John Whitney - Arabesque (1975) early computer graphics
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Top Comments
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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?
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The coolness of this work stretches far beyond any screensaver I have ever had.
All Comments (58)
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@jovansystem 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.
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@postingoldtapes I have the DVD and unfortunately, the image quality is not better. Alas.
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Excellent piece of graphical art for that times...it's very fascinating and magical despite of its embrional technique
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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.
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This is the kind of thing that would have had me transfixed when I was a kid. It's as if computer graphics is in my DNA, and it's because of this sort of brilliant work that it made such an impact on me.
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Very cool to see this again. I remember watching John et al film this (or at least, some portion of it, or a conceptual test) on the IBM 370 Model 145 in the computer lab at CalTech. Yes, I was there! It was really amazing to watch history being made. It was drawn in stop-frame style, on a vector display IIRC. Incredible to think how far we have come. The computer you are using to view these comments is more powerful than the multi-million dollar mainframe used to create this video 36 yrs ago.
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John Whitney is an amazing animator, I can't believe one would do this with such primitive digital equipment. The music is nice too, Mr. Whitney has introduced me to such wonderful musicians as well such as Terry Riley.
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thank you
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this is one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen
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I thought 1961's "Catalog" was better, at least esthetically.
any ideas as to who made the music in this video?
DCEmoinabox 2 years ago
I have the musician's name in the text right at the start of the video.
postingoldtapes 2 years ago
I never noticed the name, I'm a bit thick it seems =__= sorry.
DCEmoinabox 2 years ago
No problem.
postingoldtapes 2 years ago