Around Perception
1968 · 16m · Canada
Directed by Pierre Hébert
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Computer-generated geometric forms vibrate in colour through shifting alternation speeds. A simple line figure dances between optical illusions and direct sound shapes.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Hébert's doing something every scout expects from '68 computer animation, which means it's already boring—geometric forms and optical tricks are the safe play when you've got access to a mainframe, and this feels like the experimental-film equivalent of showing up on time.
A watershed moment in the lineage of algorithmic aesthetics: Hébert's direct marriage of computer generation to synchronized sound creates a formalist argument about perception itself, each oscillation in colour and timing a deliberate proposition about how we process visual rhythm—the kind of rigorous conceptual work that retrospectively justified the entire medium.
The genius move here is letting the *speed alternation* do the storytelling instead of layering it with anything else—that single formal constraint between geometry and sound is what transforms a technical demo into something that actually breathes and holds you.