Jordan Belson

Influences

Relation to San Francisco Museum of Art - all from Stein/Keefer:

some of Belson’s major influences were films and kinetic light art exhibited at SFMOMA (then the San Francisco Museum of Art) in the 1940s–60s.

He was first a painter, until he attended the seminal Art in Cinema series at the museum from 1946–53. Art in Cinema exposed the San Francisco cinema community to European avant-garde films and new American experimental films. It was here that many young artists first saw films by Oskar Fischinger, the Whitney Brothers, the European surrealists, and the French avant-garde. Belson especially appreciated Fischinger’s films (calling him “one of my heroes”); the work of Norman McLaren; and Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 (1921–25). Belson made two short animated films in 1947–48, shown in later Art in Cinema programs

In 1953 Belson attended Fischinger’s performance of his Lumigraph (a mechanical color-light performance instrument) at the museum. The Lumigraph was performed in pitch darkness, and Fischinger created what he called “fantastic color plays” with spontaneous movements of colored light dancing to accompanying music. Belson was struck by the simple elegance and the mysterious soft, glowing images. Similarly, Belson later saw one of Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia color-light machines exhibited at SFMA, which became an influence on his later work.

Vortex Concerts

Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco, California. With Henry Jacobs. Ca. 1957-60.

The concerts used “strobes, star projectors, rotational sky projectors, kaleidoscope projectors, and four special dome-projectors for interference patterns.”(Youngblood: 359) Belson created original films for the concerts; imagery by Hy Hirsh and James Whitney was also used.(Youngblood: 359)

Allures

From Stein/Keefer:

In October 1959 Belson and Jacobs presented a “concert of electronic music and non-objective film” called Vortex Presents at the SFMA. This was a very different, single-screen event. Belson screened early versions of films he was working on, including one which became Allures, plus films by others. Only one evening of Vortex Presents occurred; though it was planned as a series, the audience reaction was disappointing. According to Belson, they came expecting a multiple projector planetarium show, but saw instead a film screening.

The Vortex Concerts were crucial to Belson’s transition to a new style of filmmaking — he stopped using traditional animation techniques and began working with pure real-time light sources.

From Perkins:

Belson’s work on the concerts provided the raw materials for two films: Seance (1959) and Allures (1961). [...] Allures is an abstract montage of spirals, collapsing kaleidoscopes, stroboscopic patterns, geometric grids, and spinning shapes resembling atoms. Over time, his style became more organic and ethereal, reflecting such diverse influences as Eastern philosophies, outer space exploration, and psychedelic drugs.

Optical bench

Perkins writes:

It is known that part of his toolkit included a custom-built optical bench with rotating tables, variable-speed motors, and lights of varying intensity. (Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, P. Dutton & Co. ( New York, 1960), 158)

Donald Cammell’s bizarre sci-fi film Demon Seed (1977). [...] Here, Belson is credited as providing “Special Proteus Monitor Footage.” This is an elaborate way of saying that footage from films such as Allures and Samadhi were used as the Proteus 4 interface.

In mainstream

Perkins:

Excerpts from his film Samadhi were used Gerry Anderson’s film Journey To The Other Side of the Sun (1969).

References

• Gregory Zinman (2011): "RE-ENTRY: Thoughts on Jordan Belson: 1926-2011". Brooklyn Rail: December 2011-January 2012 [1]
• Gene Youngblood (1971): Expanded Cinema, P. Dutton & Co
• Rodney Perkins (2011): "JORDAN BELSON: VISUALIZING INNER AND OUTER SPACE". Spectacular Optical: November 1, 2011 - [2]
• Stein, Suzanne (2010): "Cindy Keefer on Jordan Belson, Cosmic Cinema, and the San Francisco Museum of Art". Open Space: October 12, 2010 [3]
• 1992–94 interview with Scott MacDonald - referred in Stein 2010