Even if the nature and evolution of the images of Paci c 231 are guided by the score, the material reality they represent is not dependent on the music; in other words, they are not fundamentally illustra- tive. (…) It is about expressing in space a rhythm that unfolds and expresses itself rstly in the duration, about nding a vi- sual equivalent for it, working in a way that the movements of form are linked with the musical rhythm like the edited shots with the bars of the score (…). Undoubtedly, considering that the images are always images of a reality, what is real must be “made abstract” in order to eliminate the overly gurative qualities of the object, but in a way that the emotional charge linked to the image’s tangible real- ity is not lost. Its movement, rhythm and tone all must be preserved (…). In fact, as Gaston Bachelard superbly pointed out, “only matter can bear the weight of impressions and multiple sensations; only the values of the senses can provide a correspondence. The values of perception provide nothing other than translations.” This is why movement needs to be added to perception, the sensation of matter in motion, but in a way that matter inter- venes only for the sensorial value it give us and satis es us. This is the reason why we tried to nd visual correspondences in material reality rather than abstract graphics and why we chose to sing the movement of reality, which is the only movement that can generate sense.

Jean Mitry, Storia del cinema sperimen- tale, Mazzotta, Milan 1971