In the 1970s and 80s, a cer­tain vivid, com­plex, and slight­ly fright­en­ing com­put­er-graph­ics aes­thet­ic rose in the zeit­geist. Though it has long passed into the realm of the retro, it remains imprint­ed on our minds, and we owe much of its look and feel to an artist named Lil­lian F. Schwartz. Trained in the art of Japan­ese cal­lig­ra­phy as a way of recov­er­ing from polio and lat­er brought into the high tech­no­log­i­cal fer­ment of late-1960s Bell Labs, Schwartz found her­self well-placed to define what human­i­ty would think of when they thought of the imagery gen­er­at­ed by these promis­ing new machines called com­put­ers.

Schwartz start­ed cre­at­ing a series of abstract films in the ear­ly 1970s, using not just com­put­ers but com­put­ers in com­bi­na­tion with lasers, pho­tographs, oil paints, and the full range of tra­di­tion­al film pho­tog­ra­phy and edit­ing gear.

You can watch 30 of her films on her web site, and at the top of this post you’ll find 1972’s Muta­tions. Schwartz’s site quotes the New York Times’ A.H. Weil­er as describ­ing its “chang­ing dots, ecto­plas­mic shapes and elec­tron­ic music” as “an eye-catch­ing view of the poten­tials of the new tech­niques.”

Video-art fans will know the Paik video-syn­the­siz­er, or at least they’ll know Paik: Nam June Paik, that is, the Kore­an video artist who did plen­ty of artis­tic-tech­no­log­i­cal pio­neer­ing of his own. Both he and Schwartz gave a great deal of thought to — and put a great deal of prac­tice into — push­ing the bound­aries of tech­nolo­gies whose con­ven­tion­al uses the rest of us had­n’t quite learned yet. You can see Schwartz doing exact­ly that in The Artist and the Com­put­er, the 1976 short doc­u­men­tary on her work, orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for AT&T, just above.

You can read more about Schwartz, back at Bell Labs and today, in the arti­cle “Art at the Edge of Tomor­row” by Jer Thorp. “I find it’s still an awe­some expe­ri­ence to use a machine that — one can’t even fath­om the speed,” she says in The Artist and the Com­put­er as we watch her pass­ing rows and rows of hulk­ing main­frames with their racks of obscure periph­er­als and spin­ning reels of tape. “When you speak of nanosec­onds, you can’t even grasp how fast these machines can work.” They work much faster now, of course, and we’ve grown used to it, even jad­ed about it — but Schwartz’s films cap­ture our imag­i­na­tions, in their inven­tive and eerie way, more than ever.

You can watch 30 of Schwartz’s pio­neer­ing films here.

via Mono­skop

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Debussy’s Clair de lune: The Clas­si­cal Music Visu­al­iza­tion with 21 Mil­lion Views

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Click on the arrows to get the full 360 degree expe­ri­ence.

I felt as impressed as every­one else did when I saw my first 360-degree video, the tech­nol­o­gy that allows view­ers to “look” in any direc­tion they wish. But most of the 360-degree videos that became pop­u­lar ear­ly sim­ply demon­strat­ed the con­cept, and as much aston­ish­ment as the expe­ri­ence of the con­cept alone can gen­er­ate, even more excite­ment came from think­ing about the tech­nol­o­gy’s poten­tial. It has­n’t tak­en long for 360-degree videos to look beyond vir­tu­al real­i­ty — indeed, to look all the way to vir­tu­al sur­re­al­i­ty, as envi­sioned by per­haps the best-known sur­re­al­ist of them all, Sal­vador Dalí.

“Dreams of Dalí,” the 36o-degree video above, drops you into the world of Dalí’s 1935 can­vas Archae­o­log­i­cal Rem­i­nis­cence of Millet’s ‘Angelus,’  an homage to an ear­li­er work (Jean-François Millet’s paint­ing, “The Angelus”) which enjoyed enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing Dalí’s youth. This ear­li­er work, notes the Dalí’ Muse­um, was “repro­duced on every­thing from prints and post­cards to every­day objects like teacups and inkwells. The late 19th cen­tu­ry paint­ing depicts a peas­ant cou­ple stand­ing in a field with their heads bowed in prayer. For many it was a sen­ti­men­tal work, but for Dalí’ it was trou­bling, with lay­ers of hid­den mean­ing, which he explored through day­dreams and fan­tasies.”

As the artist him­self put it, “I sur­ren­dered myself to a brief fan­ta­sy dur­ing which I imag­ined sculp­tures of the two fig­ures in Millet’s ‘Angelus’ carved out of the high­est rocks.” His for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion con­vert­ed that mid-19th-cen­tu­ry image of rur­al hard­ship and piety into the moon­lit desert land­scape through which “Dreams of Dalí” flies you. Cre­at­ed for “Dis­ney and Dalí: Archi­tects of the Imag­i­na­tion,” an exhib­it at St. Peters­burg, Flori­da’s Dalí Muse­um on the friend­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion between those two vision­ary 20th-cen­tu­ry world-cre­ators (see Des­ti­no, the short film Dalí and Dis­ney col­lab­o­rat­ed on), the video not only gives the paint­ing a third spa­tial dimen­sion, but a detailed son­ic one fea­tur­ing the god­like voice of Dalí him­self.

If you make use of the arrows that appear in the video’s upper-left cor­ner or click and drag (or, on smart­phones, press and drag with your fin­ger) with­in the frame, you can turn the “cam­era” in any direc­tion. Pay close enough atten­tion, and you’ll spot more than a few touch­es not includ­ed in the orig­i­nal paint­ing that will nonethe­less delight fans of the Dalí sen­si­bil­i­ty, not all of which you can catch on your first flight through. But as much as the expe­ri­ence may feel like a dream — and it counts as one of the few works to real­ly mer­it the term “dream­like” — it won’t van­ish as soon as you emerge from it; you can have at it again and again, see­ing some­thing new and sur­pris­ing each time.

via The Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Des­ti­no: See the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Film, Orig­i­nal Sto­ry­boards & Ink Draw­ings

Sal­vador Dalí Goes to Hol­ly­wood & Cre­ates Wild Dream Sequences for Hitch­cock & Vin­cente Min­nel­li

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Sal­vador Dalí Illus­trates Don Quixote: Two Spaniards with Unique World Views

Sal­vador Dalí’s Haunt­ing 1975 Illus­tra­tions for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juli­et

Sal­vador Dalí Illus­trates Shakespeare’s Mac­beth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

I’ve long won­dered what it would feel like to have synes­the­sia, the neu­ro­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non — this straight from Wikipedia — “in which stim­u­la­tion of one sen­so­ry or cog­ni­tive path­way leads to auto­mat­ic, invol­un­tary expe­ri­ences in a sec­ond sen­so­ry or cog­ni­tive path­way.” A synes­thete, in oth­er words, might “see” cer­tain col­ors when they read cer­tain words, or “hear” cer­tain sounds when they see cer­tain col­ors. Non-synes­thetes such as myself have trou­ble accu­rate­ly imag­in­ing such an expe­ri­ence, but we can get one step clos­er with the work of Greek artist-musi­cian-physi­cist Yian­nis Krani­d­i­o­tis, who, in his “Ichographs” series, turns the col­ors of famous paint­ings into sound.

“Exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ship between col­or and sound fre­quen­cies,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Claire Voon, “Krani­d­i­o­tis has recent­ly com­posed a sound­scape for Raphael’s ‘Madon­na del Pra­to’ (1505), or ‘Madon­na of the Mead­ow.’ His result­ing video work, ‘Ichographs MdelP,’ visu­al­izes the break­ing up of the paint­ing into 10,000 cubic par­ti­cles that cor­re­spond to var­i­ous sounds, hon­ing in on spe­cif­ic parts of the can­vas to explore the dif­fer­ent tones of dif­fer­ent col­ors.” You can view that video at the top of the post, and see even more at Krani­d­i­o­tis’ Vimeo chan­nel.

Voon quotes Krani­d­i­o­tis as explain­ing the basic idea behind the project: “Each col­or of a paint­ing can be an audio fre­quen­cy. Each par­ti­cle, like a pix­el in our com­put­er screen, car­ries a col­or and at the same time an audio fre­quen­cy (sinu­soidal wave).” He chose a Renais­sance paint­ing “to gen­er­ate a high con­trast between the clas­si­cal aes­thet­ics and the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions that occur,” as well as to make use of its “blue and red col­ors that help to cre­ate a com­plex and inter­est­ing audio result.”

The artist has more to say at The Cre­ators Project, explain­ing that “there are areas of sound and col­or (light) that humans can per­ceive with their eyes and ears (hear­ing and vis­i­ble range) and areas where we need spe­cial equip­ment (like infrasound—ultrasound and infrared—ultraviolet ranges). As a physi­cist, I was always fas­ci­nat­ed by these com­mon prop­er­ties and I was inves­ti­gat­ing ways to high­light and jux­ta­pose them.”

You can enjoy more Icho­graph­ic expe­ri­ences in the oth­er two videos embed­ded here, the first an overview of the process as applied to a vari­ety of paint­ings from a vari­ety of eras, and then a piece focused on trans­form­ing into sound the col­ors of Claude Mon­et’s 1894 “Rouen Cathe­dral, West Facade.” While Krani­d­i­o­tis’ process does­n’t draw from these works of visu­al art any­thing you’d call music, per se, the son­ic tex­tures do make for an intrigu­ing­ly incon­gru­ous ambi­ent accom­pa­ni­ment to these well-known can­vas­es. If the Lou­vre offered his “com­po­si­tions” loaded onto those lit­tle audio-tour devices, maybe I’d actu­al­ly use one.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic/The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Course: An Intro­duc­tion to the Art of the Ital­ian Renais­sance

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to #4, Visu­al­ized by the Great Music Ani­ma­tion Machine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.