Larry Cuba, Two Space

Larry Cuba was a computer animation pioneer of the generation that directly followed John Whitney Sr. In 1975 Whitney invited Cuba to be the programmer on Arabesque.

Earlier in the 1970s Cuba worked with Thomas DeFanti on GRASS. He also worked with George Lucas on Star Wars, providing the animation for the Death Star attack training sequence. A 4k version of the original Two Space can be viewed here. The film was completed with Defanti’s GRASS and according to the artwork description it:

“systematically explores symmetries used by Islamic artists to create abstract temple decorations. The two dimensional patterns, like the tile patterns of Islamic temples, are generated by performing a set of symmetry operations (translations, rotations, and reflections) upon a basic figure or tile.”