Stan VanDerBeek

A study in analog imaging and the relation of sound to image, Color Fields Left merges moving bands of color with electronic sounds in an increasingly complex pattern.

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In Vanishing Point Left, the "vanishing point" is an analogy for the metaphysics of watching the video screen, which assumes such forms as a mandala, flower or gyre.

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Strobe Ode is an exercise in video feedback and analog imaging, in which a circular image-field is modified and abstracted by strobe flashes.

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Against a black background and a pulsating beat matching white symmetrical geometric flashes around a central orb, white lines are drawn in mirror images vertical to each other. The images created are generally a myriad of faces in silhouette. Those silhouettes however often take on abstract forms in their entirety.

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"The shapes of sound filmed from a computer system that reproduces analog patterns from sounds. This pioneer work in animated computer mandalas is a lyrical, abstract song with analog rhythms."

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Stan VanDerBeek, experimental filmmaker at work with friend and computer expert Wade Shaw, at the sophisticated new (1972) computer at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and discussing the inevitable interaction of computers with artistic creativity. Clips from several VanDerBeek films.

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"A film of video light and color. Dancers move through computer-generated patterns and fields of soft color to the music of Ravel. An experiment in video graphics combining the new technologies of video matting and analog computer patterns. One of the most successful of the Boston Symphoney Experiments, 1972, aired nationally." --S.V.

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"A study in ocular illusions, pattern superimposition producing other patterns and illusions of three dimensionality. A thorough demonstration of the richness and varied qualities of moiré patters by the acknowledged scientist/artist Gary Oster." S.V.

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”Assassination, falling down, animated drawings from the landscape of memory, mankind falling down, faces with faces, a haunting view of man drawn in brilliant animation graphics.” – S.V., Filmmaker’s Cooperative Catalogue № 7.

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COMPUTER ART SERIES is animated computer/graphic films. The series is called POEMFIELD. All of these films explore variations of poems, computer graphics, and in some cases combine live action images and animation collage; all are geometric and fast moving and in color. There are eight films in the computer animated art series. As samples of the art of the future all the films explore variations of abstract geometric forms and words. In effect these works could be compared to the illuminated manuscripts of an earlier age. Now typography and design are created at speeds of 100,000 decisions per second, set in motion a step away from "mental movies." POEMFIELD No. 2 and 5 are all colorized by Brown and Olvey.

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Similes of a slippery TV tube gesticulate break and supply – a long view of multiple images (Mr. Johnson's war, is it Howard Johnson's or President Johnson's war?) – a long curving view, breakfast with aspirin, good grief – or Goodbye. (SUPER-IMPOSITION is a videotape experiment with multiple images, made with film artist-in-residency at Colgate University.) Life and art ... interacting ... it is interesting to note that movies and psychoanalysis are approximately the same age ... there are now more TV sets in America than bathtubs. There are more radios in America than people. Although 75 percent of Japanese households have television sets, statistics show only 35 percent have running water and fewer than ten percent have flush sanitation. Some 40 percent of American children have one or more.

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A hypnotic dance film of colours, dancers, forms, music, all sweeping through the TV tube eye, mixed together into a flow of female bodies and colours, a brilliant study of colour printing from black ad white. Collaboration on the project by Brown/Olvey.

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To create his “Poemfields” (1965-71) series, VanDerBeek worked closely with computer scientist Ken Knowlton and the staff at Bell Labs. Each “Poemfield” was adapted from poems by VanDerBeek, programmed on an IBM 7094 computer in black and white using a custom language known as BEFLIX, and colored after the fact by artists Robert Brown and Frank Olvey.

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"Words pulsate, then bleed into abstraction. Fields of color fragment into pixels or smear into mutating organisms. Swarming text grids explode into chaotic rainbow clouds, blinking dots, stars, and spirals. Snaking orange lines and pointillist textures form strobing mandalas, mosaic embroidery, and Pac Man architecture, tumbling geometries of throbbing color that dissolve into blue, pink, yellow, and green pixel noise." - Leo Goldsmith, writing about VanDerBeek's Poemfield series

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A short by Stan Vanderbeek.

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"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." --AT&T Archives and History Center

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"Calligraphic computer animation of the enigmatic poem 'There is no way to peace- Peace is the way.' Black and white animation is colored by Brown/ Olvey. This film with soundtrack by John Cage is a lyric accidental stylization of christian myth/crosses. The patterns are written by random programs on a computer with help by Ken Knowlton." S.V.

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Optically-printed film and computer graphics synthesis. 16mm, color, silent, 4:40 min.

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First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

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16mm film transferred to video, black and white, sound

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16mm film transferred to video, color, sound

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In this pioneering work of early computer art, geometric groupings of monochrome patterns and words are created with the program BEFLIX, which was developed in the 1960s by Bell Telephone Laboratories programmer Kenneth Knowlton.

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A dance filmed with Elaine Summers, in which the nude figure is placed against nature, in this case a particular and spherical sense of nature as produced by a special lens…(that takes in 195 degrees of sight on film).

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An experimental film

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16mm film transferred to video, black and white, silent

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To create his “Poemfields” (1965-71) series, VanDerBeek worked closely with computer scientist Ken Knowlton and the staff at Bell Labs. Each “Poemfield” was adapted from poems by VanDerBeek, programmed on an IBM 7094 computer in black and white using a custom language known as BEFLIX, and colored after the fact by artists Robert Brown and Frank Olvey. Poemfield No. 2 features a soundtrack by jazz percussionist Paul Motian, known for his collaborations with Bill Evans.

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Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theater where people would lie down and experience movies all around them. Floating multi-images would replace straight one-dimensional film projection. From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and even extraterrestrial intelligence.

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