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Ken Knowlton | |
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![]() Knowlton in 2007 | |
Born | Kenneth Charles Knowlton June 6, 1931 Springville, New York, U.S. |
Died | June 16, 2022 (aged 91) Sarasota, Florida, U.S. |
Spouses |
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Children | 5 |
Academic background | |
Education | Cornell University (BS, MS) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
Doctoral advisor | Victor Yngve |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Engineering Art |
Sub-discipline | Computer engineering Computer graphics |
Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6,1931 –June 16,2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer,artist,mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963,while working at Bell Labs,he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap computer-produced movies. In 1966,also at Bell Labs,he and Leon Harmon created the computer artwork Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I).
Kenneth Charles Knowlton was born to Frank and Eva (Reith) Knowlton in Springville,New York,on June 6,1931. He completed high school one year early,then entered Cornell University to study engineering physics. After finishing his undergraduate degree,he continued to a master's degree. [1] He completed his M.S. in 1955;the title of his thesis was "X-Ray Microscopy with a Modified RCA Electron Microscope." [2]
In 1962,Knowlton earned his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 under the supervision of Victor Yngve. His thesis was titled "Sentence Parsing with a Self-Organizing Heuristic Program". [3]
In 1963,Knowlton developed the BEFLIX (Bell Flicks) programming language for bitmap computer-produced movies,created using an IBM 7094 computer and a Stromberg-Carlson 4020 microfilm recorder. Each frame contained eight shades of grey and a resolution of 252 x 184. Knowlton worked with artists,including Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz. He and VanDerBeek created the Poem Field animations. Knowlton also created another programming language named EXPLOR (EXplicit Patterns,Local Operations and Randomness). [4] [5] [6]
In 1966,he prepared an animated film as an introduction to the Bell Telephone Laboratories' Low-Level Linked List Language (L6). [7]
In 1966,Knowlton and Leon Harmon were experimenting with photomosaics,creating large prints from collections of small symbols or images. In Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I) they created an image of a reclining nude (choreographer Deborah Hay), [8] by scanning a photograph with a camera and converting the analog voltages to binary numbers,which were assigned typographic symbols based on halftone densities. It was printed in The New York Times on October 11,1967,as the first full frontal nude published in the paper,and exhibited at one of the earliest computer art exhibitions,The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age,held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from November 25,1968,through February 9,1969. [1] [4] [9] [10] The artwork in Studies in Perception also launched Robert Rauschenberg's Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). [1] In 1969,Knowlton and Harmon continued the series with Gulls (Studies in Perception II) [11] and Gargoyle (Studies in Perception III). [12]
Knowlton's work had been previously exhibited at Cybernetic Serendipity,an exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from August 2 to October 20,1968. [13]
Knowlton co-invented Ji Ga Zo with Mark Setteducati,released in the United States on March 30,2011. Ji Ga Zo is a puzzle in which the user assembles a mosaic from 300 shaded pieces to form a digitized image from the user's own photograph. [1]
Technology historian Jim Boulton worked with Knowlton to reconstruct the algorithm used to generate Studies in Perception I,which was used to make a remastered version of the original work in 2016. As a fundraiser for Rhizome,Knowlton and Boulton used the algorithm in 2022 to generate a portrait of E.A.T. director Julie Martin,Studies in Perception IV:Julie Martin. [8]
Knowlton had three sons and two daughters from his first marriage to Roberta Behrens,which ended in divorce. [1] His second wife,Barbara Bean,died before him. [1] He died at a hospice facility in Sarasota,Florida,on June 16,2022,ten days after his 91st birthday. [1]
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text-based visual art in general. ASCII art can be created with any text editor,and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font such as Courier for presentation.
Nokia Bell Labs,originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by Finnish company Nokia. It is headquartered in Murray Hill,New Jersey,and operates a global network of laboratories.
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image,sound,animation,video,CD-ROM,DVD-ROM,video game,website,algorithm,performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and,as a result,the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance,an artist may combine traditional painting with algorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result,defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is bound to change over time since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible.
Lillian F. Schwartz is an American artist considered a pioneer of computer-mediated art and one of the first artists notable for basing almost her entire oeuvre on computational media. Many of her ground-breaking projects were done in the 1960s and 1970s,well before the desktop computer revolution made computer hardware and software widely available to artists.
Stan VanDerBeek was an American experimental filmmaker known for his collage works.
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.),a non-profit and tax-exempt organization,was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and engineers,rather than defining a formal process for cooperation. E.A.T. initiated and carried out projects that expanded the role of the artist in contemporary society and helped explore the separation of the individual from technological change.
Leon D. Harmon was a researcher in mental/neural processing,particularly regarding vision,who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories,Incorporated.
BEFLIX is the name of the first embedded domain-specific language for computer animation,invented by Ken Knowlton at Bell Labs in 1963. The name derives from a combination of Bell Flicks. Ken Knowlton used BEFLIX to create animated films for educational and engineering purposes. He also collaborated with the artist Stan Vanderbeek at Bell Labs to create a series of computer-animated films called Poemfields between 1966 and 1969.
In the field of photographic imaging,a photographic mosaic,also known under the term Photomosaic,is a picture that has been divided into tiled sections,each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo. When viewed at low magnifications,the individual pixels appear as the primary image,while close examination reveals that the image is in fact made up of many hundreds or thousands of smaller images. Most of the time they are a computer-created type of montage.
A. Michael Noll is an American engineer,and professor emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He served as dean of the Annenberg School from 1992 to 1994. He was a very early pioneer in digital computer art and 3D animation and tactile communication.
Peter Zinovieff was a British composer,musician and inventor. In the late 1960s,his company,Electronic Music Studios (EMS),made the VCS3,a synthesizer used by many early progressive rock bands such as Pink Floyd and White Noise,and Krautrock groups as well as more pop-orientated artists,including Todd Rundgren and David Bowie. In later life,he worked primarily as a composer of electronic music.
Deborah Hay is an American choreographer,dancer,dance theorist,and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater. Hay's signature slow and minimal dance style was informed by a trip to Japan while touring with Merce Cunningham's company in 1964. In Japan she encountered Noh theatre and soon incorporated nô's extreme slowness,minimalism and suspension into her post-Cunningham choreography. Sometimes she also imposed stressful conditions on the dancers,as with her "Solo" group dance that was presentation at 9 Evenings:Theatre and Engineering.
Systems art is art influenced by cybernetics,and systems theory,that reflects on natural systems,social systems and social signs of the art world itself.
Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics,it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing.
Cybernetic Serendipity was an exhibition of cybernetic art curated by Jasia Reichardt,shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts,London,England,from 2 August to 20 October 1968,and then toured across the United States. Two stops in the United States were the Corcoran Annex,Washington,D.C.,from 16 July to 31 August 1969,and the newly opened Exploratorium in San Francisco,from 1 November to 18 December 1969.
Jasia Reichardt is a British art critic,curator,art gallery director,teacher and prolific writer,specialist in the emergence of computer art. In 1968 she was curator of the landmark Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. She is generally known for her work on experimental art. After the deaths of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson she catalogued their archive and looks after their legacy.
Lorinda Cherry was an American computer scientist and programmer. Much of her career was spent at Bell Labs,where she was for many years a member of the original Unix Lab. Cherry developed several mathematical tools and utilities for text formatting and analysis,and influenced the creation of others.
The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s,when people began to experiment with computer graphics –most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established,that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially,uses were mainly for scientific,engineering and other research purposes,but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s –most notably by Dr Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s,many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-dimensional imagery,though increasingly as computer power improved,efforts to achieve 3-dimensional realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s,photo-realistic 3D was beginning to appear in film movies,and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3D animation could be used for entire feature film production.
William Fetter,also known as William Alan Fetter or Bill Fetter,was an American graphic designer and pioneer in the field of computer graphics. He explored the perspective fundamentals of computer animation of a human figure from 1960 on and was the first to create a human figure as a 3D model. The First Man was a pilot in a short 1964 computer animation,also known as Boeing Man and now as Boeman by the Boeing company. Fetter preferred the term "Human Figure" for the pilot. In 1960,working in a team supervised by Verne Hudson,he helped coin the term Computer graphics. He was art director at the Boeing Company in Wichita.
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