Celery Stalks At Midnight

The music animation (or animated music?) inspired by Will Bradley’s composition Celery Stalks at Midnight from 1940 is one of the early works of John Whitney, the pioneer of computer animation. Filmstrip only served as a means of capturing the abstract world created before the camera lens. Inspired by Oskar Fischinger, Whitney makes abstract patterns move and intersect on a blue background. The variations and permutations of simple shapes copying the form, melody and phrasing of the composition represent a visual equivalent to the language of music.