Light Music (1975)

Overview

Light Music is a classic work of expanded cinema. Formed from two projections facing one another on opposite screens, Light Music is Rhodes’ response to what she perceived as the lack of attention paid to women composers in European music. She composed a ‘score’ comprised of drawings that form abstract patterns of black and white lines onscreen. The drawings are printed onto the optical edge of the filmstrip. As the bands of light and dark pass through the 16mm projector they are ‘read’ as audio, creating an intense soundtrack that proposes a direct relationship between the sonic and the visual. What you hear is equivalent to what you see.