Spheres Dance to the Music of Bach, Performed by Glenn Gould: An Animation from 1969

From Nor­man McLaren and René Jodoin comes a 1969 short ani­ma­tion called “Spheres.” Here, you can watch “spheres of translu­cent pearl float weight­less­ly in the unlim­it­ed panora­ma of the sky, group­ing, regroup­ing or col­lid­ing like the styl­ized burst of some atom­ic chain reac­tion.” All the while, “the dance is set to the musi­cal cadences of Bach, played by pianist Glenn Gould.” A per­fect com­bi­na­tion.

This film par­tic­i­pates in a long tra­di­tion of ani­ma­tions explor­ing geom­e­try, some of which you can find in the Relat­eds right below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Avant Garde Ani­ma­tion: Watch Wal­ter Ruttmann’s Licht­spiel Opus 1 (1921)

Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line Cel­e­brates Geom­e­try & Hard Work: An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion (1965)

Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle: Watch the 1977 Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion That Demys­ti­fies Geom­e­try

Watch “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)