An Optical Poem – produced by Oskar Fischinger 1938 – YouTube

“An Optical Poem” is a famous experimental animated short film produced by Oskar Fischinger in 1938. Oskar Fisinger is a German-born artist and animator, credited as one of the pioneers of visual music and abstract animation.

The music of this animation was composed by Liszt Ferenc, and it is closely coordinated with the visual elements of the animation, which together constitute the overall artistic experience. Oscar Fisinger used a technique called “multiplane photography” to create complex transformations and movements in animation by drawing and arranging graphics on multiple layers of transparent material and then shooting them frame by frame.

It is a completely abstract animated short with no specific story line or characters. It focuses on conveying the emotion and rhythm of the music through shape, color, movement and transformation. Each frame of this production is a carefully designed abstract graphic that accompanies the music to create a unique audio-visual experience. This kind of experimental animation form combining Music and animation is called Visual Music, which is an art form combining music and visual art. Its goal is to convey the emotion, rhythm and emotion of music through visual elements, thereby creating a multi-sensory artistic experience. Typically, Visual Music involves the representation of images, animations, light, colors, and other visual effects along with music to create an audio-visual interaction.