Generative Art Timeline · Chapter 4: Digital Era (1960s)

1965

Four-Dimensional Hyperobjects by A. Michael Noll

Artwork · North America

Stills from A. Michael Noll’s Hypercube (1965), the computer-animated rotating four-dimensional hypercube, printed as paired left/right frames for stereoscopic free-viewing.
Stills from A. Michael Noll’s Hypercube (1965), the computer-animated rotating four-dimensional hypercube, printed as paired left/right frames for stereoscopic free-viewing. A. Michael Noll, Hypercube, 1965, Bell Telephone Laboratories. Image: compArt database Digital Art (dada), University of Bremen; the Kunsthalle Bremen holds a photograph of stills from the animation.

Made by Noll at Bell Labs, this stereoscopic film of a “hypercube” is one of the earliest 3D computer graphic films.

Images were printed side-by-side, frame-by-frame and are meant for 3D freeviewing (like a “Magic Eye”). The work is similar to what Noll and Julesz exhibited at Howard Wise that year. The video can be viewed in the same way as a Magic Eye by relaxing the eye without the need for 3D glasses.

Listen to Peter Bauman’s interview with A. Michael Noll (transcript).

Text by Peter Bauman. Generative Art Timeline, Le Random.

Sources

People

A. Michael Noll, Béla Julesz, Howard Wise

Movements

computer animation

Filed under

Ideas
Computer Film, mathematics
Technologies
3D Graphics, computer animation, hypercube, stereoscopy
People
A. Michael Noll, Béla Julesz, Howard Wise
Works
Four-Dimensional Hyperobjects
Organisations
Bell Labs, Howard Wise Gallery

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