Early American Computer Animation # 2 – Review

“…Stan VanDerBeeks Poemfield #2 explored the representation of lines of text from a poem with geometric alignment, transformation and composition. The style of copy is pixellated and there is interplay between the background patterns and the foreground text. While not overly breathtaking seen in todayÂ’s climate of hypermedia and rich graphical environments, for its time it must have caused quite a stir.

VanDerBeek studied art and mixed with the likes of Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. Later he built his Movie-Drome theatre at Stony Point, New York, and produced shows with multiple projectors. Interestingly his shows utilised large number of random image sequences resulting in performances that were never the same.
‘Influenced by Buckminster FullerÂ’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theatre 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.Â’ - Jürgen Claus in Leonardo, Vol. 36…” From Early American Computer Animation # 2 – Review, Dataisnature.