Media Art Net | Ruttmann, Walter: Biography

Walter Ruttmann, «Tri-Ergon optical sound recording», 1922
Photography | © Walter Ruttmann

1930 saw the first attempts to produce radio plays with the Tri-Ergon-Technology (Walter Ruttmann's collage «Weekend» and Friedrich Bischoff's «Hörsymphonie»: «Hallo! Hier Welle Erdball». The bureaucrats, however, condemmned this technology for being influenced by Bolshevist ideas. Thus the attempt was a failure, the patents sold abroad and radio art had to wait for many more years to be able to use the Tri-Ergon technology. (Hermann Naber)

Source text:

Ruttmann, Walter «Malerei mit Zeit» Ruttmann, Walter «Neue Gestaltung von Tonfilm und Funk. Programm einer photographischen Hörkunst» Ruttmann, Walter «Weekend»

Relevant passages:

Dieter Daniels «Media → Art / Art → Media Forerunners of media art in the first half of the twentieth century» Dieter Daniels «Television-Art or anti-art? Conflict and cooperation between the avant-garde and the mass media in the 1960s and 1970s» Golo Föllmer «Audio Art» | 2 Heike Helfert «Technological Constructions of Space-Time Aspects of Perception» | 2 Rudolf Frieling «Form Follows Format Tensions, Museums, Media Technology, and Media Art» Barbara John «The Sounding Image. About the relationship between art and music—an art-historical retrospective view» Dieter Daniels «Sound & Vision in Avantgarde & Mainstream » | 2 | 3 Golo Föllmer Julia Gerlach «Audiovisions. Music as an Intermedia Art Form.»

Works by Walter Ruttmann:

Berlin, Symphony of a City Light-Play Opus I untitled Weekend

Web-Links:

Information on Walter Ruttmann (German)

Berlin | Germany | sound

Walter Ruttmann

«Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main on December 28, 1897. He studied architecture in Zurich and then painting in Munich. [...] In ‹Berlin. Die Sinfonie einer Großstadt› he applied the principles of his abstract studies and film montage to realistic photographs from the city of Berlin. [...] After ‹Berlin› he turned to sound experiments and was eventually able to make ‹Melodie der Welt›, a Tobis film commissioned by Hapag-Lloyd and the first fulllength German sound film. [...] Ruttmann did not emigrate. He collaborated on a film for a ‹Reichsparteitag› but withdrew from the team for unknown reasons. Beginning in 1934 he was employed as a director by UFA and made cultural, industrial, commercial, and propaganda films. On July 15, 1941, he died in Berlin after an operation.»

(source: Goethe-Institut (ed.), The German Avant-Garde Film of the 1920’s, exhib. cat., München, 1989, p. 78.)