Page Contents

• Description
• Other Credits

Description

LAPIS (1965), also consists entirely of dot patterns, but the mood is radically different. Like a single mandala moving within itself, the particles surge around each other in constant metamorphosis, a serene ecstasy of what Jung calls "individuation." For 10 minutes, a succession of beautiful designs grows incredibly, ever more intricate and astounding; sometimes the black background itself becomes the pattern, when paths are shunned by the moving dots. A voluptuous raga soundtrack by Ravi Shankar perfectly matches the film's flow, and helped to make Lapis one of the most accessible "experimental films" ever made. Occasionally, LAPIS is listed as a computer graphic film, which is quite untrue. The images were all created with handmade cels, and the rotation of more than one of these cels creates some of the movements. John Whitney Sr. had built a pioneer computerized animation set-up -- the prototype for the motion-control systems that later made possible such special effects as the "Star Gate" sequence of 2001. James used that set-up to shoot some of his handmade artwork, since it could ensure accuracy of placement and incremental movement.[Source: William Moritz article, iotaCenter website]A filmic parallel of the alchemists' pursuit of the lapis, which begins with a collecting of the different aspects of the mind, progresses to a centering of those aspects in a circumambulation of the center, ultimately producing a crystalin center which is finally burst apart by tension, leaving the whitelight. 'One of the most aesthetically satisfying abstract color films moving to music that I have ever seen is a work by James Whitney, LAPIS. Here the hypnotic image of a yantra is seen pulsating evenly, to the rhythms of a classical raga, with endlessly contracting and expanding circles of multicolored dots, all moving in complicated counter point and seeming as dense as the atoms of the sun. There is a kinaesthetic feeling of constant swelling and subsiding that recalls the motion of respiration, so that the immense yantra on the screen easily becomes an image of the human heart serenely compounding the flow of chemicals throughout the body.' -PARKER TYLER, 'UNDERGROUND FILM: A CRITICAL HISTORY'. 'The term 'lapis' has been variously described as a philosopher's stone; a symbol of the union of body, soul, and spirit; and a mandala, which, like the heavens, revolves eternally. Made on an analogue computer (fashioned from an old antiaircraft gun mechanism), LAPIS is a beautiful meditational film in which concentric circles of tiny dots revolve and metamorphosize to the beat of sitar music. The result is a mesmerizing visual tunnel that sucks the viewer into a metaphysical voyage. Outstanding.' -MEDIA & METHODS
[Source: Creative Film Society Catalog, 1975]