Olympiad

synopsis

One of the first films created on a mainframe computer using punched cards. Vibrating runners appearing to the sound of Max Mathews' computer music cross the field of vision from both sides, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. The clusters of pulsating coloured dots and lines that define their shape create disjointedly moving ornamental systems. One hundred years on, the series of electronic bodies builds on Muybridge's photographs of the human figure in motion.

“What [the computer] can do is subject to what we believe it can do for us […]; the qualitative sensations of the creative act remain the elusive domain of the artist.”

Source: Lillian F. Schwartz and Laurens R. Schwartz: Computer Artist’s Handbook, New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.

biography

Lillian Schwartz (1927) is one of the pioneers of computer art and computer analysis of artwork. She participated in the historically signigicant exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age at MoMA in New York, which led to her become artist-in-residence at AT&T's Bell Laboratories in 1969, where she remained until 2002. In 1984, she created a half-minute film for MoMA that became the first computer-generated film to win an Emmy. Ji.hlava IDFF presented a cross-section of her work in 2011 as part of its Translucent Being section.

more about film

director:	Lillian Schwartz
producer:	Lillian Schwartz