Science Friction 1959（Stan Vanderbeek）

VanDerBeek studied art and architecture first at Cooper Union College in New York and then at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met architect Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. VanDerBeek began his career in the 1950s making independent art film while learning animation techniques and working painting scenery and set designs for the American TV show, Winky Dink and You. His earliest films, made between 1955 and 1965 mostly consist of animated paintings and collage films, combined in a form of organic development.

VanDerBeek's ironic compositions were created very much in the spirit of the surreal and dadaist collages on Max Ernst, but with a wild, rough informality more akin to the expressionism of the Beat Generation. In the 1960s, VanDerBeek began working with the likes of Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow, as well as representatives of modern dance, such as Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Building his Movie Drome theater at Stony Point, New York, at just about the same time, he designed shows using multiple projectors. These presentations contained a very great number of random image sequences and continuities, with the result that none of the performances were alike.

His desire for the utopian led him to work with Ken Knowlton in a co-operation at Bell Labs, where dozens of computer animated films and holographic experiments were created by the end of the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1967 Vanderbeek created Poem Field, a series of 8 computer-generated animations with Ken Knowlton.

During the same period, he taught at many universities, researching new methods of representation, from the steam projections at the Guggenheim Museum to the interactive television transmissions of his Violence Sonata broadcast on several channels in 1970. He ran the University of Maryland, Baltimore County visual arts program until his death.

 ——http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Vanderbeek

      

         On the last week`s tutorial class, we watch this amazing work which is made up with many moving pictures. It is my first time to see this form to produce a film and it is really funny.

        In the film, there are many similar contents such as scientists, rockets, instruments, leaders…… I think Stan Vanderbeek against the war and at that time maybe the officials asked the scientists to invent more weapon such as rockets or biochemical weapon to make their country stronger. But they ignore the humanity and this kind of pursuit will make the world tends to extreme.

     Actually, all above is just my personal understanding and I think this work is really a fascinating one, not only the rich color and pictures, but also the message it conveys.