Woody Vasulka Explanation USA, 1974, 11 mins, video

Stan Vanderbeek Collideoscope USA, 1968, 6 mins, 16mm

Semiconductor Linear UK, 2001, 6 mins, video

All the films in this list are created, at least in part, using computer generated imagery. As well as many works utilising the latest technology, the list includes several works by artists who worked with early computers in the 1960s (Denys Irving, John Stehura, Stan Vanderbeek).

See also:
ABSTRACTION
ANIMATION

AL + AL
PERPETUAL MOTION
UK, 2004, 7 mins, digital video
James Brown is a retired engineer and inventor living in the north of England. The film re-fabricates his lifelong endeavours to break the law of physics and create a perpetual motion device. Free power for the people will produce a land flowing with milk and honey.

SEBASTIAN BUERKNER
PEAK PROJECT
UK, 2005, 6 mins, video
Peak gives a backstage insight into an improbable theatre production. Sets are built, equipment tested and surreal characters rehearse their acts or just kill time. Theatrical visual illusions suggest the possibility of bending time and space, while stage props are alive and form a natural part of the cast. Their arrangements form a collection of allegories in the language of theatrical symbolism; pre-production turns out to be a space where unreal forms can rehearse their future existence. We are left to guess what kind of play they might perform, or when the curtain will rise...

LOUISA FITCH
BAD DAY
UK, 1997, 3 mins, video
This computer generated animation containing all the sad, ugly, bad vibe, neurotic, paranoid underbelly of inner shit chilled and served cool like revenge. Bad Day is an emotional documentary revealing, in inspirational style, the heroine as she barbecues herself from the inside out. Spit roast psychoanalysis is the order of the day but don't think it's all good news; the ending is really quite depressing.

DENYS IRVING
69
UK, 1969, silent, B&W, 8 mins, 16mm

MALCOLM LE GRICE
ARBITRARY LOGIC
UK, 1987-89, 5 mins, video
Arbitrary Logic, an interactive audio-visual synthesiser was first presented under the working title Osnabruk at the Osnabruk festival of 1987 and later as part of an improvised and computer music performance with Keith Rowe at the London Filmmakers Cooperative, December 1989.
Part of Sketches for a Sensual Philosophy

MALCOLM LE GRICE
DIGITAL ABERRATION
UK, 2004, 4 mins, video
A punishment for digital theory that the artist must programme - every cheap visual effect in the editing package and a sound track made with free software from a corn-flakes packet - apologies to Oscar for all the hours he spent at the animation table.

ROBERT McFALLEN
TELLING TALES
Canada, 1994, 5 mins, video
Computer animation combines with onomatopoeia and nursery rhymes in this playful and inventive piece. The tape is according to the artist 'my oblique version of Pinocchio featuring Softimage 3-D animation software as the "real life boy" and myself as the blue fairy.'

NIGEL MAUDSLEY
CHANCE ENCOUNTER
UK, 1997, 7 mins, video
Computer animation symbolically exploring what is allowed to cross the division between the outside and the inside of the body and how that informs our notion of self and identity. Metaphors of space, location, geography and mapping are used to refer to the mapping and policing of desire.

BJORN MELHUS
NO SUNSHINE
Germany, 1997, 6 mins, video
Two infantile bodies are floating in a cyberspace ball. They are simultaneously connected with two subconscious bodies in the background. The attempt of unification and metamorphosis is interrupted by one part, meanwhile the other part is liberated. A glance over the shoulder means destruction. The sources for the soundtrack are fragments of the childhood voices of early Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder songs.

ALICIA NOGUEIRA
BUDDHA
USA, 1992, 5 mins, video
A meditating Buddha sits in front of a backdrop of computer generated imagery of mandalas expanding and contracting. The tape is soothing and visually pleasing.

STEVE PARTRIDGE & JOHN YEADON
1001 BOYS GAMES
UK, 1984, 7 mins, video
1001 Boys Games was based on a poem written by the painter John Yeadon in 1983. It combines computer-generated drawings by Yeadon from his Impossible Lovers series, with animation and digital video effects in a stream of images complementing the narration of the poem by the dramatist Tom McGrath. In addition to conventional camera-originated material and artwork, a Quantel Paintbox and a BBC micro computer were used to create the hundreds of 'cells' featured in the work.

"Speech returns, but still highly manipulated, in Partridge's tour-de-force 1001 Boy;s Games, 1984, a video-vision of John Yeadon's chanted poem, recited by Yeadon, Tom McGrath and Partridge himself. Graphic text, line drawing and video image counterpose each other. The wit of the poem inspires the complex counter-rhythms of the video, just as Yeadon's relentless and quasi-logical categories echo Partridge's own taste for philosophical equations (as in the line 'Boys called John; Boys not called John', for example)." - Al Rees

TONY PRITCHETT
THE FLEXIPEDE
?, ?, sound, B&W, 2 mins, 16mm
Made entirely by electronic computer and digital plotter.

JOHN SANBORN & MARY PERILLO
INFINITE ESCHER
USA, 1990, 9 mins, video
A stunning display of the possibilities of combined high tech computer graphics with high definition television. A young boy's (Sean Lennon) imagination takes the form of the works of M.C. Escher.
(Copyright Sony Corporation)

SEMICONDUCTOR
LINEAR
UK, 2001, 6 mins, video
A C.G.I. documentary about a Hi-Fi Rise somewhere in the 21st Century. Portraying the story of T.O.E. String, a confused citizen within a quaking urban universe.

GEORGE SNOW
TALL STORY
UK, 1995, 5 mins, video
Stunning computer graphics display a majestic robot tens of meters high, which walks through a city of normal proportions. This is a lesson in virtual architecture in which the artist presents a model for the urban development which is based on the symmetry of his own body.

MICHAEL SNOW
CORPUS COLLOSSUM
Canada, 2001, sound, colour, 92 mins, 16mm
The corpus callosum is a central region of tissue in the human brain which passes 'messages' between the two hemispheres. Corpus Callosum, the film (or tape, or projected light work), is constructed of, de-picts, creates, examines, presents, consists of, and is, 'betweens'. Between beginning and ending, between 'natural' and 'artificial', between fiction and fact, between hearing and seeing, between 1956 and 2002. It's a tragi-comedy of the cinematic variables.

Corpus Callosum juxtaposes or counterpoints a realism of normal metamorphosis (two extreme examples: pregnancy, explosions) in believable, 'real' interior spaces with 'impossible' shape changes (some made possible with digital animation). First the camera, then we in the audience, observe the observations of the 'real' people depicted in the obviously staged situations. What we see and what they 'see' is involved in shifting modes of belief. There seem to be (though there is no narrative) a Hero and Heroine. However, from scene to scene they are different people costumed identically or altered electronically. The sound - electronic like the picture - is also a continuous metamorphosis and as the film's 'nervous system', is as important to the film as the picture. Or: the sound and the picture are two hemispheres joined by the artist. Corpus Callosum is resolutely 'artificial', it not only wants to convince, but also to be a perceived pictorial and musical phenomenon.
Michael Snow.

JOAN STAVLEY
WANTING FOR BRIDGE
USA, 1991, 6 mins, video
Surreal and dream-like computer animation. Disembodied human hands everywhere!

JOHN STEHURA
CIBERNETIK 5.3
USA, 1961-65, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm
Starring Jan Wolf and Ron Hughes.
Perhaps the 1st digital computer animated movie ever made and probably the only example of an 'Artificial Intelligence' used to simulate a filmmaker: (an IBM 7094 computer, after being instructed in genetics and graphics, generated approximately 50 billion machine instructions to design the first 2/3's of the film - I finished the last 1/3 to get it out of a warp.) The film was first shown at UCLA`1066, J.Hendrix Concerts, Brussels, Tours, 7th International Animation Festival, 1st L.A. FILMEX '71 etc.
The film should be shown only around midnight and good luck to human embryo implantation in England. - J.S.

STELARC
PSYCHO/CYBER
Australia, 1992-1993, 20 mins, video
Psycho/Cyber consists of four extraordinary robot and virtual reality performances carried out all over the world.

STAN VANDERBEEK
POEMFIELD 3
USA, ?, silent, colour, ? mins, 16mm
One of a series called Poemfield computer generated patterns combining a poem within.

STAN VANDERBEEK
COLLIDEOSCOPE
USA, 1968, sound, colour, 6 mins, 16mm.
Early computer film.

WOODY VASULKA
EXPLANATION
USA, 1974, 11 mins, video
Explanation is a computer-generated cross-hatch of lines that becomes three-dimensional, defining shapes in a synthetic landscape of gradually shifting image position and size.

STEINA & WOODY VASULKA
ARTIFACTS
USA, 1980, 22 mins, video
'This videotape spotlights the research that Woody Vasulka has conducted since the mid-1970s to generate electronic images without camera support. Though Artifacts (1980) arises from a pragmatic relationship with technology, the work nonetheless remains a playful discovery of a new visual language. Artifacts is the second part of the series Syntax of Binary Images, which also includes Transformations (1978). The work provides an overview of the effects created by digital-analogue digitizers of the time. Here, Woody relies especially on the Digital Images Articulator (also called Imager), which he co-designed with Jeffrey Schier.' - Fondation Langlois

ST JOHN WALKER
TO.KYO.ZO.IC
UK, 1993, 10 mins, video
A ten minute computer animation executed frame by frame off Amiga, Macintosh and Paintbox. It is a creation myth and was the result of a series of visualisations, exercises and meditations built around a study of the Qabalah, the ancient Judaic philosophy of the Tree of Life. TO.KYO.ZO.IC takes symbolic imagery from the oldest monotheist civilisation and applies this to the most modern monolithic civilisation, through ten visual stanzas or spheres of energy. Analogue meets digital, spirit meets material.

TO.KYO.ZO.IC was executed frame by frame over 2 years.

JASON WHITE & RICHARD WRIGHT
HELIOCENTRUM
UK, 1995, 11 mins, video
A breathtaking computer animation exploring the aesthetics and ideology of the monarchist State. Broad sweeps of baroque and neo-classical imagery are laid bare to reveal the mechanisms of the spectacular society in thrall to these symbols of power. The authors draw a direct parallel between the lavish excess and calculating cruelty of the reign of Louis XIV, and the current regime in the United Kingdom. A subtle, deeply considered and visually impressive work.
An animate! Film

ANNE WRIGHT & DAVID GARCIA
TERRA INCOGNITO
Netherlands, 1985, 12 mins, video
David Garcia uses digital imaging techniques more because of the way they look rather than anything structural about their nature. His interest is in exploring the paradoxical immateriality of our culture. And trying to test Umberto Eco's proposition that we are living through a new 'middle ages'.

RICHARD WRIGHT & JASON WHITE
HELIOCENTRUM
UK, 1995, 11 mins, video
A breathtaking computer animation exploring the aesthetics and ideology of the monarchist State. Broad sweeps of baroque and neo-classical imagery are laid bare to reveal the mechanisms of the spectacular society in thrall to these symbols of power. The authors draw a direct parallel between the lavish excess and calculating cruelty of the reign of Louis XIV, and the current regime in the United Kingdom. A subtle, deeply considered and visually impressive work.