In 1961, John Whiney Sr. produced a piece called Catalogue in which he put together all of the effects that he had perfected with his analogue computer, a 7 minute, full color exploration of visual effects set to the music of Ornette Coleman. In the 1950s he bought an M-5 anti-aircraft gun direction, later some of the M-5 components were replaced with those from an M-7, a more sophisticated machine, to create a gigantic twelve foot high analogue computer which Motion Graphics used to produce its work.
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This he used to control many different movements of camera and artwork after the manner of a modern rostrum camera. The machine, like the digital computer, not only facilitated the quick and effortless rendering of complex geometrical shapes and motions, but also actually helped realize certain graphics possibilities that otherwise might not be conceivable to the artist untrained in mathematical concepts. Catalogue is a brilliant display of floral patterns that seem to bloom and curl as though they were actually organic growths photographed in time-lapse. Also they have a natural quality quite unlike traditional single-frame animation and are far more convincing. |
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| Still from Catalog film. |
| Elsewhere in the film, neon-like coils expand and contract, throwing out bursts of pastel colour. Dish-shaped curvilinear disks wobble and strobe, stretch and contract in a variety of unexpected ways. Although the artwork was all created by hand, the distinctive quality of computer processing meant that Catalog had more in common with modern computer animation techniques that with any hand-produced effects. Catalog has been described as posessing an "overwhelming beauty", and is regarded by many critics as far more successful than his later, digital works.
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| Catalog Movie (1961) |
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