Whitney had an opportunity to work on the new high-powered digital computers between 1966 and 1969, when he was awarded a fellowship as artist-in-residence at IBM. Jack Citron programmed the IBM 360 Digital computers for him. His first computer generated film is rarely seen, but delightful. Whitney titled the film Homage to Rameau not only because Rameau wrote the baroque music heard on the soundtrack, but also to reference Rameau's book Treatise on Harmony. This text focused the direction of Whitney's aesthetic strivings, culminating in his 1980 book Digital Harmony.

At approximately the same time that Whitney worked at IBM in California, other artist-in-residence programs in the East allowed Stan Vanderbeek and Lilian Schwartz to work with Ken Knowlton at Bell Labs. Vanderbeek's Poem Fields mainly uses his clever texts as subject matter, and Schwartz's abstract music films, though colorful and well-paced, seem too similar, hampered by the limitations of the Beflix program. By contrast, John Whitney's computer films grew continually more intricate in their exploration of a genuine aesthetic goal: the establishment of a secure basis for harmonic events in audio-visual presentation.

Harmonic Progression
In each of John's next five films [Permutations (1968), Osaka 1-2-3 (1971), Matrix I (1971), Matrix II (1971), Matrix III (1972), Arabesque (1975)], he demonstrated the principle of "harmonic progression." For example, in Arabesque (programmed by Larry Cuba), Whitney experimented with the eccentricities of Islamic architecture, which, though ultimately harmonic, contain many characteristic reverse curves in its embellishments. Whitney also made three documentary films on the subject of digital harmony. In 1979 he completed Experiments in Motion Graphics. His 1973 Hex Demo for a lecture at Cranbrook was included on a laserdisc of his works issued by Pioneer in 1984.He also completed in 1993 A Personal Search for the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art which is available through Pyramid Film and Video.

Left:Whitney's set-up for filming computer animation from a monitor screen, during an artist residency at IBM Labs. Right:From sequences of Spirals, a piece of "visual music" created by Whitney on a computer program he designed in the late 1980s.

In the later 1980s, Whitney concentrated on developing a computerized instrument on which one could compose visual and musical output simultaneously in real time. His first piece on this new instrumentation, which was improved and updated constantly, appeared as Spirals in 1987. Although the compositions were linked to the particular computer set-up, and defied many attempts to copy them onto film and video, Whitney continued to compose new visual-music pieces until his death in 1995. The Moon Drum series in 12 sections based on Native American ceremonial art was most notable. Although less brilliant than the original computer monitor display, a satisfactory video version of Moon Drum was released.

John Whitney's active filmmaking career endured over 55 years, and 40 of those years were devoted to computer work. This is a remarkable record for any independent filmmaker, but particularly astonishing for the continued quality and vision of Whitney's films.

William Moritz teaches film and animation history at the California Institute of the Arts.