Guy Lochhead, 07/03/11
American visual artist best known for his 1950s Dada-inspired collage-film and pioneering late-’60s CGI work in collaboration with Ken Knowles. He also did some set design and animation for early interactive children’s television programme ‘Winky Dink And You’. In his later years, he ran University of Maryland Visual Arts programme and lectured on film and technology across the country. Although VanDerBeek’s early work was undoubtedly ahead of its time, I’m not all that bothered about it in the sort of terms by which I evaluate everything on this blog. It’s too “difficult”. His early computing work could be interesting, but the more exciting work was done by his collaborator, Bell Labs technician Ken Knowles – VanDerBeek was more “art direction” than writing the programming that makes those Poem Field animations so significant… I have added Knowles to the list to be researched later…