Chimigrammes

The text and video excerpt below document the book by Philippe Langlois, Les cloches d’Atlantis, musique électroacoustique et cinéma archéologie et histoire d’un art sonore, éditions mf, Paris, first quarter 2012.

The film is made from the works of the photographer Pierre Cordier, which the artist calls Chimigrammes: photographic images in a variety of colours and graphic patterns, obtained directly on paper by pouring chemicals onto it.

Composing to accompany images is a constant in the work of Bernard Parmegiani. His catalogue thus lists more than sixty compositions for, or contributions to the creation of a soundtrack for, cinema or television.
Even before beginning to compose his Etude de stage in 1961, Bernard Parmegiani had already worked on the sound creation for several short films following specific cinematographic techniques. Just like Ivo Malec with Reflets, his study from the training course serves as a framework for the editing of Chimmigrammes. Its originality, besides the trick effects at the shooting stage, lies in its editing, which was done in tenths of a second, trying at every moment to find the visual equivalent of the sound object and of its development in time.
“Filmmakers were very fond of musique concrète because of the singularity of the sounds we offered them. As people of the image themselves, already somewhat in the experimental with their visual research, whether with real images or animated images, they cultivated the pleonasm, also looking for music that might hold an experimental character. Like them, we were pursuing a certain research into sonic matter. Moreover, it was very artisanal work, work made piece by piece, which suited very well; it was made to measure for animation filmmakers. Our precise sound ideas gave them other ideas; what we were doing was truly “handmade”, and in my opinion these are the two reasons why animation filmmakers liked this kind of music so much.”

Production: Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF, 1962.

Music by Bernard Parmegiani

This information notice was co-produced with INA/GRM for the creation of the multimedia fresco – Artsonores – L’aventure électroacoustique, in the category Films produced by the Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF from 1950 to 1975.