In the 1910s, the Swedish painter Viking Eggeling was concerned with the integration of dynamic processes into his artistic works. After numerous studies and scroll drawings, in 1920 he turned to film, completing the Symphonie Diagonale in 1924. Eggeling saw this work as a visual composition. For this reason, he deliberately made it silent and determined the sequence of forms according to compositional principles. The interplay of figures were considered counterpoint, and their order and transformations in time rhythm. Eggeling set out from the concept of a universally-valid, abstract formal vocabulary and used a handful of basic patterns that are extended and varied as the short film progresses
