Kenneth C. Knowlton (1931 ) worked in the Computer Techniques Research Department at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey starting in 1962; he collaborated with experimental animator Stan VanDerBeek (1927 1984) on film experiments done in the artist-in-residency program. This was concerned with the use of computers to create graphics, and while there he produced twelve films between 1963 and 1967. He developed the first programming language specifically meant for animation: BEFLIX, a portmanteau of bell flicks. The animations this language created used a limited number of pixels arranged into a grid 252 by 184 in size, with seven shades of grey. Finished films had color added through optical printing.
There was only a brief consideration of the contemporary period of US abstract film/video in 3 periods of Abstract Film and Video, but its analysis bears greater expansion. By focusing on the dominant characteristics of the three periodsexperimentation, consolidation and institutionalizationthe marginal position of abstract film emerges clearly at the start of the third period. The potential contemporary period reverses this marginalization, and so deserves a longer discussion.
Because understanding the present requires an awareness of the past, this discussion considers the broad development of abstract motion pictures over the course of the twentieth century. Within this larger history, it is possible to identify three distinct phases to the emergence and consolidation of abstraction as a specific genre of animation.
The definition of video art as a distinct medium, apart from both experimental film and television was a central topic of theoretical and critical concern during the early years of video arts existence; of greatest importance to these first writers on video was the ways it differed from televisionmuch more than the relationship it had with the avant-garde film community, many of whom had shifted from film to video as lower cost cameras and video tape recorders became readily available.
