Celery Stalks at Midnight

1952, USA, 16mm, colour, sound, 3 min.

This is one of the earlier works of John Whitney, who was very much influenced by Oskar Fischinger and who later became one of the pioneers of computer animation. Throughout his career John Whitney was searching for ways to compose images and relate them to sounds, ultimately in real-time. In this films one of the techniques he uses is the technique of oil-wipe animation, which allows for hand gestures to be turned into an animation of abstract lines.