Many thanks to Twitch reader Niels for passing along word of compelling music / animation project Umfeld. I'm at a bit of a loss to say what exactly this is. It's not a music video, it's certainly not a narrative film, it's more along the lines of something you'd expect to see as a multimedia installation in an art gallery somewhere. Here's the deal:
Musician Jochem Paap - who works as a producer in the techno world as Speedy J - approached visual artist Scott Pagano to create something unusual from the ground up, a very deliberate, long form fusion of music and image. Running fifty five minutes the end result is Umfeld, a project built sonically from the ground up in 5.1 sound with the visuals and music specifically designed to play off of each other rather than having one designed to suit the other after the fact. Whatever you want to call it it just plain looks cool and the creators are literally giving it away. Yes, please.
Thanks for mentioning this, projects like this need a good deal of promotion!
It's indeed quite hard to figure out what it is exactly, and how it fits in in modern day cinema. It's best compared to a 55 minute version of Autechre's Gantz Graf clip, but even that doesn't do this project justice.
If you like your stuff abstract, don't miss it. Wrote a little review too: http://www.onderhond.com/blog/personal/umfeld