Experimental Architecture - The Cool School and Visual Acoustics - Essay Example

Experimental architecture adopts the concepts of utility and sound that form a significant role in art. Indeed, artists use the concept of sound to generate artistic ideas. Other key concepts of experimental architecture include light, color, and texture. The Cool School (2008) and Visual Acoustics (2008) films depict these concepts and describe the agencies of producing a localized style.

The cool school is a 2008 documentary film by Morgan Neville. The film LA artistic works in the 1950s. The film is prominent in Los Angeles subject to its focus on the historical Ferus Gallery. The film manifests the use of color in the Ferus Gallery that developed the first of Los Angeles’s post-war artists. The film depicts fascinating narration, still images, and harmonious sounds (Neville, “The Cool School”). The documentary produces harmonious sounds since the footage, still images, and narration relate to one another (Rasmussen 104). Ideally, I could explain what is happening when the documentary produces different tones. The tones of music differed from one another and the regular periodic vibrations and fixed-pitch produced accidental noises (Rasmussen 105) as manifested in the sounds produced in the film.

Notably, the aesthetic legacy in the cool school continues in the work of LA architects and artists today. Indeed, the film depicts an old story about post-World War II aesthetic adventurers who collaborated to develop a fascinating American experience. The film replaced the great man theory of history with the aspects of modern architecture. The film equally shows how mature Los Angeles artists inherited the wisdom that Los Angeles in the 1950s was a cultural wasteland as seen in their works (Neville, “The Cool School”). More so, it is evident that the filmmakers of the cool school isolated the ideas and works of historical artists in Los Angeles and promoted the aesthetic legacy manifested in the Ferus Gallery (Neville, “The Cool School”).

On the other hand, visual Acoustics is a 2008 documentary film by Eric Bricker that analyzes the life and artistic works of Julius Shulman who was a prominent architectural photographer (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”). We can establish that Shulman used black and white colors to enhance the beauty of his works. Through a visual style used in the film, we establish that Julius Shulman depicted rich artistic styles. Indeed, the documentary explores Shulman’s iconic photos like Kaufmann House and Stahl House, Case Study House #22 (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”). These photos reflected experimental architecture that entailed human models, contemporary design, and fascinating landscapes. Moreover, he adopted a single-point approach to photography and combined natural light with artificial lighting to produce fascinating images (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”).

Ideally, the style of filmmaking and Shulman’s artistic perfection represent LA's aesthetic legacy. The documentary manifested the evolution of modern architecture and artistic perfection and defined scale and proportion that played an important role in the evolution of modern architecture (Rasmussen 104). Notably, the aesthetic continues in the work of LA architects and artists today where visual Acoustics manifests how Shulman works defined the artistic life of some prominent architects of the 20th Century like John Lautner. Furthermore, Shulman participated in developing commercial architecture photographers that focused on Modern architecture like Southern California Modernism (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”). As such, by focusing on Shulman's art, the film reflects on the continued aesthetic in the work of LA architects and artists today.

Reference Images with Captions

The Ferus Gang (Neville, “The Cool School")

Stahl House by Julius Shulman (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”)

Kaufmann House (Bricker, “Visual Acoustics”)