Dan Flavin - The Milky Way 2007
Stan VanDerBeek - Steam Screen 1979
“The audience is able, physically, to enter the image and the cloud and become wrapped in a wholly new experience..”
(Source: stanvanderbeek.com)
Visualing Poetry with 1960s Computer Graphics
Experimental collection of films made in late 1960’s using a computer has surprising digital and glitch aesthetic - video embedded below:
[PK Note - I’m not going to lie, the film isn’t going to be for everyone, and it does feature some abstract jazz which may hurt your ears if you are listening via headphone. As you’ll see in the excerpt below, a computer was used to create the composition but not the colours, which was added later. Still, I do see it as a possible precursor to glitch we are more familiar with today]
From 1964 through around 1969, artist Stan VanDerBeek worked with computer scientist Ken Knowlton on a series of films:
… Each film was constructed using Knowlton’s BEFLIX computer language, which was based on FORTRAN. The films were programmed on a IBM 7094 computer. The films were created in black and white, with color added later by Brown and Olvey. This particular version is taken from a film with some color decay.
VanDerBeek passed away in 1984. He is also part of the film Incredible Machine, made in 1968. VanDerBeek was part of a unique program at Bell Labs that allowed artists to work with computer scientists in order to explore and advance the technology in the fields of computer graphics and music.
STAN VANDERBEEK // MOVIE DROME (1963-1965)
Originally installed behind the artist’s home in Stony Point, NY, VanDerBeek’s Movie Drome is made up of a continuous stream of projected moving images that revolve, merge, and disperse within a partially enclosed silo roof. Recently exhibited this summer at the New Museum, the piece is heralded as a harbinger of many techniques used in new media, representative of a proto-digital approach to the immersive media environment.
(Source: kae-whalen)