Maxwell's Time Streams (music: Allan Schindler, 2003) opened the festival. All Stephanie Maxwell images © Stephanie Maxwell.

You have to imagine the setting: a dark room, and a 12-hour program of uninterrupted visual music, divided into 12 one-hour segments, but without a break in between! From 10:00 am to 10:00 pm, with beautiful weather outside (well, during much of the day), on a Saturday, with spring showing up in full force (flowers and trees blooming, the works), and yet the amphitheatre was near full all of the time, with people going in and out, usually during the few seconds separating the various segments. I saw many who were there at 10:00 am last till the very closing well after 10:00 pm. Surely, we all needed to take a break once in a while, but we kept coming back for more. This was a festival unlike any I have attended, there was a quality of attention, itself fueled by expectations radically different from "habitual animation" festivals; the main mood was one of quiet concentration, attention and, well, yes, respect.

People would applaud each and every piece shown during the 12-hour marathon. One could feel the heightened attention at the key moments of particularly successful pieces, the reactions to the manifestation of "quality" (as per Robert Pirsig) was exceptional. How far we were from the cravings for mind-numbness/numbing so often the norm elsewhere.

All that Remains (music: Michaela Eremiasova, 2006) by Stephanie Maxwell.

The closing of the festival was at once a manifestation of warmth, dignity and gratitude. How fortunate "we" were to be granted that kind of event!

I strongly suspect that much of the source of that extraordinary mood came from the fact that the festival was organized by Miller, and that his reputation and association with the music department of Northeastern U. attracted many musicians (that is a fact). It also attracted many filmmakers/ directors/ animators and, above all, practically nobody came to the Marathon to be "entertained" (in the lowest sense of the word, as addressed in my Notes from the Underground Part One -- Animation: Prozac or Kyosaku?; this was a place dedicated to the celebration of "the search for meaning."

Case in point -- during the historical films segment of the program, a film broke, resulting for the audience in a few minutes of "empty" waiting. There was not a single manifestation of impatience, not a cat call, nobody used that "silence" to (try to) be funny; there was simple and dignified waiting, "just waiting" as some Buddhists might call it.

Indeed, unlike what is too often commonplace in "habitual animation" festivals, this was not a celebration of "Life is a bitch and then you die," it was rather a brilliant demonstration of Cézanne's "Art is a religion. Its aim is the elevation of thought."

The amazing 1.618 (2006) by Scott Pagano with music by BT, shows that the mathematical process giving it birth does not interfere with its sheer beauty. © Scott Pagano.

Yes indeed, the elevation of thought.

This VMM was a magnificent demonstration of the sensitivity and intelligence of visual music creators and viewers. One film after another took us on multi-faceted journeys that made visible, and audible, so much of the infinite possibilities of that art form!

It indeed seems to me that the potential of visual music is infinite. When getting involved with it, we are confronted with an infinity of choices begging to be made, from that of being a "human metronome," to being totally at odds with the music, exploring it all while making visible many of the combinations and possibilities that gratify us. To be "on" the beat, ahead of it, behind it, to draw/paint/animate with the bass, or switch to the top, or go along with the middle, to concentrate on the "colors" of the music, or privilege one over the others, to connect with all those echoing shapes, the resonances, and switch (again, switch, an essential aspect if there is one), back, and forth, and back again, to play hide-and-seek with all those elements and get lost, with delight (at times), in the midst of them all -- what richness, what joy!