Destino began in 1946 as a collaboration between Walt Disney and the famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali. A first-hand example of Disney's interest in avant garde and experimental work in animation, Destino was to be awash with Dali's iconic melting clocks, marching ants and floating eyeballs. However, Destino was not completed at that time. In 2003 it was rediscovered by Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, who took on the challenge of bringing the creation of these two great artists to fruition. In addition to the completed Destino, this exciting addition to the Walt Disney Treasures line also includes an all-new feature-length documentary that examines the surprising partnership between Dali and Disney plus two new featurettes; "The Disney That Almost Was," an examination of the studio's unfinished projects; and "Encounters with Walt," which addresses the surprisingly diverse group of celebrities and artists who were attracted to Walt Disney's early work.
Photo#1 : A perspective drawing by Sant'Elia, 1914Antonio Sant'Elia was born in Como, Lombardy. A builder by training, he opened a design office in Milan in 1912 and became involved with the Futurist movement. Between 1912 and 1914, influenced by industrial cities of the United States and the Viennese architects Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, he began a series of design drawings for a futurist Città Nuova and the ("New City") that was conceived as symbolic of a new age.
Many of these drawings were displayed at the only exhibition of the Nuove Tendenze group (of which he was a member) exhibition in May/June 1914 at the "Famiglia Artistica" gallery. Today, some of these drawings are on permanent display at Como's art gallery (Pinacoteca). (They used to be in the Villa Olmo)
The manifesto Futurist Architecture was published in August 1914, supposedly by Sant'Elia, though this is subject to debate. In it the author stated that "the decorative value of Futurist architecture depends solely on the use and original arrangement of raw or bare or violently colored materials". As described in this manifesto, his designs featured bold groupings and large-scale disposition of planes and masses creating a heroic industrial expressionism. His vision was for a highly industrialised and mechanized city of the future, which he saw not as a mass of individual buildings but a vast, multi-level, interconnected and integrated urban conurbation designed around the "life" of the city. His extremely influential designs featured vast monolithic skyscraper buildings with terraces, bridges and aerial walkways that embodied the sheer excitement of modern architecture and technology.
A nationalist as well as an irredentist, Sant'Elia joined the Italian army as Italy entered World War I in 1915. He was killed during the Battles of the Isonzo, near Monfalcone. Most of his designs were never built, but his futurist vision has influenced many architects, artists and designers.
Max Vernon Mathews (* November 13, 1926, in Columbus, Nebraska) is a pioneer in the world of computer music. He studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a Sc.D. in 1954. Working at Bell Labs, Mathews wrote MUSIC, the first widely-used program for sound generation, in 1957. For the rest of the century, he continued as a leader in digital audio research, synthesis, and human-computer interaction as it pertains to music performance.
Although he was not the first to generate sound with a computer (an Australian CSIRAC computer played tunes as early as 1951), Mathews fathered generations of digital music tools. He describes his work in parental terms in this excerpt from "Horizons in Computer Music," March 8-9, 1997, Indiana University:
"Computer performance of music was born in 1957 when an IBM 704 in NYC played a 17 second composition on the Music I program which I wrote. The timbres and notes were not inspiring, but the technical breakthrough is still reverberating. Music I led me to Music II through V. A host of others wrote Music 10, Music 360, Music 15, Csound and Cmix. Many exciting pieces are now performed digitally. The IBM 704 and its siblings were strictly studio machines--they were far too slow to synthesize music in real-time. Chowning's FM algorithms and the advent of fast, inexpensive, digital chips made real-time possible, and equally important, made it affordable."
"Starting with the Groove program in 1970, my interests have focused on live performance and what a computer can do to aid a performer. I made a controller, the radio-baton, plus a program, the conductor program, to provide new ways for interpreting and performing traditional scores. In addition to contemporary composers, these proved attractive to soloists as a way of playing orchestral accompaniments. Singers often prefer to play their own accompaniments. Recently I have added improvisational options which make it easy to write compositional algorithms. These can involve precomposed sequences, random functions, and live performance gestures. The algorithms are written in the C language. We have taught a course in this area to Stanford undergraduates for two years. To our happy surprise, the students liked learning and using C. Primarily I believe it gives them a feeling of complete power to command the computer to do anything it is capable of doing."
In 1961, Mathews arranged the accompaniment of the song Daisy Bell for an uncanny performance by computer-synthesized human voice, using technology developed by John Kelly of Bell Laboratories and others. Author Arthur C. Clarke was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce at the Bell Labs Murray Hill facility at the time of this remarkable speech synthesis demonstration and was so impressed that he later told Stanley Kubrick to use it in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in the climactic scene where the HAL 9000 computer sings while his cognitive functions are disabled.
Mathews directed the Acoustical and Behavioral Research Center at Bell Laboratories from 1962 to 1985, which carried out research in speech communication, visual communication, human memory and learning, programmed instruction, analysis of subjective opinions, physical acoustics, and industrial robotics. From 1974 to 1980 he was the Scientific Advisor to the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), Paris, France, and since 1987 has been Professor of Music (Research) at Stanford University. He served as the Master of Ceremonies for the concert program of NIME-01, the inaugural conference on New interfaces for musical expression.
Mathews is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Acoustical Society of America, the IEEE, and the Audio Engineering Society. He holds a Silver Medal in Musical Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America, and the Chevalier dans l'ordre des Arts et Lettres, Republique Francaise.
The Max portion of the software package Max/MSP is named after him (the MSP portion is named for Miller Puckette, currently teaching at UC- San Diego).
Reference: http://www.answers.com/topic/max-mathews
"Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. In 1961, the IBM 7094 became the first computer to sing, singing the song Daisy Bell. Vocals were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum and the accompaniment was programmed by Max Mathews. This performance was the inspiration for a similar scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Below the pictures there is a video clip you can play with the audio recording. Enjoy.
PHOTO #1: IBM 7094 Emergency Power Off Switch
