Want more evidence that tradition in user interfaces has blinded us to the possibilities for making graphics fluid and intuitive? Just look at the first known GUI, Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad. His 1962 PhD thesis at MIT, Sketchpad represents a whole bundle of firsts: the first object-oriented programming project, the first use of a toolbar, the first real-time graphics system, the first drawing program, the first GUI, the first use of instances, the first use of draggable vector graphics … and yet, that’s not what’s impressive about this. What’s really impressive is that the work of this one man still holds up in 2008, and not all of what he does here has been fully answered by modern UIs. (Sometimes the past turns out to be more futuristic than the present, perhaps because people doing modern development work don’t know enough of their history.)

The video here is introduced by Xerox PARC’s Dr. Alan Kay, who was later an Apple Fellow (among other things), and made his own contributions to UI history.

This is doubly interesting to me, because the simplicity of this kind of project makes it ideal for people writing their own interfaces into tools like Processing. And notice how nice it is having a persistent physical interface — something that might not be practical for Adobe, but could be perfectly practical for a DIY electronics builder and live visual performer. You can read his full thesis, and for more UI history with Alan Kay, there’s a full 1987 documentary that traces this and many other developments (including the mouse) on the Internet Archive.

Ivan Sutherland celebrated his 70th birthday last week, as described by Java creator James Gosling:
Happy Birthday, Ivan! [James Gosling: on the Java Road]

Gosling points out that even more interesting than this interface is what Ivan has to say about technology and courage. It’s well worth reading if you’re embarking on a research project of your own.

Emergency Broadcast Network have released their ground-breaking audiovisual album Telecommunications Breakdown online for the first time. As Jonny says on the AV blog at videomix.es:

The release was original mainly CD Audio only at the time as general release formats didn’t allow for an AV album. All the visuals were made at the same time, basically the the visuals is the music and here for the first time is all the video album in one place::::::

Skip to 3:19 for a truly brilliant mashup moment, which appears at 3:27. Then watch it from the beginning. I can only imagine how difficult this was to create using the technology available in 1995.

Via Wiley Wiggins’ blog, I’ve learned that Doc Baily passed away in April. Doc is perhaps best known for the breathtaking visuals he created to represent the sentient planet in Steven Soderbergh’s film Solaris, which were generated at extremely high resolution–for film, remember–in Spore, the software he wrote. I was very moved by Solaris and inspired by the cinematography and the visuals to push my own nascent work. Watch some video of Doc’s work, especially this clip from Xtacism by Doc Baily and John Buchanan, 2005, and many more. Here are some screenshots of Doc’s work I particularly like, which link on to the galleries on imagesavant.com. Read Doc’s words and those of his colleagues on friends on the Center for Visual Music’s memorial page.

For participatory art in a similar vein, I highly recommend Spot Draves’ Electric Sheep, which is (much more than) a beautiful, abstract screensaver.

Click To Play

Bill Etra, the analog video processing pioneer, has been posting some of his original works from the late 1960s through 2005 on video sharing site Blip.tv. It’s a sort of ongoing retrospective of his work. His techniques are varied, including Rutt-Etra processing (using the hardware he co-designed), hand-controlled oscillator-to-RGB inputs, and laptop-based software rigs.

While not a complete archive, it’s an interesting look back at important works and techniques. I’m glad this is online; it’s hard to find useful archives of older analog pieces simply because most techniques involved were incredibly hard to capture to tape. Usually only re-scanning would work (re-scanning is a fancy term for pointing a camera at a CRT). More work will be added, so check back occasionally. I think archives like this are invaluable for inspiration.

Bill Etra’s blip.tv Page

Ed.: We’ll definitely be watching for updates, and hopefully cdmotion can help encourage more documentation of this stuff online. -PK

Brian Eno, as one of the masters of generative music, naturally has some deep things to say about generative visuals. Since we’re always interested in the fusion of the two, that’s all the more interesting. Here he is, talking about his project 77 Million Paintings:

I love that Eno’s ideas are always clearly expressed and elemental. There’s tremendous opportunity to build on those ideas, I think.

More on Eno’s work on this project in a recent Apple profile; let me know if you’ve seen other good coverage.

Eno has a long history in art — digital, generative, and otherwise — and I know I enjoyed reading his writing from closer to “art school days.” (I gather art school is a different experience in the UK than here. Any Brits want to chime in on that?)

I look at the music side of what Eno’s doing over on CDM, though you can expect much more coverage when Spore hits. I think it’s probably our duty as composers and visualists to drop everything we’re doing and play Spore when that happens. It’s art, you know?

Brian Eno, Generative Composer, with Will Wright, on Create Digital Music

Cross-posting to Music and Motion? Absolutely! Eno is part of the inspiration for covering both!