Additive processes as format: The Synchrome Corporation and the politics of early experimental film

Abstract

This article examines the little-known colour film experiments of the Synchromists, an avant-garde group founded in the 1910s by US painters Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell. It focuses on the Synchrome Corporation, a company founded by Macdonald-Wright in Los Angeles in the 1920s to develop new colour film tech-niques. Through an analysis of archival material, including un-published letters between Macdonald-Wright and Russell, and pa-tents, I trace and contextualise the Synchromists’ efforts within the political and industrial dynamics of the interwar period and examine Macdonald’s subversive approach to film as a technological and ideological construct. Drawing on recent developments in format studies, media archaeol-ogy, and machine epistemology, I use this case study as an invitation to re-evaluate the existing concepts of ‘visual music’ and ‘intermedia’ that have been adopted to discuss early experimental film. The methodological model I propose highlights the interconnectedness of technical innovation, industrial ambition, and artistic modernism, in an attempt to enrich our understanding of early experimental film history.