John Whitney - Arabesque (1975) early computer graphics

John Whitney is considered by many to be the "Father of Computer Graphics". He started in the 1940s building clockwork mechanisms with lights to draw directly on film. Later, he bought WW2 surplus analog ballistics computers and eventually started using digital computers. I believe this one was rendered using a vector display.

Incidentally, his son John Whitney, Jr. owned the company that did graphics for "The Last Starfighter".

• Category

  Film & Animation

[postingoldtapes]

Sorry about the quality. I've never seen a DVD of any of Whitney's work. This was from a Japanese LaserDisc called "Visual Pathfinders" copied to VHS years ago. Also, I put this up quite a while ago before YouTube started accepting better quality video posts.

On the other hand, if you have access to a DVD of this, why don't you go to the trouble of digitizing it and posting it instead of just knocking others?

[uuaschbaer]

The coolness of this work stretches far beyond any screensaver I have ever had.

[RatTheHippie]

this is trippy...

[Tocinator]

I saw this one at MoMA in NYC, in good quality! so a copy must exist

[oliverecords]

Same thing on my end.

[Phavonic]

Whitney's videos are powerfully spiritual. It's like Carl Jung and Jacob Boehme proscribed of the mandala and circle.

I can't get anything from new age vibration bollocks, but this is doing something for me.

[postingoldtapes]

Oh man, that is a crying shame. Are any of his pure film works transferred properly, or did they use a low-res source for the whole thing? I've seen that happen, where the expected number of sales doesn't justify doing a proper transfer from the film elements and they just use a 3/4" tape of an old transfer.

[jovansystem]

I have the DVD and unfortunately, the image quality is not better. Alas.

[marcorock93]

Excellent piece of graphical art for that times...it's very fascinating and magical despite of its embrional technique

[AerialTheShamen]

The morphing effects look unusual, like oscilloscope pictures copied together into symmetrical patterns. The way the lines split apart and then rejoin looks sometimes a bit broken compared with 1980th and newer computer graphics demos. But so they also do unexpected things. I never saw this combination of run away oscilloscope curves and kaleidoscope before. (Modern morphing keeps corners connected.) But when all was rendered non-realtime, it was certainly hard to control.