Rainbow remixes: Cut and paste sound in the films of Len Lye

Abstract

Len Lye made extraordinary, energetic direct films in the mid-1930s with the help of his sound editors, Jack Ellit and Ernst Meyer. While receiving recognition for his visual animation, the full extent to which Lye broke new audio-visual ground has been underestimated. This article proposes Lye and his collaborators as important pioneers of audio remixing, a musical process generally assumed to have much later origins. His short, hand-painted films including Rainbow Dance (1936) and Trade Tattoo (1937) were constructed using little to no visual editing, while their soundtracks were substantially cut and pasted. These soundtracks were painstakingly constructed from pre-existing musical recordings, re-arranged into bespoke instrumentals. This significant audio-visual accomplishment has remained largely unnoticed, despite predating experiments in audio manipulation by better-known composers. This article brings these considerable audio-visual innovations to the fore, and highlights the important relationship between dance music and Lye’s avant-garde filmmaking.