Ephemera

Apr 19

“Surprisingly for such a cinematic individualist, some of Belson’s most significant innovations arose from collaborations. Working with electronic musician Henry Jacobs, Belson produced one of the earliest expanded cinema projects, the Vortex Concerts, at California Academy of Science’s Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco. From May 1957 to 1959, roughly 35 of these Vortex Concerts took place over five series. Jacobs would curate an eclectic musical program, including compositions by Stockhausen and Ussachevsky as well as selections of Balinese and Afro-Cuban tunes, which would be pumped through 36 loudspeakers arranged around the room. CVM’s Cindy Keefer, who has written the definitive account of the series, writes that Belson, meanwhile, operated up to 30 different projection devices that displayed on the planetarium’s 65-foot dome. His mix of intensely layered real-time imagery comprised slide projectors, a kaleidoscope, rotating and zoom projectors, various prisms, a flicker machine, a spiral generator, four interference pattern projectors, 16mm projectors, and the planetarium’s sophisticated starfield projector. This last item, called the Academy Projector, was a unique device capable of projecting a realistic field of nearly 4,000 stars.” —

RE-ENTRY: Thoughts on Jordan Belson: 1926–2011 - The Brooklyn Rail

I had no idea that Belson died late last year…imagine, to have been there in the late fifties to witness that premonition of the psychedelic decade ahead, as an analog light show swirled over the shimmering beats of Balinese gamelan!

A sincere RIP to an unacknowledged cinematic alchemist….