Abstronic

Mary Ellen Bute produced more than a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and 1950s, pioneering visual music and electronic art. Her films pair classical works by Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shostakovich with rapidly mutating geometries, blending formal rigor and high spirits. Lewis Jacobs noted in the late 1940s that her films were composed on mathematical formulae, while Bute herself sought to bring visual forms to the eyes in step with music's thematic development and rhythmic cadences.