This is a set of six variations Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 (BWV 1007), especially the famous opening motive. These silent videos are presented as musical graphic scores, meant to be interpreted more subjectively than traditional notation. Source images come from a manuscript believed to be copied down by Anna Magdalena Bach and a scrolling computer-typeset version by YouTube user gerubach for the Scrolling Bach Project.

The source images are processed by software I created in Max, which is largely autonomous, driven by an audio recording of the first movement of Bach’s Cello Suite. These studies aren’t intended to sound exactly (or much) like Bach’s composition, but by using it as an ingredient in creating these studies, they should carry some of the suite’s essence, in one way or another.

I didn’t originally intend to create a tribute to the abstract early films of Hans Richter, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp, but as the similarity grew as the work developed, I happily embraced it to see where it would lead.