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Experiments in motion graphics

by: Whitney, John, Sr., 1917-1995

Publication date: 1968

Topics: 16mm Film, Educational Film, Animation (Cinematography), Computer graphics, Computers, Indians of North America $z Great Plains, Computers, Indians of North America $z Great Plains, Computer graphics

Publisher: IBM Corporation / IBM Direct / IBM K-12 Assist Group / IBM Publications 4800 Falls of the Neuse Rd Raleigh NC 27609 USA (800)879-2755

Digitizing sponsor: Internet Archive

Contributor: Internet Archive

Language: English

John H. Whitney explains the graphic art potential of the computer and the methods and philosophy involved in his computer film making.

Search Educational Film Journals at Media History Project for references to this film

Summary

Demonstrates and explains experiments by John Whitney with computer - produced motion graphics, showing the use of lines and dots to produce parallel and related pair structural relationships w.ich move in depth as well as time. Analyzes Whitney's film permutations as an example of his work. Filmed at the Health Sciences Computing Facility of the School of Medicine at UCLA.

Access-restricted-item: true

Addeddate: 2015-01-16 21:23:25

Boxid: IA1113003

Color: color

Creator_2: Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Identifier: experimentsinmotiongraphics

Lccn: 78702354

Oclc_id: 5166671

Ocr: The feather from clips of film made under a research program and compute the images are a range to illustrate this talk which will be an attempt to suggest some of the formal problems that hold my interest. Regarding design in motion this is the I.B.M. twenty to fifty graphic play console that generates the images in mode which I have been exploring. Dr Jack Citron of I.B.M. who developed the computer program for this project is demonstrating the way we select numerical variables that demon a particular graphic pattern. The program is based upon a single polar coordinates equation having about twenty parameters. Using the light pan numerical values can be chosen and given to any of the parameters of the program. One soon learns how to control the graphic possibilities of this new medium and realizes that it is a very powerful and versatile figure generator. When the camera is used. Control of a computer program is by punch cards not the light pan. The camera using black and white motion picture film is automatically operated by control signals generated by the computer program at a later stage I recapped the with an optical printer the black and white images on to colour films using an assortment of color filters and superimpose years I am able to produce the images which you will see in the remainder of this film. This is one kind of action that I have been exploring asymmetrical not Center oriented a fluid kind of motion that is not stuck in one place. This motion is multiplied. No static elements except when it comes to rest it as a path and space which is approximately a trajectory I call it a linear figure. The essential problem with this kind of motion must resemble the creative problem of melody writing it is perhaps in its purest form the most highly concentrated case study of the essence of art itself. Involving as it does balance contrast tension and resolution all brought into play with minimum expenditure. Perhaps of these actions were structured with still greater contrast of motion and scale and some as yet unknown qualities they might be developed through variations that we could recognize and respond to directly and emotionally of course. Even these actions on the screen might work better if there were music of some sort of related to them. I think of sound as a partner to this kind of visual experience but I do not want the graphics to play a role of the lesser subservient partner starting with recorded history I suppose we have had as much experience creating melodies as creating poetry but who's experienced the satisfaction of composing more than a fragment and this new audio visual art. What is needed there for is for someone to be able to add a few years experience to perfect his skill at this dining motion for the I don't perceive. You have been seeing a kind of motion which I would have you compare with melodic linear phenomena of music the comparison might be carried a step farther by showing how we might relate and harmonize two or more actions that run simultaneously. Here is a simple and obvious and quite infallible kind of holographic relationship parallel action rotated into four quadrants positions. Now from here on I'm going to present a kind of spoken counterpoint. I'll interrupt myself to explain what is on the screen but I have more to say in general about formal problems. For example the op art directions have indicated what the values can be found in the effects of color as an experience for its own sake there are the same potentials here but with the added factors of time and motion. Let me add a disclaimer to any systematic colourist I think at this time I am using color on the elemental level of a simple color code system at present. On the screen now our poll a graphic relationships are related pairs derived from structural configurations of the computer program. The relationship is still simple. Merely completing the other half of a basically circular figure these more dynamic relationships begin to illustrate some of the potentials of the computer as a graphic variational instrument. Yet the obstinant part about these actions we are seeing is their subtlety their ambiguity they remind me of certain optical puzzles you actually have to be sharp by and have your wits about you to see these relationships I am describing this becomes too much a kind of intellectual game all this that you see here should impinge upon the emotions and feelings directly it does not do that very well but I think it can and will now hear the Paris show their amazing relationship as they move in a depth of space. Music of course has its impact directly and emotions are involved in composing music the tiresome misconception the composer's work and a heat of passion has given away to its opposite at the short haired modern composers supposed to be all brains I don't have to labour the point that music and music composing actually allow for a free and easy involvement of the emotions but I must say to get emotionally involved creatively at the computer is not easy. One considerable problem has to do with a matter of real time. Here the orange figure moves in space while the yellow remains at a constant distance. These actions on the screen were not produced in real time in fact it takes three to six seconds to produce one image such as we see here. Passing at the rate of twenty four frames per second one twenty second sequence requires about thirty minutes computer time then I must wait some twelve hours or more to see my film after this process. This is another dynamic relationship the yellow and orange figures complete a close figure but the connecting lines are organized differently. Imagine how handicapped the pianist would be if his piano made not a sound as he played on it and he had to wait some twelve hours before he could hear the music he had performed. The musicians reactions and his emotions and feelings are easily involved because all musical instruments to this day have operated in real time but computers are evolving toward real time operations with the material as complex as this and I expect some of the hardships to ease. Now these mated pairs advance and retreat in time opposed to each other. As difficult to combat as the old misconceptions about the Romantic composers maybe the ideas floating around that we may turn to art by computer is a labor saving device there is so much misunderstanding about the so-called electronic brain which is supposed to do the work of a hundred or a thousand scientists you can already expect to hear talk of the computer doing the work of many artists there would be less nonsense in this if it were put the other way around I would gladly share the task that lies ahead with many others who I am sure are abundantly cognizant of the problems in fact to me it seems likely that problems such as I have tried to outline here. Well one day be collectively studied at many centers devoted to the computer arts. Now in conclusion I would like to present a brief analysis of the film. Permutations which is the most recent of several films which I have made as one of the many activities within my I.B.M. research project. Permutations represents a first step toward developing a compositional language by which an art of graphics in motion might be structured in time that is to say with this film I have been able to realize on a decidedly tentative an experimental level a hierarchy of components of a structural system at least I have been able to put the pieces of the system to get together in different ways to achieve different effects. As with the language. On the screen now consider the generalized effect of these dots weather moving in order to a deliberate paths are bouncing around in seemingly random fashion they have a lively dynamic quality and they form collectively into figures at times in ways which I find I can arrange with much more graphic integrity than any of the other lying figures of the first part of this talk. This dot pattern domain of the computer program might be compared with an alphabet if so at the next level of complexity the DA patterns form into words each word having a two hundred frame or approximately and eight seconds duration. The words in turn can be fitted contextually one after another into sentence structures such as you see on the screen now. My use of a parallel to language is only partially descriptive one is again moved to draw parallels with music and the next term I would use is of course. Counterpoint or more exactly Palestinian but comparisons with either language or music are tenuous at best. For example this simple succession of the same graphic figure or word over itself again and again it's certainly not producing anything like the effect of musical canon and is without parallel in linguistics in summary I must comment that if this kind of computer art study looks like a lot of fun which it is. Let me add there is some agony in it to a few years ago it fairly serious serve a lecture on the state of the computer art at Rand. Concluded with electors own aphorism computers are getting smaller faster and cheaper year by year my threefold agony is that computers are not small fast or cheap enough let me say here my use of the word agony is really in the lofty Christian sense I don't personally suffer but I do for others in the sense that because one computers are not cheap. Fewer people have an opportunity to use them as I do too because computers are slow people have to wait in line behind me while I do a camera run and three computers are too big to take home over the weekend to finish work when it gets behind schedule. Still computers are becoming smaller faster pose my real agony is one of impatience I expect to see one day an art of graphics as a regular daily part of television programming. I am impatient with the probability that to bring this about will require about as much invention. Hard creative work and digestion of many new techniques as will be required to bring about the home television size computers.

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Reviewer: CamillaZora - - October 12, 2021
Subject: Rights

Hello, can I use some of the video material for non profit purpose? Thank you.

Reviewer: Not Waving - - December 21, 2020
Subject: the mov version

hello,
is it possible to have access to the mov. version (15gb) please ?
thanks in advance

Reviewer: slowtide - - June 13, 2020
Subject: inquiry from a Japanese magazine

hello could we have this web link and captured images in our story on inspiring videos? please advice us on the usage.

Reviewer: sonification - - February 23, 2020
Subject: Resources?

great video, where can we find a detailed description of the equation used?

Reviewer: Anonymous - - April 8, 2018
Subject: Aspect Ratio

Really Nice! The aspect ratio was bothering me so I re-uploaded it with the correct one... Cheers!

Reviewer: alexoverseas - - February 8, 2017
Subject: Public Domain ?

Hey there, this stuff is great, is it free of copyright ?

Reviewer: rupertrussell - - June 16, 2016
Subject: How to download the video

Select Show All
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See also: https://youtu.be/LaarVR1AOvs

Reviewer: scottishkenny - - February 22, 2016
Subject: Can't dowload

Hi there love this old footage but it wont let me download it. Every time i try it simply plays the footage.

Reviewer: Joel Wells - - February 10, 2016
Subject: HD 'SCAN'

Hi,

Thank you for uploading this, some really beautiful graphics and interesting techniques.

I was hoping to source a 'high resolution' version, do you know where I might be able to find one?

Best wishes

Joel

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