Experimental film editing inspired by Avant-Garde and Surrealist genres: "High Art"

'can you pass the acid test' 1966, from the collection of Mike Zaidlin, by Norman Hartweg

I would like to explain why "High Art", a book by Ted Owen is one of the sources for my inspiration for my project and why I have to look through these kind of psyche-manipulative art projects in order to develop my own style of editing and visual story-telling.
I reckon, that these ideas help me understand other ways reality can be portrayed through films, and I would like to suggest a deeper edit, that can provoke the viewers to get into a little visual hypnosis and separate that visual story from the reality and see objects, actions, scenes and the sequence of them in a way they can help them build up their own personal meaning of what they see.
The idea of psychedelia relates to surrealism, and triggers the phenomena of love, state described through many disciplines- biology, physics, philosophy and even chemistry, it is a state of mind and spirit which is deeply subjective and emotional. In my semiotical analysis I will highlight it in details.

So, here is something I found in a book by Ted Owen- "High Art"

"The evolution of rock poster as an art form began in San-Francisco in the mid Sixties."

The inspirations were Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec and Cheret. The artists could create affordable posters.

There were some clubs of artists such as Avalon and Fillmore ballrooms that were commissioned to that art and also, UFO Club in London. All of them were aware of the psychedelic art movement.
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One of the crucial aspects of the liberalisation in the 60s was that it confirmed the end of imperialism.

Fashion related to rock'n'roll started changing as well, the music scene's biggest influence was Bob Dylan at the time (p.14), who not only supported the liberalisation, was a really big musician, but also introduced marijuana to the Beatles. The world was changing. Communities were against the war in Vietnam, and instead, people were open to the new cultures: they saw Asia and East as a place of inspiration- colourful clothes and the lands of spices.

Timothy Leary was sacked out of Harvard University for spreading "the LSD gospel", he created the "psychedelic revolution". A common effect of the drug was to heighten the senses and break down the barriers to perception. With the widely-spread drug use, the use was divided into two ways: for medicine reasons, and for "fun"- they were experimenting with ancient hallucinogens such as hashish and 'magic' mushrooms. LSD was chemical and it was dangerous.

In 1955, British psychiatrist Dr Humphrey Osmond was deeply engaged in the study of substances which altered human consciousness, including among others, cannabis, mescaline and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (known as LSD). To describe the experience resulting from the ingestion of these substances he developed the word 'psychedelic' by combining the Greek words "psyche", meaning "mind, spirit and soul" and "delos" meaning "clearly apparent or seen".

With the emerge of OP art there were the poster artistic movements coming up, as well.

As it is clearly stated above, it was the time when a lot of artists would get inspired by 'psychedelic' experiences. Their paintings or posters were created in order to experiment and show a different state of mind.

* I , personally, research all of these movements in order to try to imagine what that experience is. And I would like to show a 'blurred' mind and encourage a new way of perceiving my works. I hope my film's editing can suggest a room for widened perception of a story. My fashion film, shown through layers and projections of psychedelic ornaments possibly can help to play with that idea because it is tightly connected to hallucinations, possibly provoke side-effects, hysteria and anxiousness which is a result of mind's processes, which can be out of our control and strictly ruled by subconscious motives. But I hope the links the viewers' minds will build while watching my film can be very personal and clearly their own.

I research on what it is to make the film look a little 'psychedelic' so the viewers can relax and let their mind flow.

In my film you will see Final Cut's editing made with a lot of effects of "layering", "mirroring", "prisms", "kaleidoscope", "blurring" and more...

But to get the inspiration to do that, I got back to the idea of psychedelia (marbling, oil-light shows also relate to that). This time, posters, and I would like to give a few examples of how artists represented the psychedelia through graphics and paintings in poster art: