Birdsong and meandering lines, sometimes solo, sometimes as a swarm movement. In their midst a park landscape, a staircase, and a man with a dog seem to emerge fleetingly. In Robert Breer’s minimalist drawn animation, the abstract and the figurative briefly overlap, then fall apart again. The permanent change of the forms follows the pulse rate of the birdsong recorded in nature.

The Whitney brothers are pioneers of abstract animation. In 1943/1944, they experimented in five film exercises with modernist form and a device of their own that wrote directly on the soundtrack of the film by means of an impact pendulum. The resulting analogue electronic bleeps and bits are accompanied by moving stencils in constantly alternating coloured backlight whose shadows change their geometrical shape.

A washing machine less ordinary: The electronic music duo Matmos probes the music making capabilities of the “Ultimate Care II” by Whirlpool and weaves the sounds of its housing, laundry cycle and switches into a beat. Using animation, optical effects and advertising film quotes from the time when fully automatic machines had their breakthrough, a lively piece of music video is created that makes us forget all our laundry worries.