John Whitney Bio By Anthony Bevilacqua

John Whitney is known as an inventor, composer and animator who was born in Pasadena, California on April 8^th, 1917. He died at the age of 78 on September 22, 1995. He is frequently considered to be the father of computer animation. He went to Pomona College and studied the art of music in Paris for a year. When he returned to America, he began to collaborate with his brother, James. He was awarded first prize at the First International Experimental Film Festival for a film he did with his brother and also won the Guggenheim Fellowship. But along with achieving distinction in the experimental film world, he made his mark in television with commercials and in movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. His work varied greatly; it went from being considered psychedelic to being influenced by Native Americans. His work and name would be nothing without him perfecting the analogue computer. The following quote is a description of the device he used to create his art.
“The analogue computer Whitney used to create his most famous animations was built in the late 1950s by converting the mechanism of a World War II M-5 Antiaircraft Gun Director.[1] Later, Whitney would augment the mechanism with an M-7 mechanism, creating a twelve-foot-high machine.[2] Design templates were placed on three different layers of rotating tables and photographed by multiple-axis rotating cameras. Color was added during optical printing. Whitney's son, John, Jr., described the mechanism in 1970: ‘I don't know how many simultaneous motions can be happening at once. There must be at least five ways just to operate the shutter. The input shaft on the camera rotates at 180 rpm, which results in a photographing speed of 8 fps. That cycle time is constant, not variable, but we never shoot that fast. It takes about nine seconds to make one revolution. During this nine-second cycle the tables are spinning on their own axes while simultaneously revolving around another axis while moving horizontally across the range of the camera, which may itself be turning or zooming up and down. During this operation we can have the shutter open all the time, or just at the end for a second or two, or at the beginning, or for half of the time if we want to do slit-scanning. ‘”

This link is of one of his earlier digital works, Arabesque-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7h0ppnUQhE

This link is Catalogue, which was made when he perfected the analogue computer-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbV7loKp69s

These are the opening credits, which he worked on for the film Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkHn8PNGYaA

This is a picture of Whitney and his brother James at work.

BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! -angela

Bugs Bunny was always kind of my favorite Looney Toons. He wasn't the cutest or the sassiest, but I really liked the way he calmly and cleverly outsmarted those who were out to get him. Even though he would prank them consistently in ways that would be fatal outside of Looney Toons land, it was always in an oddly loving way.

His premier as the famous bunny we know and love, was in the 1940 animated short "A Wild Hare," directed by Tex Avery. Here, he eats his crunchy carrot, as he says his first "What's up, Doc?" and the whole thing its toped by two instances of his lip smacking attack on his enemy. It seems like the letter R was eliminated from the alphabet in this animated world. Also, his performance along side Elmer Fudd sets a high standard as a classic interaction between hunter and prey in cartoons. Another thing that makes him particularly attractive as a character is that it seems almost natural that he would break the 4th wall and address his amused audience, as he does in the end of "A Wild Hare."

While he retains some of the presence he had in his first appearance in 1938, before he was grey and before his name Bugs was official, he evolved to become much more stylized and much more dimensional as a character, not to mention that he loses the overly goofy laugh he had at first. See "Porky's Hare Hunt," directed by Cal Dalton and Ben "Bugs" Hardaway for the earliest appearance of a rabbit like character, the origins of Bugs.

The rabbit made his second appearance in 1939. in "Prest-O Change-O," directed by Chuck Jones. That same year, he also appeared in "Hare-um Scare-Um," directed again by Dalton and Hardaway, with a rather crass version of Elmer Fudd (although, Bugs is still amazing, with his government refusal sticker and his brief musical stunt). In the latter, the bunny has already turned grey, although it is a great leap still between this rabbit and the wabbit featured in Chuck Jones' short.

Bugs officially gets his title in Jones' "Elmer's Pet Rabbit" released in 1941. Watch him play dead yet again, here!

ENJOY!!

The Rabbit of Seville-Amelia D.

After seeing "What's Opera, Doc?" last week, I thought of another opera-esque cartoon involving Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, "The Rabbit of Seville". This was based off of the overture to Rossini's "The Barber of Seville".
I love many different parts of this cartoon, but the two that stick with me the most are when Bugs is giving Elmer a haircut, and he makes fruit salad on top of his head. The other one is when Bugs "proposes" to Elmer, and the two get married (with Elmer in drag, surprisingly) and then Elmer gets dumped into a wedding cake. It's silly, ridiculous, and everything you'd expect out of a Bugs Bunny animation.

The Strange dreams of Harry Smith - Yael Silverman

When I was growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey I met a boy named Harry Smith. He was in my chorus class, and cried often because he was quite a terrible singer. He cried about almost everything actually. He would bawl if there was too much peanut butter in his sandwich, or if there was not enough of it. What would especially set him off is if people teased him and called him cry baby, then you would really see the water works.

Let's just say the animator Harry Smith redefined my impression of Harry Smiths everywhere.

Harry Everett Smith was born in late may , 1923. He was nothing short of a renaissance man, dabbling in anthropology, country music, mysticism, film making, and of course, animating. We witnessed a cutout process, but this we certainly not his exclusive media ( though it was my favorite!) Harry's animations often branched off into far more abstract concepts, where no image or place is recognizable at all. His early abstractions were simply encompassing the sensations of texture, color, and movement.

Harry Smith and Norman Mclaren were honestly the first animators to open my eyes to the power of abstraction. Like the average dimwit I found abstraction to be pointless and boring. Once I began to actually create animation and study it; I realized just how intense and important process was. My overly polished character drawings came out looking stiff and awkward, and honestly, sometimes animation is just a lot more fluid when you are following the smooth sweep of an abstract green arch than a character who's mouth doesn't sync with sound for the life of them. Character animation has to CONVINCE the audience that the walking, talking, and anatomy is "correct." The charm of abstraction is the artistic process, visual stimuli, and meaning that each individual can take away from witnessing such work. Harry Smith sometimes provides us with a little more than other surrealists and abstract animators; he does seem to enjoy using people and familiar objects. The distinct differentiation is that the people are not particular CHARACTERS playing a part in a NARRATIVE, they are more in line with other representational objects, carrying out whatever strange task that we could not imagine being assigned to them. This puts them in a position we may find humorous, confusing, but over all entertaining and thought provoking. Thank you Harry, for showing me that abstract animation is a vast and beautiful field that flirts with the eye and leaves room for my imagination to wander.

Back to facts, Harry smith seemed to have a fondness for labeling his works by number. He compiled about 20 animations over the course of 30 years. Only a few were collage , many were more focused on brush stroke and color. It is suggested that his work was affected by his bohemian lifestyle and recreational drug use. Though many may be opposed to this type of lifestyle, it was a very current reflection of artistic society in the era in which he was working. This mindset stemmed from a community of experimentalists, which he seemed very much a part of.

Now for the show!

Open your imagination and let some Harry soak in!

Len Lye (Brought to you by Parcel Post)

I was going to write about Norman McLaren but it seems a lot of people already have, so I looked into Len Lye's work more thoroughly. The piece that caught my attention the most was a scratch film called Free Radicals. Simple lines on the film dance to tribal music from the Bagirmi tribe of Africa, and give the illusion of moving in 3D space. His inventive way of showing rotations of flat lines is so convincing, I went to wikipedia to make sure that this was indeed scratch on film. The movement to the music fits perfectly and showcases his true talent of illustrating music and creating art that dances to a rhythm.

Free Radicals

Another work I enjoyed was Rainbow Dance, where he uses the Gasparcolor process. Rainbow Dance, Lye's second film (viewed publicly) is a colorful display of a sillouette man dancing with an umbrella in the rain, with an ever changing background. Towards the end of the film when the music finishes, a narrator advertises the Post Office Savings Bank, as well as an incomprehensible slogan for it. The same kind of ending is seen in his other work, A Colour Box, with Cheaper Parcel Post. Since Lye was funded by these companies, they had to be included somewhere. In A Colour Box the insertion of Cheaper Parcel Post is seemingly unnoticeable since it moves with the music and doesnt break from the overall feel of the piece, which to me makes him all the more talented. Even in films today the advertisers are all to obvious to the audience with no subtlety and often remove the audience from the film

A Colour Box

Rainbow Dance

Enjoy.

by Ryan

Brakhage.

While Norman McLaren's work was utterly tasteful, I feel that Brakhage displayed an elegance rarely seen. One might say McLaren is to Mozart as Brakhage is to Beethoven. I want to know: is this why McLaren found such embrace in Canada, and Brakhage found such solitude in the States?

His work may be criticized as scientific, but his transcendence of inherent distinctions between art and science is exciting, even today. And what continues to be exciting is the anti-materialism of his work...

I was very centered on the American abstract expressionist movement. I was always interested in ineffable shapes that, if you were going to name them, would be biological rather than mathematical: shapes related to nerves, to cells, to the honeycomb of the bones, to the synapse system in the brain. Whether they were conscious of it or not, the abstract expressionists were always painting closed-eye vision, and I wanted to include that in film, since my impulse always was to include everything that you might see within the possibilities of filmmaking: closed-eye vision, daydreams, nightdreams, and so on.

And while anti-materialism is an aspect of all abstract work, it is interesting to consider the commodification of abstract expressionist paintings in contrast to Brakhage's struggle to find an audience.

Brakhage's work started out as (gorgeous) documentation - he abhorred the term abstract; but it applies to his films. I guess I say that because abstraction requires commitment of its audience, which is certainly true of his work. His compositions came to be based on light acting as a musical score in itself. His images immediately call to mind the sound of Cecil Taylor.

I feel Brakhage's distance from symbolism is what continues to make his films brilliant. And though this strays from the realm of animation, how could I discuss Brakhage without touching on Window Water Baby Moving? On further tangent, Brakhage and Bill Viola make an interesting comparison.

Only a ghost film could possibly break through thought-bonds of language and exist as, say, movement haunt, tone-texture haunt, ineffable-haunt. The sense of such a film might naturally exist within the spectator, very like the kind of passing image which prompts dreams that cannot be verbalized to one's breakfast companion or psychoanalyst. Such a film might eventually prompt whole new ways of recollection that are essentially free from language?indeed might prompt whole new definitions of what "language" might eventually come to be...an un-nouned, non-dichotomous series of light-glyphs available for arrangements of cathectic exchanges which directly reflect each person's synapsing inner nervous system.

Fred Camper said, "A narrative film creates an arc of expectation that sets up conflicts and tensions the viewer expects to have resolved — or at least, lead to some form of conclusion. Brakhage's films are organized according to a precisely opposite principle. There is no overarching or predictable form; his emphasis is on each instant of perception. One way he achieves this emphasis is by organizing his films around unpredictable changes in composition, subject-matter, and rhythm: each small pattern that a film sets up is violated just at the moment when you think you have finally apprehended it. The process of viewing a Brakhage film becomes part of the film's subject; in answer to the passivity encouraged by a mainstream commercial narrative movie, Brakhage requests active participation. Relaxing one's perceptions when the lights dim, as many movie viewers are accustomed to doing, won't work here: one must learn to see faster, more precisely, and more deeply."

Brakhage enabled this to exist.

A few of his films, which total at least four hundred (though the quality is... that of youtube, there is something to be gained from observing the timing and spacing of color and gesture):

Glaze of Cathexis (1990)

Dante's Quartet (1987)

Cat's Cradle (1959)

post by eli

Mary Ellen Bute & Seeing Sound

Kool Kat Mary Ellen!

Being the only female animator on the list of people we could pick to write about, I thought Mary Ellen Bute would be a really great and fascinating person to look into. Born in 1906, Bute was a pioneer of "visual music" and abstract animation, making a series of films which she referred to as "Seeing Sound." Earlier on, she studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, where she realized that although she enjoyed painting, it was too restricting for the kind of art she wanted to make. She later started to embrace the potential of light, which compelled her to travel to Europe and assist the color-organ inventor Thomas Wilfred. This led her to study the electronic transformation of acoustic into optical signals with Leon Theremin in 1931, along with the mathematical concepts of composition with Joseph Schillinger. She then realized that film was the right medium for her, which led her to create "Rhythm in Light," which was screened at the Radio City Music Hall and is believed to have most likely been the first abstract film to have been shown publicly. Unfortunately, "Rhythm in Light" has not been uploaded onto the internet for me to post here.

Mary Ellen Bute embraced classical music in particular by juxtaposing famous compositions with entrancing "lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, [and] deepening colors and tones," creating intense and wonderful visual experiences that were synchronized to feel as though you could see the music (centerforvisualmusic.org).

An interesting piece I found on her work was this short documentary about her, which notably describes her films as "unjustly ignored." Along with talking about her work and her life, it additionally shows clips of her films, including live action work with a young Christopher Walken, ha.

The thing this documentary lacks, though, is a discussion on how Bute approached and created her work. She first refined her black and white film technique in which she would sometimes take drawn images with filmed pictures and multiply them to distort their appearance and enhance the light and shadow. Later, with her husband Ted Nemeth, she started creating her visual music films to synchronize musical compositions with animated imagery. She used early color film systems and quickly began utilizing hand drawn animation and superimposition. Bute, along with Norman McLaren and Hy Hirsh Bute were some of the first filmmakers to truly explore electronic imagery, as early as the beginning of the 1950s. By using oscilloscope patterns, she felt as though she had become the closest to visually representing music onto film.

Collaboration with Norman McLaren:

Later film, "Finnegan's Wake," which combined live action with animated techniques. It won the "best debut" award at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival:

--Phylicia

Larry Jordan: Animator/Human

I was completely taken aback by the beauty of Duo Concertantes by Larry Jordan. According to scientific studies performed in Switzerland by "top men," the film was animated entirely with cut-outs of steel engravings, a mind blogging achievement, considering the fluidity and intricacy of movement throughout the film's length. And, holy shit, did it look good on 16mm.

Given the film's placement in history, I found the subject matter to be surprising. Made in an era defined by abstract expressionism, political activism, the experimentation of French New Wave cinema, and drawing influences from surrealist photomontage and the playful language of Dada, who would have thought that an experimental animation such as Duo Concertantes would focus on more innocent subjects, like spiritual rebirth, instead of trying to instill in its viewers the tenets of some ridiculous Grand Marxist Narrative? Lots and lots of words in that sentence. But it is this attraction to innocence and non-theistic sacral narratives that makes Larry Jordan such an interesting filmmaker and separates his work from the heavy handed manifestos of his peers. And thank GOD he didn't turn into one of those drug dropping "I just want to make things that look cool and sound kinda funny" self-proclaimed synaesthete hippies that monopolized experimental film making in the 60's.

On a slightly related note, Len Lye did not produce a single film in the 60's. What.

Moving forward, and transforming rapidly into biography mode with incredible precision, Larry Jordan was born in the year of our Lord, 1933, made his first film in 1952, has been living and working in the Bay Area of San Francisco since 1955 and is, surprisingly, still not dead. He has made both live-action and animated films, and was good friends with Stan Brakhage, whose shadow is dark and all-encompassing.

To my knowledge, these are the film's of Jordan's in which Brakhage has appeared:

Trumpit, 1955

The One Romantic Adventure of Edward, 1956

To my knowledge, these are the films whose founding ideas Jordan ripped off of Brakhage:

Hymn In Praise Of The Sun, 1960, in which Jordan "celebrates" his daughter's birth.

Larry Jordan, throughout his career, has produced 40 short animated and live-action films, as well as 3 feature length films. He received a Guggenheim Award in 1970, has been invited to show his work at the Cannes Film Festival, and is currently the chairman of the film department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Jordan's masterwork is considered, by many, to be Sophie's Place (1986). The film was produced over five years, and utilizes Jordan's characteristic style of cut-out animation. All of the cut-outs were hand-painted by Jordan. The film was animated straight ahead, beneath the camera, and was done without any planning, whatsoever.

Oh, and apparently I lied about the whole "avoidance of Marxist Narrative" thing. Supposedly, Sophie's Place makes satire of the Academy with it's use of Classical imagery. This seems odd, as Larry Jordan is not French, and nobody cares about the Academy anymore. Although, I'm sure that somewhere, in a mass grave beneath une Grande Avenue, Courbet has finally stopped spinning.

Larry Jordan shares his name with Michael Jordan's brother and some dude that directs concert videos, making him very hard to find on both Wikipedia and IMDB.

Here's a very special list of his films:

http://www.canyoncinema.com/J/Jordan.html

Love,

matt

Len Lye- Most Unboring Person Ever- Amanda Bonaiuto

Len Lye(1901-1980) was a New Zealand born artist dedicated to motion.

Len Lye found a way to answer the question of creating a 1:1 relationship using visuals and motion. He Pioneered many methods of direct filmmaking, or camera-less animation by painting and carving directly onto film. This discovery or invention has been inspirational for many artists, namely Norman Mclaren. People often confused the works of Mclaren and Lye because of their similar techniques, however they were good friends and always spoke generously about each others work.

Len Lye was all about creating "new forms" of art and avoiding falling into the category of traditional art making. Lye seemed to possess a sense of movement far beyond most artists, which allowed him to "compose motion" and ultimately come to a cross roads between traditional art making and experimental art making. Lye's need for alternate forms of creating is what lead to his inventing camera-less animation and using film to work on directly, as if it were a pen and paper.

We see this technique used in "A Colour Box"(1935)---

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T33tS9FeS3U&feature=related

Animation today can be examined as a medium used for experimentation and could even be considered radical. Animation is the inventors medium and this type of thinking is reflected in Len Lye's work. Len Lye believed "There has never been a great film unless it was created in the spirit of the experimental film-maker. All great films contribute something original in manner or treatment". Discovering that films could be made by painting or scratching into film was a big deal because of creative solutions but also because it meant less money to be spent and no need to purchase a film camera.

Free Radicals(1958)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGyVYDseGc4&feature=PlayList&p=0049EEC57D94F031&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=20

Len Lye wasn't interested in representing actual objects in his films, but rather representing motion through "pure figures", meaning shapes, lines, and color which possess the rhythm of the film. Lye was fascinated with waves, forms, and color from a young age; he simply had an eye for motion.

-amanda

John Whitney

Whitney's interest in spirituality through meditation and music is clear in his 1975 vibrant and hypnotizing animation, "Arabesque". His use of iconography, colors, music, rhythm and repetition work together to create a powerful and experimental animation piece.
I was fascinated by the complexity of the computer graphics that Whitney was experimenting with. They were considered to be on the cutting edge at the time the animation was produced and Whitney is often referred to as the "father of computer graphics". In "Arabesque", Whitney used digital processes as opposed to his previous work created by an analogue computer that he himself developed. (The analogue computer process sounds incredible! He combined machinery that originally used to be an antiaircraft gun director into a 12 foot, brilliant monstrosity.) He created "Arabesque" with financial support from the NEA and also with full endorsement of the computer giant, IBM.
I was also struck by the iconography he uses to create a mandala-like visual experience. As the title suggests, he uses repetitive geometrical elements that form fanciful yet relatively simple patterns. Arabesques are an frequently used motifs in Islamic art and convey spirituality. The whole can be broken down into smaller geometric forms, such as squares and circles or plant forms that are all deeply entrenched in symbolism: unity, equality, nature, etc.
Not only was Whitney pushing the limits in terms of the visual language that he used, but maybe more importantly, he legitimized the computer as a medium for art. Besides using computer graphics, Whitney also weaved the enthralling music composed by the Iranian-American Santur master and composer, Manoochehr Sadeghi together with the visuals, creating a mesmerizing and powerful whole.
John Whitney was a pioneering experimental animator, who really helped to establish computer graphics as a legitimate art form and who successfully combined cutting edge technology, science, music and spirituality in his work.

Posted by Eszter

Harry Smith and William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs has been a major inspiration for me for a long time, and I've read his works extensively, as well as books about him. Much like Burroughs, Harry Smith was a truly innovative artist whose talent and vision transcended the era of the 50's and 60's. In many senses, Burroughs' "cut-up" style of writing seems almost seamlessly matched to Smith's early abstract animations.

Honestly, I only just recently realized that Harry Smith the experimental filmmaker/animator is also the same Harry Smith who frequently shows up with people like Burroughs and Paul Bowles and Allen Ginsberg in countless drug-and-booze influenced stories from the Beat Era. To make it even more suspicious, he's also the same Harry Smith who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music in the early '50's, which went on to inspire a new era of folk musicians, including Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. At various points and places in his life he was also known as a painter and a sort-of new age philosopher.

(Okay, wait a minute ... Doesn't it sound like one person couldn't really have done all this stuff in one life? Plus, isn't it kinda suspicious that his name is so ordinary that it doesn't even sound like a name? Harry Smith? That's like naming your dog "Fido", or your cat "Whiskers". "Harry Smith" might be an animator, but he might just as well be a group or a collective of "Harry Smiths". I think somebody should do a really thorough investigation into this.)

Anyway, "Harry Smith's" early abstract animations are still highly influential. Performers like Deerhoof and Philip Glass have used his films in their shows.

And like Burroughs, his intelligence and style were far ahead of his time; this sucked for him 'cuz he wound up being wicked poor and fucked-up for a while, but it's awesome for the later generations of artists that discovered his work and were profoundly inspired by it.

Also: despite his wide and varied body of work, Smith had a bizarrely self-destructive side. He was known, at times, to purposely destroy his own paintings and films. On top of that, he often continued to edit his films long after they had been "finished". Ultimately, this made compiling his films really difficult for archivists and fans.

Here is one of his early abstract animations:

Ummm ... I just thought of something as I was watching that. It's got nothing to do with Harry Smith, but it does have a lot to do with squares and shapes and stuff. It's a film by Co Hodemann called "Tchou-Tchou". It's great and fun and also scary:

http://www3.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/filmmakers/filmmaker/film.php?film=&_onfplr_sel=plr&id=7478&idfilm=11138

Also, for a really deeply incisive first-hand account of what Harry Smith was like as a person, here's an interview with Allen Ginsberg about him:

www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=paola-igliori-interview-on-harry-smith

s.st.f.d.

Mothlight-Bryan DiBlasi

Although I enjoy much cameraless animation, I can never really get into Stan Brakhages “Mothlight” (1963). There is no denying that an ungodly amount of time, focus, care, and precision went into this film. There is no denying that the film you see running right before your very eyes is in fact quite beautiful and outlandishly creative. For me, I can never get into the rhythm of the film. It moves too fast while lacking the rhythm. I have seen the film many times now (both outside my film class and several times in it) and I always reach the same conclusion. When watching the film at home on the computer, I constantly second guess my conclusion. This is because when it is paused it is easier to admire. While watching the film on my computer this time, my Internet connection started to go in and out. This made the film unintentionally pause and unpause on its own, creating its own unique rhythm. Then, I started to intentionally pause and unpause the computer to make my own rhythm, which I thought actually enhanced the film (rhythm wise). But when I would let the film play at its intended speed again, I felt it lacked something (rhythm wise). I believe other Stan Brakhage camraless animation films (e.g. “Water for Maya”, ”Glaze of Cathexis”,etc…) demonstrate his mastery in the camraless animation field, but in “Mothlight” he missed the boat with rhythm. I recently watched some (on recommendation from my film instructor) of David Gattens “What the water Said”. In this film, David Gatten “placed unexposed rolls of film in crab traps in the Atlantic Ocean off the South Carolina coast. The resulting sounds and images were produced by the physical and chemical interactions between the film's emulsion and the surrounding salt water, sand, rocks, crabs, fish and underwater creatures.” I believe that that this is a film, which is a prime example of what camraless animation can achieve both rhythmically and also in the entire realm of visual music. “Mothlight” is close, but I still feel lacks rhythmically.