Looking back - computer graphics from the 1980's
Studying "Electronic Media" in the mid 1908's required programming and using emerging video digitizing tools - Apple IIe's with Koala Pads and big clunky, slooow flatbed scanners; Amigas with fast and sturdy programs, and slow RGB video scanning (one color per pass, please hold still!) and MAC and IBM desktop systems. With beta versions of programs like PageMaker and Imigit. Images were programmed in Basic and CeeMac (supplied by Brook Boering) with calls to assembly code, and a set of utilities created by the ever inventive Walter Wright, who was teaching at VCU at the time.
Below are samples of early images and some of the programs I wrote to create the images.
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Code and image from "Two Squares" computer 'animation' influenced by El Lissitsky, 1987 |
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Two still images from computer animation "Housewives" from 1986. Programmed in Basic using images captured via a video camera. |
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Image and sample Ceemac code. 1986. |
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A 'shape table' created by graphing out shapes and describing them with hexadecimal numbers in assemble language areas of memory. Using a Wacom tablet in 2005 is much easier.... but this was so amazing when the shapes actually appeared....! |
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Images created in shape tables, from "Inside My Head" from 1986. |
