1.1 Icon: Len Lye

Leonard Charles Huia Lye is a New-Zealand born artist, mostly known for his experimental approach of creating sculptures and film.

I think it is also the experimental possibilities which Lye explored in his life-time that make him so inspiring, at least to me he does. For example in his film Free Radicals he scratched patterns into the film, creating a quite cool shifting pattern. And further on in his careers he used all sorts of techniques to create quite weird yet cool projects with which he showed the possibilities of film beyond just simply filming.

However, I think the beginning of his film career is the most inspiring. A Colour Box from 1936, was the first film of his that was shown to a general audience. While some people hated it and other loved it, to me the combination of the music with the visual has almost a hypnotic effect. The time, effort and technique that went into this are incredible, and to think for that time to create something by hand that looks so smoothly in its transitions and to work so well with the sound... 🤯