New Delhi: Tech giant Google Doodle honours Oskar Fischinger, the German-American visual artist, musician and filmmaker who was known for creating abstract musical animation several decades prior to the advent of computer graphics and music videos. The Google Doodle celebrates his 117th birthday today.
He created special effects for Fritz Lang’s 1929 Woman In The Moon, one of the first sci-fi rocket movies ever produced. Oskar Fischinger made over 50 short films and painted around 800 canvases that find a place in museums, galleries and collections across the globe. Oskar Fischinger left Nazi Germany in 1936 for Hollywood as Adolf Hitler cracked down on abstract art.
His works were impeccable crafted stop-motion animations which were synchronized to music and he constantly fretted and worked over each of them for months and even years before completing a project.
One of Oskar Fischinger’s famous quotes was, “Music is not limited to the world of sound. There exists a music of the visual world,” is one of Fischinger’s famous quotes.” In the world of design Oskar Fischinger is a towering figure especially in the field of motion graphics and animation.
He was known for his ability to combine abstract visuals with musical instruments to give it character and a special nuance. Each frame was carefully drawn by hand or photographed at a time when there were no computers to fall back on.
Although Oscar Fischinger is more popular for his films he was also an accomplished painter, creating numerous works that captured the dynamics of his films in a single frame. Motion Painting Number 1 (1947) is seen as his masterpiece.
Oskar Fischinger also invented a contraption called the Lumigraph for generating chromatic displays with hand movements.
It was an optical painting in motion and was a precursor to the interactive media and multi-touch games of modern era.
Google's commemorative Doodle allows the users who clicks on it to create their own visual art in Oskar Fischinger’s style. The user has to click on the diamonds to choose notes and can change instruments as well. Have you created your own yet?
