i had a dream and right before i woke up i heard the name james whitney. and before i could forget it i wrote it down. i’m finally looking him up and turns out he died on my birthday several years b4 i would be born.

For those wondering how this was done, look up the Wikipedia articles on James Whitney (filmmaker) and John Whitney (animator). He basically used an analog computer developed by his brother John - based on a gear-driven WWII surplus ballistics computer - to move many layers of hand-painted cels, frame-by-frame. I believe the video here on KZfaq was recorded on VHS from a broadcast on Canadian TV back in the 80s? The original film is much sharper, with more vivid colors, and totally breathtaking. I think "Lapis" was released at one point on Laserdisc, and some libraries (especially at colleges) have film prints. A digitally restored version can be viewed occasionally at the Center for Visual Music in LA and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but for some reason the Whitney estate refuses to allow this masterpiece to see wider release. It's really a shame that more people can't see this in all its glory!

1966? wow. that is still hard to do now...the naturalness of it.

OMG Thankyou James Whitney for making this miracle in the sixtys and hand made I saw this many times in the whitney museum in nyc and was blown away by it . I rented it on film and transfered it to real to real for personal enjoyment ! and now it is here on utube I was moved to tears again . I'am 67 now and it still has the original punch. gurkirpal singh

James' little film inspired Douglass Trumbull's psychedelic graphics in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And 10 years earlier, James' brother John invented the gizmo that allowed Saul Bass to create the spiral graphics for the opening of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo".

This was stunning to see projected back when I was in the animation program at Cal Arts, 1972-74.

This video goes well with the smell of old books.

I think the reason why the distinction matters, is because James Whitney was an incredibly spiritual man, and making these animated films was a LONG process, which he undertook, along with a humble lifestyle to attain something higher. It would be almost against him memory to say he did it easier with a computer. Although computer animation is so much a part of cinema today, I think his films stand more on their spirituality than their technical achievement or innovation.

Thank you so much for posting this, i've been trying to see this film again for 10 years.

Looks (almost) as good as when I saw it in 1972

This is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen - a masterpiece of "visual music." The pathetic version you're looking at here is from a TV broadcast; the original is much higher-resolution. I have corresponded with the Center for Visual Music, and apparently the Whitney family refuses to release the film for sale to the public. What a shame - I'd pay quite a bit to own this DVD! Look up James Whitney (filmmaker) on Wikipedia, and follow the links on that entry for lots more info.

The brilliance staggers.

I just saw this on the big screen last night in LA. Absolutely amazing! This was all done by hand and took Whitney 10 years to make. Hand Done People!!!

What an amazing treat...I programmed this back in its era for an experimental film series at the Cleveland Museum of Art thru the 60s...new to utubing after some years of a reclusive back-to-the-woods phase. Just rediscovering things in my memory! Also remembered Scott Bartlett's OFF-ON which I also found tucked in this platform. Thank you!

I listened to tomorrow never knows by the Beatles and watched this and I had the most ethereal experience of acid ever

thank you

Saw this in an exhibition today. It was so calming

I'm an MFA student in animation and I also studied this film, and actually, he only used a computerized mechanism built by his brother John Whitney Sr. to truck in and out of the moving mandala, but the points of light are all hand done animation. He spent years punching holes into 5x7 paper and then backlighting it. The idea that he used a computer to plot the points has been spread for years, but is incorrect. His older brother later used computers, such as in Permutations.

True art! Thank you for sharing.

Wow wow wow wow wow.

Lucky to have seen a film copy in film school at PITT in the 80s.

So clever and transcendent. Very profound too, I am so impressed.

Amazing. This is Poetry.

I didn't know his work! Wow!

Thanks for sharing with us. Would love to see any other J Whitney work.

First of all, besides all technicall explanation, this is a very beautiful piece! Now, to how this was accomplished: this is just a guess, but from my experience in image processing, I would say he used several interleaved sets of dots, each set sampled along a rotating spiral. The resulting cloud could then optically filtered using a hard low-pass filter done directly on the Fourier domain. All of the previous stuff can be done using analog circuits and optics.

I saw this in film school 35 years ago!

Very masterpiece! The dance of creation.

I appreciate your comments. I first saw a snippet of this film at a USC film fest (in the title Catalog). The experience was so profound that I dedicated hundreds of hours of my life to helping the Whitney family make the most recent digital masters of this film which are now circulating the museum circuit. Each dimension of the motion in Lapis was controlled by the computer. I do not think this detracts from the spiritual content of the piece at all. The film which was 100% hand made is Yantra.

James Whitney's film Yantra is now installed at the Guggenheim, for anyone who cares to see it in NYC.

this man obviously lived ahead of his time

staring into the infinite

I came across this by sheer luck a few days ago in Vienna at MUMOK as part of their Vertigo exhibition. The granularity of the detail is almost indescribable when you see it in person. The images look like they’re teeming with life. It’s messed up that it’s so hard to see this outside of a handful of elite institutions. I wonder if anyone has tried to start a petition for its release to the public....

extraordinary

I love the sitar! Sounds like Pandit Ravi Shankar!

fantastic! It got my feedback purring like a kitten!

This is true of other James Whitney films, Yantra for instance. Lapis however was made with the assistance of a modified WWII era M5 guidance computer which the Whitney brothers called the Cam Machine. The motion of the points of light in Lapis were produced by precise motion control of a translucent composition positioned beneath a stationary camera. I have seen this "cam machine" myself and can attest that Lapis is a very early computer animation.

§§§§§ Sooooo Goooood §§§§§

mezmerizing

really too bad they don't have this in HD. i saw a 16mm print of this today and this low-res version really does it no justice whatsoever. really fascinating..

I sampled from this to make a beat. Its amazing

This is the high water mark for pretty much everything.

Raga Jogiya from Ravi Shankar album "Ragas and Talas"

Yes, they did use the modified WWII guidance computer to pan in and out. The points of light are hand animated, though. It is possible that the animated cards were rotated by the guidance of the computer, I'm not sure. Animation historian William Morris says it was hand animated cards. I'm a USC Cinema student and Christine Panushka is my professor. She made the point that this is often mistaken for computer animation, but is not.

this film was not made on a computer. it was made entirely under film. This is 1966 we're talking about kids.

Definitely trance-inducing.

@ChipZempel GOD I would love to have that!!!!! If you ever find out anything please please post here!

Anthology Film Archives occasionally does screenings of Stan Brakhage's work, I wonder if they've done the same with Harry Smith, John Whitney etc.

@ruslanchorf means what you feel watching it.

I don't know where this computer rumor started, but it is incorrect. Every frame was hand-animated over years. Noted animation historian William Morris states in a biography of James, that " Occasionally, Lapis is listed as a computer graphic film, which is quite untrue. The images were created all created with handmade cels..."

@ruslanchorf I found a great analysis of it once. James Whitney was interested in the magical science of Alchemy which is the search for the power of creation. If you read the details (I forget where I found it, but try Google) the strobing is synchronized to the human brain's alpha wave pattern -- I believe. I could be wrong, it may be Beta or Gamma but anyway, the meaning of this video is very very deep and powerful. Please look for it on Google.

actually it was made on a computer, and it was made on film. the two are not mutually exclusive. the computer used was an electro-mechanical analog computer from WWII which did differential equations.

Astonishing - can anyone tell me what process was used to achieve the effect?

The date is slightly erroneous - work began in 1962 (according to SIGGRAPH) and was finished in 1966.

know if theyll be any sort of distribution on dvd or similar technology? i live in the woods :/

Makes you want to open a nightclub just so you can project this on the wall/stage!

@dross87 that is incorrect and I very much recommend looking for the deeper meaning intended by Whitney.

@ruslanchorf why must it mean anything? just like it for what it is in whatever adjective you care to describe it for yourself

This is incredible. I made a beat out of this.Its incredible as well.

Soundtrack by Ravi Shankar! 😮

What is the name of the song playing here?

This would actually be ok for a PlayStation 1 Game.

what's your interpretation of it?

I find this very interesting, although I can't quite figure out why, what's going on in this video?

E8

the meaning is yours

when you close your eyes on lsd

How was this done exactly? Anybody know? I read he used an analog computer to rotate it, but how was everything else created?

I feel like I just went on worst or best acid trip of my life. At this point, I'm not sure which

@dross87 kerrtex333 just linked me to this post. Wow! Looks like Whitney and I found the same interference pattern. Smoke & Crystal Spheres 2280 ZoomSq YT HD is rotating rings of translucent spheres. I found it playing with spherical arrays. Mind Cuff 12 S2 HD is the same animation with solid rings. Prayer Beads 5 is the basic animation. Free Camera1a MC12 shows the 3D spherical nature of the animation. What do you think of them?

can anyone explain, in layman's terms, how this was done?

MDMA all over again

I have Yantra, I'll put it up for you.

When a man invents something way trippy than I-Doser and way cooler than Winamp Visualizations almost half century before, we call him A VISIONARY!

lol

Now this is very trippy lol

This is a very creepy simulation of an acid trip