It was the change that no-one saw coming: the idea that we could take a book, a painting or a song and send it through cables and wires and even thin air to the other end of the world – and it would be identical on the other side. But this idea underpins everything about the Information Age we live in.

How did we make such a mind bending transition into the digital world? And how does it work? It turns out it’s all based on a concept that is surprisingly beautiful in its simplicity. This short video essay explores what that idea is and tells you about the man who figured it all out.

Computers are everywhere and control almost every aspect of our lives. In the next 6 minutes you’ll find out how they really work.

[vimeo 98345492 w=640 h=360]

The Man Who Turned Paper Into Pixels by Delve Deeper.

This post collects the work on synthesis of sound and image in the early days of computer graphics.

Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941)

He was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film. He also worked with sound alone (Wochenende, 1930).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=od0MxuD4xxQ&w=560&h=315]

Walter Ruttmann – Lichtspiel Opus 1,2,3,4 -The first abstract film screened publicly – 27 April 1921

JOHN WHITNEY,Sr
He was one of the earliest pioneers in computer animation, he was the father of Motion Graphics (in fact in the 60s he founded a company named Motion Graphics Inc).
Whitney and his brother (James Whitney)  were interested in the combination of graphics arts and music and they developed devices and techniques for the synthesis of sound and image.
For his creations, Whitney used at first a custom analog computer that was adapted from an M-5 Anti-aircraft, an optical machine from the army, made for calculate and visualize missiles trajectories.

Frames from Whitney’s film MATRIX III (1972)

The following video is an excerpt from the “Computers: Challenging Man’s Supremacy” documentary, where Whitney demonstrates his analog computer.

VERTIGO ( 1958)
He worked together with Saul Bass in the creation of the title sequence for the Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Vertigo”.

MATRIX III (1972)

LARRY CUBA

“Larry Cuba is widely recognised 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.“ (LARRY CUBA web site)

Cuba is also one of the directors of IOTA centre, a research group and community that work in experimental and abstract film.

Larry Cuba working at EVL lab

<iframe src=”http://movieweb.com/v/VInG9ros3jT1qq/embed” width=”400″ height=”225″ frameborder=”0″ />

video you can see a “Making of” documentary made by Cuba where he explains the entire process. Sadly this video has been blocked by Youtube. Some automata-nasty-boot detected a piece of music that is copyrighted (the Star Wars theme maybe) and blocked this fundamental piece of history of Computer Graphics.
I founded it again in another video website, I hope that this one stays visible forever.

In 2009 Cuba was a guest speaker in “Punto y Raya” in Barcelona, and abstract film festival.
There he gave a retrospective of abstract film and visual music. A must see for everyone interested in the relations between image and sound.!

Nam June Paik ( www.paikstudios.com ): Born: July 20, 1932, Seoul, South Korea, Died: January 29, 2006, Miami, Florida, United States Movement: Fluxus

Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with an early usage of the term “electronic super highway” in application to telecommunications. Wikipedia

5 Times Artist Nam June Paik Predicted the Future | Tate

Nam June Paik: Electronic Superhighway

Bill Viola: (born 1951) is a contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media.^[1] His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness. Known for Video art, Electronic art, New media art

GENERATIVE ART

John Whitney, Sr. (April 8, 1917 – September 22, 1995) was an American animator, composer and inventor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation.

Steina and Woody Vasulka ( www.vasulka.org, www.thekitchen.org )

Steina Vasulka (born Steinunn Briem Bjarnadottir in 1940)^[1] and Woody Vasulka (born Bohuslav Vasulka in 1937) are early pioneers of video art, and have been producing work since the early 1960s.^[2] The couple met in the early 1960s and moved to New York City in 1965, where they began showing video art at the Whitney Museum and founded The Kitchen in 1971. Steina and Woody both became Guggenheim fellows: Steina in 1976, and Woody in 1979.^[1]

LIGHT ART

Anthony Mccall ( Images ): Born: April 14, 1946 (age 70), St Paul’s Cray, United Kingdom.

Anthony McCall is a British-born New York based artist known for his ‘solid-light’ installations, a series that he began in 1973 with “Line Describing a Cone,” in which a volumetric form composed of projected light slowly evolves in three-dimensional space.

Dan Flavin ( Images ) : Born April 1, 1933 – Died: November 29, 1996  Periods: Contemporary art, Minimalism

Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.

François Morellet ( www.francois-morellet.com ): Born: April 30, 1926, Cholet, France Died: May 11, 2016, Cholet, France Period: Conceptual art

François Morellet was a French contemporary painter, sculptor, and light artist. His early work prefigured minimal art and conceptual art, and he played a prominent role in the development of geometrical abstract art.

James Turrell ( Images ) : Born: May 6, 1943 (age 73),California, United States Field: Installation art Period: Land art

James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984.

“My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.”

LIGHT, OPTICS & OTHER OBJECTS

Julio Le Parc ( www.julioleparc.org ): Born: September 23, 1928 (age 87), Mendoza, Argentina

Julio Le Parc is an Argentina-born artist who focuses on both modern op art and kinetic art. Le Parc attended the School of Fine Arts in Argentina. A founding member of Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visual (GRAV) and award winning artworks, he is a significant figure in Argentinean modern art.

Olafur Elison 

Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. Wikipedia

Born: February 5, 1967 (age 49), Copenhagen, Denmark, Known for: Installation art, Period: Contemporary art

in 2003, he represented denmark at the 50th venice art biennale with his installation ‘the blind pavilion’. he currently lives and work sin copenhagen and berlin.