Lillian Schwartz: A Beautiful Virus Inside The Machine

Lillian Schwartz:

A Beautiful Virus Inside The Machine.

(Computer animation 1970-1980)

Curated by Gregory Kurcewicz and Lumen

Lumen presents a touring film and video programme of pioneering work by Lillian Schwartz, resident artist and consultant at Bell Laboratories New Jersey from 1969—2002.

During the 70s and 80s, Lillian employed a catalogue of newly developed techniques for use in animation. Her formal explorations in abstract animation involved the marriage of film, computers and music in collaboration with such luminaries as F.R.Moore, Jean – Claude Risset, Max Mathews and Kenneth Knowlton .

Schwartz’s films have been shown and won awards at the Venice Biennale, Zagreb, Cannes, The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and nominated and received Emmy nominations and awards. Her work has been exhibited at, and is owned by, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Centre Beauborg (Paris), Stedlijk Museum of Art (Amsterdam), and the Grand Palais Museum (Paris).

The 55 minute programme features 12 animations restored to video.

During the 70’s and 80’s Lillian Schwartz developed a catalogue of techniques for the use of the computer in film and animation. Her formal explorations in abstract animation involved the marriage of film, computers and music in collaboration with such luminaries as F.R.Moore, Max Mathews, Jean Claude Risset, Kenneth Knowlton, and John Chambers.

Alongside other artists working with digital computers at this time: to name a few: Charles Csuri, Ben Laposky, Manfred Mohr, Robert Mallary, Frieder Nake, George Nees, Duane Palyka, Lloyn Sumner, Stan Vanderbeek, James and John Whitney; Lillian Schwartz’s work in computer animation in the 1970’s gives us an opportunity to view the developments of technology at Bell Labs along with her particular, charming and colourful vision.

Bell laboratories

Bell Labs computer punch card

Bell laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey in the 1960’s was a very exciting place to work. Bell is known as the birthplace of the transistor, the laser, and Unix, but it was also rich in multimedia art and electronic music. Formed in 1925, and named after the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, the laboratories had reached a praxis of artistic development in the late sixties. At this point in time, artists of all kinds especially from the highly fertile nearby New York with its volatile and multimedia - expanded arts scene, were introduced to Bell Labs, sometimes under the cover of darkness or through the back door. Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ became a leading research contributor in computer graphics, computer animation and electronic music from its beginnings in the early 1960s.

Initially, researchers were interested in what the computer could be made to do, but the results of the visual work produced by the computer during this period established people like Michael Noll Ken Knowlton ,Manfred Schroeder, Leon Harmon and Bela Julesz, whose random-dot stereograms used in the study of binocular perception showed that 3-D visual perception does not depend on the recognition of meaningful objects.
Edward Zajac produced one of the first computer generated films at Bell Labs in 1961, which demonstrated visually how a satellite could be stabilized to always have a side facing the earth as it orbited. This film was titled “A two gyro gravity gradient altitude control system”. Ruth Weiss created in 1964 (published in 1966) some of the first algorithms for converting equations of surfaces to orthographic views on an output device.

The artistic/scientific/educational image making efforts at Bell Labs were some of the first to show that electronic digital processing (using the IBM 7094 computer) could be coupled with electronic film recording (using the Stromberg-Carlson 4020 microfilm recorder) to make exciting, high resolution images. With the dozen or so films made between 1963 and 1967, and the many more films after that, they showed that computer animation was a viable activity. Zajac's work, Sinden's films (e.g., Force, Mass and Motion) and studies by Noll in the area of stereo pairs (e.g., the four-dimensional
hypercube) were some of the earliest contributions to what is now known as scientific visualization.

"We had a freedom that few places had. Unlike at universities, where everyone seems to be competing with each other for scarce resources, we could cooperate. It made it very pleasant place to work as well as richly productive."

"Everything we did was written up, published, and given away for free to society,"

The Laboratories worked at the forefront of research: the research and development resource of the massive AT&T corporation in the USA. They were a popular destination for engineering and science graduates, being seen as seedbeds of innovation and creativity. Funded by AT&T, the laboratories were charged with producing new technology that the corporation could turn into commercial products.

Bell Laboratories employees included several Nobel prize winners and many other eminent scientists, who have been responsible for developing and inventing some of the major innovations of telecommunication. These include the transatlantic telephone service, stereo recording, synthetic speech, transistors, direct distance dialling, communication satellites, touch tone phones, cellular phones, Unix and C programming languages.

In 1996 the laboratories were renamed Lucent Bell Labs.

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Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1971) 4 minutes 8 seconds

Music by Gershon Kingsley

Ken Knowlton, who wrote the animation program BEFLIX (Bell flicks) in 1964, recognised that programmers were:

“The question of how this dichotomy could be used to push the computer into realms beneficial to each side could not be explored because of economic constraints. During the 1960’s, programming still took up 50 percent of the time for each project. Therefore, what programmers did had to have a potential corporate benefit to it. My first attempt at using the computer for animation resulted in the film Pixillation, which explored the dichotomy without resolving it.”

- Lillian Schwartz

Mathoms

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1970) 2 minutes 18 seconds

Music: F. Richard Moore

A playful concoction of computer produced images, a few hand-animated scenes and shots of lab equipment. Made largely from leftovers from scientific research.

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1971) 2 minutes 35 seconds

A study in motion based on Muybridge's photographs of man running. "Figures of computer stylized athletes are seen in brilliant hues chasing each other across the screen. Images are then reversed and run across the screen in the other direction”

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1971) 3 minutes 2 seconds

Music: Emmanuel Ghent

Of the preview of UFOs at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Schwartz noted that “the reactions were surprising. The film caused headaches and hallucinations and, in one instance, uncrossed a case of chronically crossed eyes. I had achieved a major breakthrough in colour saturation by seducing the eyes to continue watching what they would otherwise avoid.”

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1972) 4 minutes 26 seconds

Music by F Richard Moore

“my goal with Enigma was to create an illusion of colour in a black-and-white film, and I drew upon experiments Edwin H. Land had been performing at Polaroid. The timing in this film involved the speed of the dance among the rectangles. If the lines moved and intersected enough, the observer would start to perceive saturated colours between the lines.” - Lillian Schwartz.

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1972) 5 minutes 26 seconds

With its synchronised tribal rhythms and flickering visual white noise, Googolplex is a hypnotic film that is effective for its minimalism. Extended editing techniques based on Land's experiments affect the viewer's sensory perceptions.

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1972) 4 minutes 21 seconds

Music by F. Richard Moore

A film that sets the viewer off traveling transversely through slices of the body, with images derived from early MRI scans made in the radiation treatment of human cancer. A body is abstracted through the process into some times recognisable, sometimes mandala and star-like shapes - GK

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1974) 6 minutes 51 seconds

Music: Jean–Claude Risset

“the changing dots, ectoplasmic shapes and electronic music of L. Schwartz's Mutations which has been shot with the aid of computers and lasers, makes for an eye-catching view of the potentials of the new techniques." - A. H. Weiler, The New York Times

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1973) 4 minutes 6 seconds

A slow, elegantly flowing film with a liquid, falsetto soundtrack by Max Mathews, who explained that “the digital computer was controlled by a performer manipulating a variety of control devices including a conventional music keyboard and a three dimensional joystick…the soundtrack was generated in one evening in real-time while watching the film.”

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1974) 8 minutes 28 seconds

Music: Salieri’s Symphony in D Major

Metamorphosis is a complex study of evolving lines, planes, and circles, all moving at different speeds, and resulting in subtle color changes. One channel of a 3 screen work commisioned for a computer conference in 1974.

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1975) 3 minutes 51 seconds

Music: F. Richard Moore

Beginning with footage of sea birds in flight, the film image is then optically scanned and transformed by the computer. The geometric overlay on live random motion has the effect of creating new depth, a third dimension. Our perception of the birds' forms and movements is heightened by the abstract pattern outlining them.

Dir. Lillian Schwartz (USA, 1978) 5 minutes 30 seconds

Music: Jean–Claude Risset

This film is strongly rooted in its underlying mathematical structure which forms the basis for the images.The music by Jean-Claude Risset is integral to the creation of this concert of space and time.

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Gregory Kurcewicz on

Lillian Schwartz

I first became aware of the work of Lillian Schwartz after reading an article by Malcolm Le Grice from 1971 reviewing developments of moving image work produced with computers.

On mentioning the project to a colleague they replied to the idea with interest, but said something to the effect of that the graphics that were done then could be done now on a mobile phone In addition, it might come back, “It might be of interest in the same way that Norman Architecture was interesting from a historical point of view”.I thought that this was a very simplistic view of what were in my mind very rich, inspired films. From an historical point of view, Lillian Schwartz was demonstrating some of the frontiers of computer aided filmmaking at the time, using very new technology and methods created “down the hall that morning” in the heady climate of Bell Labs; but there is also a very optimistic and artistic element to these works; you can witness techniques evolving through the pieces, in the lineage of modernist experimentation in the moving image; all this in combination with electronic music made at Bell labs at the time.

From a computing historian’s point of view, these films are very significant documents of development; but also, from a “lay” viewer’s point of view they hold many surprises and pleasures: a heady combination of elegantly choreographed line and form, saturated colour, and at times highly emotive combinations of sound and image.

Kenneth Knowlton

Most of the films that you will see in this programme were made in conjunction with the programmer Kenneth Knowlton. Amongst other programming feats Ken Knowlton along with Leon Harmon experimented with human pattern perception and art by perfecting a technique that scanned, fragmented and reconstructed a picture using patterns of dots (such as symbols or printer characters.) Ken Knowlton developed the Beflix (Bell Flicks) animation system in 1963, which was used to produce films by artists such Stan VanDerBeek and others. The films you will see in this programme were created with EXPLOR - (explicitly provided 2D Patterns) a language developed between 1963 and 1970.

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Max Mathews on the soundtrack to Papillons:

“The sound track for Papillons was made as a real-time improvisation using the Groove program

developed by F.R. Moore and myself in the late 1960's. Groove was one of the first electronic

music synthesis programs which could perform live music in real-time. Because the digital computers of that era were not fast enough to synthesize music in real-time, Groove was a hybrid device with sounds produced by a voltage-controlled analogue synthesizer controlled by voltage signals from d-to-a converters attached to a digital computer. The digital computer was controlled by a performer manipulating a variety of control devices including a conventional music keyboard and a three dimensional "joy stick" which could be moved in three independent dimensions x, y, and z. The "joy stick" was developed by A.M.Noll.

The sound track was generated in one evening in real-time while watching the film. I patched the

analogue synthesizer to produce notes with a "graceful" timbre which I thought appropriate to

butterflies. The "joy-stick" was the principal control device. I wrote a computer program which assigned control of tempo to the x dimension, control of pitch to the y dimension, and control of loudness to the z dimension. While watching the film and listening to the music, I made trajectories in xyz space with my right hand on the joy stick. After several practice repetitions of the film, I was able to produce and record the film's sound track. Since the sound track was made in real-time while watching the film, it was exactly synchronized with the film.”

CCRMA-Stanford University

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Jean–Claude Risset on the music for Mutations and Newtonian II :

For both Mutations and Newtonian II, I composed the music before Lillian Schwartz realized the movies.

Mutations was commissioned by GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Paris) and realized in 1969, at Bell Laboratories : it was one of the first substantial music works entirely synthesized by computer, using Max Mathews' program MusicV.

In the beginning of the work, one can hear instrumental simulacra. But synthetic sounds can be contrived as acoustic sounds could not be. Thus I produced bell-like and gong-like tones for which I literally "composed" the sound itself, prescribing a given harmony within the tone.

I also realised "impossible" sounds : tones that appear to glide up indefinitely, or that go up in pitch but end lower than they started, going beyond the phenomenon of circularity demonstrated by Roger Shepard.

I later extended this acoustic paradox or illusion to rhythm : in my piece Trois moments newtoniens, part of which was used by Lillian Schwartz for Newtonian, one can hear beats that appear to slow down but that end up much faster. Trois moments newtoniens was scored for 7 instruments and computer-synthesized tape, realized at IRCAM in 1977 : it was commissioned to illustrate musically the scientific work of Isaac Newton.

The title Mutations (1969) refers to the form of the piece, which mutates from discontinuous pitch scales to continuous pitch glides : the initially discontinuous scales are gradually eroded into a gliding pitch continuum. The title also alludes to the mutation stops of the organ, where a tone is made of distinct pipes tuned to harmonics and sounding together : in Mutations, the harmonics are shifted in time, similarly to components of white light dispersed by a prism. Harmonics get closer in pitch as their rank increases : this is a path from discontinuous to continuous.

Lillian Schwartz initially realized a movie that was entirely synthesized by computer. This version was shown with great success in Philadelphia in 1970, but was accidentally destroyed when Lillian was performing changes. She decided then to start again and realize a completely different movie with a shortened version of the music. She called for computer-synthesized images - including the well-known "game of life" - but she also resorted to different visual material : speeded-up crystal growth filmed in polarized light, and processed shooting of laser beams diffracted through transparent plastic volumes (the heat from the laser distorts the plastic, causing the beams to move).

Lillian Schwartz implemented abstract animated structures often related to the musical structures. For instance coloured dots explode into many more moving dots which eventually come back together, similarly to the musical chords expanding into many notes later converging again into the chords. The movie stops at the end of the paradoxical glides : the phenomenon of an endlessly ascending tone is illustrated in three ways - a crystal that could grow indefinitely to the right, while the visual scene moves to the right; fast rotating red lines synthesized by computer; and circular motions of laser beams. I enjoyed these free associations very much, as I deeply admire the uniquely imaginative, colourful and lively creations of Lillian Schwartz.

The musical work Mutations was distinguished by Dartmouth International Electronic Music Competition 1970; it figures on the recent compilation "Early Gurus of Electronic Music (CD Ohm/Ellipsis Art). The movie Mutations has been shown on many occasions; it received the Golden Eagle Award, and it had been selected for the Festival de Cannes 1974.

- Jean Claude Risset September 2003

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Lumen is a Leeds-based media arts organisation which exists to advocate a greater knowledge, understanding and appreciation of communication technology and its impact upon artistic practice and discourse.

Gregory Kurcewicz is an artist who works in painting and film and also works as an independent curator. He has organised and collaborated in the presentation of artist’s film programmes in the UK and Europe, and most recently was the co–curator of Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!, a major - internationally touring - exhibition of film highlighting the work of the London Filmmakers’ Co–operative 1966–76.

Pixillation

Olympiad

UFOs

Enigma

Googolplex

Apotheosis

Mutations

Papillons

Metamorphosis

Alae

Newtonian II

About Lumen

Gregory Kurcewicz