Mood Contrasts by Mary Ellen Bute

Artwork · Women Artists

Bright looping white lines, magenta shapes and blue pinwheel forms against black in a Mood Contrasts film still. — Mary Ellen Bute, Mood Contrasts. Film still showing the film’s oscilloscope imagery. Mary Ellen Bute; cinematography and technical collaboration by Theodore (Ted) Nemeth. Collection of the Center for Visual Music. CVM source watermark retained. Image source.

Bute’s oscillograph-made, pioneering abstract film saw Rimsky Korsakov’s “Hymn to the Sun” and “Dance of the Tumblers” visually interpreted by an array of Surrealist visual images.

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random, fact-checked September 2026.

Sources

centerforvisualmusic.org

People

Mary Ellen Bute, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Movements

computer animation, computer art, generative art, Surrealism, Oscillographic Art

Filed under

Ideas: abstraction, animation, film, generative art, music, Surrealism
Technologies: computer animation, computer art, oscillographs
People: Mary Ellen Bute, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Works: Dance of the Tumblers, Hymn to the Sun, Mood Contrasts, Visual Music Orchestration

Echoes across time

Le Random editorials

Explore all Le Random editorials and artist interviews

Le Random podcast

Timeline Ch 3—Analog Era (1950s) with Georg Bak — listen with transcript on Le Random (10 Aug 2023, 65 min). Chapter 3’s episode. Apple Podcasts · Spotify