Warsaw Autumn, 1962-1965

Each of the series of posters created for the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival in 1962-1965 expresses – visually – musical effects. On the visual level, they loosely reference technical notations of audio phenomena: a zigzagging oscillogram amplitude (1964) or sound waves spreading in circles (1965). These attempts to render audio effects using a new visual language are important in the context of the rise of experimental electroacoustic music to prominence and its firm establishment in the mid-1960s on the Polish contemporary music scene and at the Warsaw Autumn festival. Many of Zamecznik’s contemporaries remember his keen interest in music, and various metaphors connected with music writing and the musical imagination have been used to describe his work. The following quote by Eryk Lipiński is from the catalogue of Zamecznik’s monographic exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw (1968): ‘... like an experienced accompanist, he does not drown out the soloist, does not repeat, but rather provides a counterpoint, creating an atmosphere without illustrating’.