zounk!

The random choreography of colorful, flashing screen signals that sink back into black, has its appeal. The artist Billy Roisz knows it well; she is a specialist for electronic abstraction, the aesthetics of visual distortion is one of her areas of activity. In Zounk! the play of horizontal, and later also vertical lines becomes ever more complex, step by step, transforming into series of flickering grids that also seem complex in terms of their color dramaturgy. What is first limited to black, white, and yellow, is soon expanded by red, green, and blue; and in the end again sinks into the great darkness. The images are triggered by the soundtrack, connected with its frequency: the meta rock collection, Broken.Heart.Collector’s piece called “Eisenwalzer.” The piece begins with stylized guitar noise erecting metalic partitions before singer Maja Osojnik works her sonorous recitation up to vocal ecstasy.
In a variety of ways, Zounk! plays on the history of abstract art, harboring references to Hans Richter’s geometries of motion from the 1920s, Piet Mondrian’s right-angled color compositions, and Oskar Fischinger’s abstract film music. Billy Roisz likes to produce her works using her own, homemade picture-manipulation apparatuses, trusting the logic, the independent existence of the machines. zounk! is a good example of the charm of low-threshold aleatori: Roisz generates her visual material with analogue techniques, using video mixer and transducer—she first switches to digital in the video montage. The result is an idiosyncratic mix of brutality and tenderness: image-sound art rising like a bonfire for people with modern nerves.
(Stefan Grissemann)

Orig. Title
zounk!
Year
2012
Country
Austria
Duration
6 min
Director
Billy Roisz
Category
Animation/Computeranimation
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Credits
Director
Billy Roisz
Concept & Realization
Billy Roisz
Music
BROKEN.HEART.COLLECTOR
Available Formats
DCP 2K flat
Digital File (prores, h264) (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
16:9
Sound Format
5.1 surround
Frame Rate
25 fps
Color Format
colour
Blu-ray
Aspect Ratio
4:3
Sound Format
stereo
Festivals (Selection)
2012
Berlin - Int. Filmfestspiele Berlinale - Wettbewerb
Graz - Diagonale, Festival des österreichischen Films
Wien - VIS Vienna Independent Shorts
Vilnius - Tindirindis International Animated Film Festival
Denver - Int. Film Festival
Victoria - Antimatter Underground Film Festival
Montréal - Festival du Nouveau Cinéma
Paris - Festival des Cinemas Differents Collectif Jeune Cinema
Wien - One Day Animation Festival
Limassol - Cyrus Int. Short Film Festival
2013
Wien - Tricky Women / Animationsfilmfestival
Bradford - International Film Festival
Stuttgart - Int. Trickfilm-Festival
Annecy - Festival Int. du Cinema d'Animation
Washington - National Gallery of Arts shows "Sixpack: The Austrian Experiment"
Ottawa - Animation Film Festival
Basel - Clair-obscur Filmfestival
Split - Festival of New Film and Video
2014
Bruxelles - Festival of Cartoons & Animated Films
Zagreb – Animafest, Festival on Animated Films
Birmingham - Flatpack Festival
Reykjavik - Punto y Raya Festival
Wels - YOUKI Youth Media Festival
Zilina Fest Anca - Festival of Animated Films
2015
Zagreb – Animafest, Festival on Animated Films