather than the much more familiar inverse experience. Beyond serving as a mesmerising slice of audiovisual eye candy – and it certainly is that – the piece also provokes a bevy of intriguing questions about our multisensory experience of art.
Director: Bastien Dupriez
videoHistory of science
Insect aesthetics – long viewed as pests, in the 16th century bugs became beautiful
8 minutes
videoMusic
A riveting audiovisual dive into what makes sounds harmonious, or not
28 minutes
videoNature and landscape
After independence, Mexico was in search of identity. These paintings offered a blueprint
15 minutes
videoProgress and modernity
Moving from Tibet to Beijing, Drolma reconciles big dreams with harsh realities
31 minutes
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Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
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videoArt
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videoArchitecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
videoArt
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videoFilm and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes