Stan VanDerBeek
Nacimiento : 1927-01-06, New York, New York
Muerte : 1984-09-19
Historia
American experimental filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek began his career in the 1950’s after having studied art and architecture in New York and North Carolina.
His earliest period (1955-1965) is marked by his animated painting and collage films which the artist and critic Daryl Chin regarded as having an “enormous vitality, bounding inventiveness and incendiary wit which was shared by such other collagists as Robert Breer, Bruce Conner, Dick Preston.” Films such as Science Friction (1959, 10’), Breathdeath (1963, 15’), A la Mode (1959, 7’) and Achoo Mr. Kerrooschev (1960, 2’) are from this period.
In the 1960’s, in the context of his expanded cinema research, Vanderbeek started his audacious project of the “Movie Drome” theater, a space that allowed him to create an appropriate environment for his synesthetic works, which included film, performance and dance among other disciplines. The filmmaker spent about 10 years developing this project, which consisted of a huge dome that surrounded the audience and engulfed them in the images projected all around them.
From the mid-1960’s, Vanderbeek ‘s appetite for exploring new technologies increased and tools such as video played a major part in the filmmaker’s work. This can be seen in his computer-animated films from this period such as Symmetricks (1972, 6’) and the Poemfield series of 8 computer generated animations (1966-1971). His work with computers and experiments with holograms reflected his desire to use the most complex technology to get as close as possible to the functioning of the human nervous system.
In addition to his creative work in the fields of film and video art, Vanderbeek was a faculty member and artist-in-residence at a number of major universities. He died in 1984.
Visual Velocity is a tribute to the pioneering work of Stan VanDerBeek. VanDerBeek was an experimental filmmaker, artist, animator, and media visionary. Produced by David Donnelly, the work originally aired on PBS stations' THE TERRITORY, the longest running public television showcase of independent film/video in the country.
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In Reeling in TV Time, VanDerBeek experiments with imaging capabilities and early computer graphics.
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In Micro Cosmos, a series of four short computer-animated works, the image of an orb is transformed into a pulsating, energetic evocaton of life forces.
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In Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie, VanDerBeek and artist Sonia Sheridan assemble a pastiche of images of Ronald Reagan, metamorphosed through digital computer graphics.
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Self Poured Traits is a tongue-in-cheek self-examination set to the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth.
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Face Concert is an ode to human expression in which VanDerBeek transforms the face into a visual canvas.
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In After Laughter, VanDerBeek constructs a rapid-fire montage depicting the evolution of the human race and the haunting specter of its destruction.
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A Kafka-inspired tale, Mirrored Reason tells the story of a woman who is haunted and eventually replaced by her double.
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A fantasy film of illusive geometry, changing and rebuilding itself by computer animation, unique visual magic done while artist-in-residence at NASA in Houston in conjunction with Richard Weinberg.
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A study in analog imaging and the relation of sound to image, Color Fields Left merges moving bands of color with electronic sounds in an increasingly complex pattern.
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In Vanishing Point Left, the "vanishing point" is an analogy for the metaphysics of watching the video screen, which assumes such forms as a mandala, flower or gyre.
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Strobe Ode is an exercise in video feedback and analog imaging, in which a circular image-field is modified and abstracted by strobe flashes.
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Against a black background and a pulsating beat matching white symmetrical geometric flashes around a central orb, white lines are drawn in mirror images vertical to each other. The images created are generally a myriad of faces in silhouette. Those silhouettes however often take on abstract forms in their entirety.
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Fulton made the film during his brief time at Harvard, where he had been invited to teach by Robert Gardner, his friend and collaborator (Fulton would later serve as a cinematographer on Gardner’s 1981 documentary Deep Hearts, among others). Reality’s Invisible could be described as a portrait of the Carpenter Center, yet it is a portrait of an extremely idiosyncratic and distinctive sort. Fulton moves us through the concrete space of the Center’s Le Corbusier-designed building—the only structure by the architect in North America—but, more centrally, presents us footage of students making and discussing their work alongside figures like Gardner, theorist Rudolf Arnheim, artist Stan Vanderbeek, filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and graphic designer Toshi Katayama.
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"The shapes of sound filmed from a computer system that reproduces analog patterns from sounds. This pioneer work in animated computer mandalas is a lyrical, abstract song with analog rhythms."
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"A film of video light and color. Dancers move through computer-generated patterns and fields of soft color to the music of Ravel. An experiment in video graphics combining the new technologies of video matting and analog computer patterns. One of the most successful of the Boston Symphoney Experiments, 1972, aired nationally." --S.V.
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"A study in ocular illusions, pattern superimposition producing other patterns and illusions of three dimensionality. A thorough demonstration of the richness and varied qualities of moiré patters by the acknowledged scientist/artist Gary Oster." S.V.
Himself
Iimura creates a short self-portrait as well as brief portraits of five of his peers: Brakhage, Vanderbeek, Smith, Mekas and Warhol. In each portrait, Iimura attempts to copy the styles and traits of each artist (Vanderbeek's constantly moving camera; Mekas' experiments with film speed; Warhol's use of flashes of white against a black background), while briefly commenting on the images being shown. The film serves effectively as an introduction to the film styles of these artists.
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”Assassination, falling down, animated drawings from the landscape of memory, mankind falling down, faces with faces, a haunting view of man drawn in brilliant animation graphics.” – S.V., Filmmaker’s Cooperative Catalogue № 7.
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COMPUTER ART SERIES is animated computer/graphic films. The series is called POEMFIELD. All of these films explore variations of poems, computer graphics, and in some cases combine live action images and animation collage; all are geometric and fast moving and in color. There are eight films in the computer animated art series. As samples of the art of the future all the films explore variations of abstract geometric forms and words. In effect these works could be compared to the illuminated manuscripts of an earlier age. Now typography and design are created at speeds of 100,000 decisions per second, set in motion a step away from "mental movies." POEMFIELD No. 2 and 5 are all colorized by Brown and Olvey.
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16mm film transferred to video, black and white, sound
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A hypnotic dance film of colours, dancers, forms, music, all sweeping through the TV tube eye, mixed together into a flow of female bodies and colours, a brilliant study of colour printing from black ad white. Collaboration on the project by Brown/Olvey.
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To create his “Poemfields” (1965-71) series, VanDerBeek worked closely with computer scientist Ken Knowlton and the staff at Bell Labs. Each “Poemfield” was adapted from poems by VanDerBeek, programmed on an IBM 7094 computer in black and white using a custom language known as BEFLIX, and colored after the fact by artists Robert Brown and Frank Olvey.
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"A two screen Dream/Film/Farce/Sity about sleeps-two-sides-the Dream-Beast, animated trick photography combined into a knifed dream with a sexual dream's edge. A movie mural, based on the gender question... In question or sexus plexus... Dayglow dream life..." - Stan VanDerBeek
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"Words pulsate, then bleed into abstraction. Fields of color fragment into pixels or smear into mutating organisms. Swarming text grids explode into chaotic rainbow clouds, blinking dots, stars, and spirals. Snaking orange lines and pointillist textures form strobing mandalas, mosaic embroidery, and Pac Man architecture, tumbling geometries of throbbing color that dissolve into blue, pink, yellow, and green pixel noise." - Leo Goldsmith, writing about VanDerBeek's Poemfield series
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1967 short animation by Stan Vanderbeek
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"Each film was constructed using Knowlton's BEFLIX computer language, which was based on FORTRAN. The films were programmed on a IBM 7094 computer. The films were created in black and white, with color added later by Brown and Olvey." --AT&T Archives and History Center
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"Calligraphic computer animation of the enigmatic poem 'There is no way to peace- Peace is the way.' Black and white animation is colored by Brown/ Olvey. This film with soundtrack by John Cage is a lyric accidental stylization of christian myth/crosses. The patterns are written by random programs on a computer with help by Ken Knowlton." S.V.
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Optically-printed film and computer graphics synthesis. 16mm, color, silent, 4:40 min.
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First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.
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16mm film transferred to video, black and white, sound
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16mm film transferred to video, color, sound
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A dance filmed with Elaine Summers, in which the nude figure is placed against nature, in this case a particular and spherical sense of nature as produced by a special lens…(that takes in 195 degrees of sight on film).
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In this pioneering work of early computer art, geometric groupings of monochrome patterns and words are created with the program BEFLIX, which was developed in the 1960s by Bell Telephone Laboratories programmer Kenneth Knowlton.
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An experimental film
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16mm film transferred to video, black and white, silent
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To create his “Poemfields” (1965-71) series, VanDerBeek worked closely with computer scientist Ken Knowlton and the staff at Bell Labs. Each “Poemfield” was adapted from poems by VanDerBeek, programmed on an IBM 7094 computer in black and white using a custom language known as BEFLIX, and colored after the fact by artists Robert Brown and Frank Olvey. Poemfield No. 2 features a soundtrack by jazz percussionist Paul Motian, known for his collaborations with Bill Evans.
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A Stan VanDerBeek short film from 1965.
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An artistic short film directed by Stan Vanderbeek.
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Experimental film that used handheld projectors to present film images and slide projections.
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16mm color work by Stan Vanderbeek that takes his work away from the cutups and the commentary and lands him in the psychedelic and abstract. Opticals, repetitions, camera moves and zooms are what make up the bulk of this exploration into fluids. The results bridge that realm between hangout art piece and intersteller stoner trip.
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Performance by Robert Morris and Carolee Schneemann.
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Dream matrix, history written in lightning image, memory and the TV syntax, images flowing and fused together to other images and electronic tapestry of images half seen, sought for, seeking man's dreams, movies as dreams, history as media. "The artist will tell you it is as much a process he is interested in ... as a result. Art is a process – life is a process – are they the same process? So many of the artists became unhappy about this eternal, unyielding quality in their art, and they began to wish their work were more like shoes, more temporary, more human, more able to admit of the possibility of change. The fixed, finished work began to be supplemented by the idea of work as a process, constantly becoming something else, tentative, allowing more than one interpretation." – Dick Higgins
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Dream matrix, history written in lightning image, memory and the TV syntax, images flowing and fused together to other images and electronic tapestry of images half seen, sought for, seeking man's dreams, movies as dreams, history as media. "The artist will tell you it is as much a process he is interested in ... as a result. Art is a process – life is a process – are they the same process? So many of the artists became unhappy about this eternal, unyielding quality in their art, and they began to wish their work were more like shoes, more temporary, more human, more able to admit of the possibility of change. The fixed, finished work began to be supplemented by the idea of work as a process, constantly becoming something else, tentative, allowing more than one interpretation." – Dick Higgins
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A surrealistic fantasy based on the 15th century woodcuts of the dance of the dead. A film experiment that deals with the photoreality and the surrealism of life. A collage-animation that cuts up photos and newsreel film and reassembles them, producing an image that is a mixture of unexplainable fact (Why is Harpo Marx playing a harp in the middle of a battlefield?) with inexplicable act (Why is there a battlefield?). It is a black comedy, a fantasy that mocks death ... a parabolic parable.
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A surrealistic fantasy based on the 15th century woodcuts of the dance of the dead. A film experiment that deals with the photoreality and the surrealism of life. A collage-animation that cuts up photos and newsreel film and reassembles them, producing an image that is a mixture of unexplainable fact (Why is Harpo Marx playing a harp in the middle of a battlefield?) with inexplicable act (Why is there a battlefield?). It is a black comedy, a fantasy that mocks death ... a parabolic parable.
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World leaders at the crossroads.
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A subversive experimental short against the ruling class.
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"A Claes Oldenburg 'happening.' A black statement about the City in which two people represent the populace after a bomb raid." S.V.
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A cut-out of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sails over newspaper articles as they take place. Combines live photography and collage animation in one film.
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"A 'drawn' film, with images that are constantly changing, drawings of landscapes that keep escaping, traces of faces, everything is almost what it is but never stays that way. The soundtrack punches out a wild monotone of dirty, nonsense limericks to the accompaniment of hand-drawn images related only in their complementary rhythm." -- David Holmstrom
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Performance art collaboration between Jim Dine and Stan VanDerBeek.
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This film uses stop motion animation of still photographs to convey images of politics and science in the nuclear era. The advancement of science allows man to do things he never would have been able to do without, for good or bad. Politicians are either behind the scenes manipulating those scientists or are using that science for their own goals, primarily in the space race. Everyday items and people are projected upwards - many in the form of rockets - followed by iconic structures, such as the Empire State Building, the US Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower and the Kremlin, being rocketed skyward as visual representations of that race into space.
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A short surreal animation created with fashion magazine clippings and sound collages.
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A companion piece to Wheeeels No. 1, exploring more of the highways and by-ways of “American on Wheels”- with the filmmaker's gentle surgery on the American pop-consciousness very much in evidence.
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An animated and live action fantasy, the loop de loops of ten spoons, forks and tableware ... a parable in the shape of a soup spoon ... conceived as a children's film.
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"An animated vision... a subliminal glance at man in light and space" S.V.
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A short surreal animation created with fashion magazine clippings and sound collages.
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"Dedicated to Detroit and subtitled 'America on wheels.' A fantasy-farce on the car of everyday life. Everything is a vehicle, life is in motion, motion is the means, the automation is the mean mania of today." - S.V.
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An animated short film from Stan Vanderbeek.
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An animated drawing done directly under the camera, combining painterly images and a drawn calligraphy, the works unfolds as you watch, permitting the viewer to see the process of the drawing.
