“Apotheosis, which is developed from images made in the radiation treatment of human cancer, is the most beautiful and the most subtly textured work in computer animation I have seen.” – Roger Greenspun, N. Y. Times Award Foothills-1973.

Drawing on rare performances, interviews, animations, and experimental film, this documentary surveys the formative years of electronic music from 1948 to 1980. Featuring pioneering composers and inventors—including Milton Babbitt and Leon Theremin—the film explores the experimental technologies, academic laboratories, and creative struggles that shaped the early evolution of electronic sound.

A dance by bodies of shifting colors.

Beginning with footage of sea birds in flight, the film image is then optically scanned and transformed by the computer. The geometric overlay on live random motion has the effect of creating new depth, a third dimension. Our perception of the birds’ forms and movements is heightened by the abstract pattern outlining them.

1970 short animated film by Lillian Schwartz

Blasting off into cosmic visual abstraction, pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz's recently restored UFOs (shown here in eye-popping ChromoDepth 3-D) is a kinetic tour-de-force whose innovative pixel pigmentation predated advances in stereoscopic technology by decades.