Spotlight on: John Whitney, father of computer animation [I Heart Tech]

Back in the late 50’s, animator John Whitney was building up a reputation as one of the rising stars in animation. He was very interested in symmetry and patterns in nature, and he exploited these relationships in his animation. Using complicated machinery, he was able to produce beautiful patterns and forms on film. His machines would literally paint with light, and he would painstakingly colorize each frame during the film printing process. As he became more experienced, his artwork became more complicated and mysterious. His first big-name project was a collaboration with film guru Saul Bass on the opening sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic Vertigo.

The swirling, iris-like patterns in this intro sequence were an example of the beautiful symmetry that would characterize his later work. John believed that moving objects on a screen could form re-occurring patterns, and that these patterns were similar to musical harmonies. In order to capture this effect, John had to build the first analog animation computer ever. Using the innards of a WWII-era analog computer which guided anti-aircraft guns, he created a complicated machine which could rotate and swivel a camera around a set of three turntables. These turntables would contain drawings of some of the shapes which would be incorporated in his animations. The motion of the cameras and turntables combined to produce beautiful patterns.

The camera could also be used in slit-scan mode, where only a tiny slit of light would enter the camera, and the film inside the camera would move past the lens at the same speed that the camera was panning. Slit-scan photography causes an interesting time-dilation effect, where moving objects appear to be stretched in one direction or another, depending on their direction of movement and speed. The film “Catalog” is a demo reel which shows the complex patterns and effects which were possible with Whitney’s amazing analog computer and slit-scanning camera:

This demo reel later inspired Douglas Trumble to use slit-scan photography to generate the stargate sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. IBM had also taken notice, and they hired Whitney as an “Artist in Residence”, giving him access to the best hardware that IBM had to offer. Using this hardware, John created the film Permutations. At this point, it’s best to let him explain the film himself:

“In PERMUTATIONS, each point moves at a different speed and moves in a direction independent according to natural laws’ quite as valid as those of Pythagoras, while moving in their circular field. Their action produces a phenomenon more or less equivalent to the musical harmonies. When the points reach certain relationships (harmonic) numerical to other parameters of the equation, they form elementary figures.”

As technology marched on, so did Whitney’s craving for artistic and musical symmetry. Whitney created several short films in the early 70s, but his 1975 film Arabesque is largely regarded as his greatest work. Using a digital computer to control a series of oscilloscopes, Whitney created beautiful, undulating curves and floral designs which seemed to morph together.

John soon moved on to fully digital computers, where he began experimenting with composing music to match his impressive visuals. Unfortunately, like most good artists, he was ahead of his time. Some of his ideas would have been difficult to realize, even around the time of his death in 1995. For example, consider Whitney’s “music box”. In his 1981 book Digital Harmony: On the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art, Whitney described a set of dots rotating around a central axis. Each point would move slightly faster than the previous point, resulting in a spiral form. As the dots moved around, they would gradually align with other dots, forming interesting symmetric forms. In his example, he also assigned a musical note to each dot, and each note fell on a chromatic scale. Fortunately, Jim Bumgardner at krazydad.com has put together several flash versions of Whitney’s idea, which can be found below.

Whitney’s music box finally realized

Update from delsydsoftware:

Jim Bumgardner wrote the following correction to this article:

If you read Whitney’s Digital Harmony, he doesn’t actually describe a
“music box” or a musical application of the animation.  He does
describe the animation technique itself, but doesn’t talk about using
it to make music.  The idea to take Whitney’s animation and make a
musical piece out of it was my own idea.  I suspect that Whitney would
have found my musical interpretation far too literal for his own
tastes.

Jim Bumgardner

Thanks for this information, Jim. It may be a literal interpretation, but it still works very well, in my opinion. Thanks for taking the time to respond to this.