The VanDerBeek-Knowlton Movies

During the second half of the 1960s, artist-filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek collaborated with Bell Labs researcher Kenneth Knowlton in the production of ten computer-animated movies. This article describes that collaboration and discusses certain movies that resulted. In this early example of collaboration between an artist and a computer technologist, VanDerBeek built on his experience to learn computer programming, and Knowlton extended his artistic sensitivities and programming languages—each learned from the other. The article concludes with a discussion of the term “computer artist” as used during those early days of computer art and animation. In the author’s opinion, VanDerBeek, by doing his own computer programming, became a computer artist, while Knowlton’s creativity in creating computer-animated sequences made him an artist.