Arabesque

(1975)

by John Whitney, Sr. Programmed by Larry Cuba. Whitney experimented with the eccentricities of Islamic architecture, which, though ultimately harmonic, contain many characteristic reverse curves in its embellishments.

Arabesque by John Whitney is a very early example of using computer graphics to create animations. This is necessarily crude by today's standards – coloured lines and shapes – but it was made at a time when computers frequently filled entire rooms and recording their visual output meant pointing a camera at a monitor. Arabesque has a suitably Arabian santur soundtrack by Manoochehr Sadeghi.

Source: John Coulthart

Arabesque, sacral, 2nd generation, Film

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Digital Harmony (1980): On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art – John Whitney, Sr. wanted to create a dialog between "the voices of light and tone." All of his early experiments in film and the development of sound techniques lead toward this end. He felt that music was an integral part of the visual experience; the combination had a long history in man's primitive development and was part of the essence of life. His theories On the complementarity of Music and Visual Art were explained in his book, Digital Harmony, published by McGraw-Hill in 1980. (Paradise 2012)

Sons et Lumières (2004) – A History of Sound in the Art of the 20th Century (in French) by Marcella Lista and Sophie Duplaix published by the Centre Pompidou for the excellent Paris exhibition in September 2004 until January 2005.

 Curated by the Pompidou’s Sophie Duplaix with the Louvre’s Marcella Lista, the show required a good three or four hours to absorb, with its bombardment of sensory and intellectual input, including painting, sound sculpture, sound/light automata, film and video, and room-size installations. (Frieze Magazine)

Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (2005) traces the history of a revolutionary idea: that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music. Over the past one hundred years some of the most adventurous modern and contemporary artists have explored unorthodox means to invent a kinetic, non-representational art modeled upon pure instrumental music. (Amazon)

Expanded Cinema (1970) - In a brilliant and far-ranging study, Gene Youngblood traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. New technological extensions of the medium have become necessary. Thus he concentrates on the advanced image-making technologies of computer films, television experiments, laser movies, and multiple-projection environments. Outstanding works in each field are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists. (John Coulthart)

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John Whitney, Sr. (1917-1995) was an American animator, composer and inventor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation. One of his most famous works from this period was the animated title sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo, which he collaborated on with the graphic designer Saul Bass. In 1966, IBM awarded John Whitney, Sr. its first artist-in-residence position. (Wikipedia)

Catalog (1961) - John Whitney's sample reel was artfully edited and ended with a lovely final image of a lissajous curve multiplied dozens of times, to appear twisting in waves, suggesting the time-lapse of a blossoming flower. The reel was released as Catalog and became a popular classic of 1960's psychedelica. (Animation World Magazin, Dr. William Moritz)

Permutations (1966) by John Whitney, Sr. was an early artistic film constructed entirely off the black-and-white monitor of a large computer system (IBM 360, IBM 2250 Display, written in GRAF and FORTRAN). Color was added by editing with an optical printer. It is an elegant abstract work composed of architectures of color dots that develop pattern while displaying a kinetic rhythm. This early work has had an immense influence on the later generations of computer animators. (Paradise 2012)

Larry Cuba (1950) is widely recognized as a pioneer in the use of computers in animation art. Producing his first computer animation in 1974, Cuba was at the forefront of the computer-animation artists considered the second generation – those who directly followed the visionaries of the sixties: John Whitney, Sr., Stan Vanderbeek and Lillian Schwartz. (Sonic Acts Festival)

James Whitney (1921-1982) younger brother of John Whitney, Sr., was a filmmaker regarded as one of the great masters of abstract cinema. Several of his films are classics in the genre of Visual Music. James Whitney was born December 27, 1921, in Pasadena, California, and lived all his life in the Los Angeles area. He studied painting, and traveled in England before the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, he returned to Pasadena. He completed a number of short films over four decades, two of which required at least five years of work. (Wikipedia)

Yantra (1950-1958) by James Whitney constructed by punching grid patterns in 5" x 7" cards with a pin, and then painting through these pinholes onto other 5" x 7" cards images of rich complexity and dynamism. Yantra is a Sanskrit word meaning implement or machine. (...) This range of quasi-musical variations of implosions and explosions, light and dark, hard-edged pure textures and thick, irregular, hand-wrought solarized textures induces a contemplation of the self and reality, identity and universality. (William Moritz)

Lapis (1966) by James Whitney was made with a new computerized optical printing device John Whitney, Sr. had developed - a pioneer motion control system prefiguring the slit-scan and other famous special effects creations of the later 60s. Lapis consists entirely of hundreds of constantly moving points of light and performs a transformation of positive and negative space, projected color and after-image, similarity and difference. (William Moritz)

Norman McLaren (1914-1987) was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Norman McLaren is remembered for his experiments with image and sound as he developed a number of groundbreaking techniques for combining and synchronizing animation with music. (Wikipedia)

Audio.Visual - On Visual Music and Related Media (2009) by Cornelia Lund and Holger Lund (Eds.) is divided into two sections: the first deals with the academic discussion on the subject of visual music; the second introduces contemporary paradigms of audio-visual praxis in brief presentations and contextualises them. Apart from being a guide in the historical sense, this new volume provides theoretical approaches to understanding and making visual music. (Fluctuating Images)

Jordan Belson (1926-2011) creates abstract films richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. (...) His varied influences include yoga, Eastern philosophies and mysticism, astronomy, Romantic classical music, alchemy, Jung, non-objective art, mandalas and many more. He has produced an extraordinary body of over 30 abstract films, sometimes called cosmic cinema, also considered to be Visual Music. ("Jordan Belson – Biography" by Cindy Keefer)

The Film Work of Norman McLaren (2007) by Terence Dobson approaches the puzzles that are set by the film work of Norman McLaren. It is divided into three parts, based on chronological divisions in McLaren's life. The first part deals with McLaren's formative years in Scotland and England and examines his early exposure to the social, artistic and institutional influences that were to shape his filmic output. The second part deals with McLaren's maturation in the USA and Canada. The third part examines specific issues in relation to McLaren and his work and as such is concerned principally with his mature output. (John Libbey Publishing)

Film as Film: Formal Experiment in Film 1910-1975 (1979) is a catalogue of an exhibition held at the Hayward Gallery in London from 3 May until 17 June 1979 on rare, essential and controversial avant-garde film history.

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Arabesque

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