User:A Peresie/Jane Veeder

Jane Veeder is an artist-programmer, filmmaker, and professor at San Francisco State University in the Department of Design and Industry, at which she held the position of chair between 2012 and 2015. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she studied video and filmmaking. Veeder is best known for her pioneering work in early computer graphics, however she has also worked extensively with traditional art forms such as painting, ceramics, theatre, and photography.

Veeder moved away from traditional art making and began working with electronic media art in 1976 after her enrollment in the graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she first discovered video as an artistic medium. In 1982, her video 'Montana' became the first computer graphics piece to be featured in the video collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Her video work typically involves working with computer softwares to create animated and sometimes interactive video works. Her work utilizes computer graphics to fabricate images and animate them to achieve a more direct relationship between the artist and the visuals. Many pieces are meant to involve participation between the viewer and the work itself, inviting the viewer to become immersed in the work. Veeder's work contributed to the rise of a new artistic medium of digital technology and she continues to contribute to the world of computer graphics, volunteering for SIGGRAPH in 1995 and 1997. In 2001, Veeder built the 3SPACE Lab for 3D animation, product modeling, and Web3D on the San Francisco State University campus.

Early life and education[ edit]
Jane Veeder moved to the neighborhood of Pilsen in Chicago, IL to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 70's.

Both of Jane Veeder’s parents were Artists, her mother was a painter and her father was a photographer.

From 1967-1969 Veeder studied ceramic sculptures and photography at California College of Arts & Crafts graduating with a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts (BFA). In the early 1970's Veeder moved from California to the neighborhood of Pilsen in Chicago, Illinois. From 1975-1977, Veeder pursued her Master's Degree in Fine Arts (MFA) at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where she studied video and filmmaking.

While studying at SAIC in 1976, she first met Phil Morton, the founder of the Video Department at SAIC. Soon after meeting, their individual art practices became heavily influenced by each other. New technologies and artistic communities were emerging at this time. Their collaboration resulted in them creating a number of programs from scratch.

After enrolling in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA program, Veeder began taking film classes. By the end of her first year at SAIC, Veeder had discovered video as an artistic medium and switched entirely from studying Ceramic Sculpture to studying Video and Film.

Early career in computer graphics
Veeder's knowledge of photography lead her to experiment with video art, eventually working across multiple program platforms. These included Bally Home Computer/Arcade, and ZGRASS computer language which was eventually combined with Sandin Image Processor. The burgeoning professional video game industry in Chicago gave Veeder an outlet to put her theories into practice.

Veeder collaborated with Phil Morton to create the video art pieces "Program #7" and "Program #9" in 1978.

Program #7
Program #7 was a part of a series known as The Electronic Visualization Center: A Television Research Satellite to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which were created using a Sandin Image Processor and a Bally Arcade System. Veeder and Morton used the Sandin Image Processor to add varying patterns to the videos, and overlay graphics created using the Bally Home Computer. Program #7 was televised on Chicago Public Television as a part of a series which ran work by independent video creators.

Videotape Presentations, Live Video, and Computer Graphics Performances, Workshops, and/or Any Useful Format of Collaboration
Veeder produced many works in collaboration with Chicago artist Phil Morton. Videotape Presentations, Live Video, and Computer Graphics Performances, Workshops, and/or Any Useful Format of Collaboration was a series of video programs inspired by their trips to the western mountains of the United States between 1976 and 1982. These videos were broadcast on Chicago public television.

The Paint Problem
The Paint Problem was an article written with Copper Giloth in 1985 for the magazine IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. In it, Veeder and Golith analyze the ways in which computer art programs were emulating real world processes digitally rather than making use of the unique capabilities that computers had to offer. Veeder and Golith argue that the role of artists is to use new technology to accomplish things that aren't possible in other media.

did someone else write about its significance?

Original:

Veeder coauthored the article titled The Paint Problem with Copper Giloth in 1985. The article, meant for IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, analyzed the ways in which computer art programs were emulating real world processes digitally rather than making use of the unique capabilities that computers had to offer. Veeder and Giloth argued that Computer graphics was not just a tool to make your existing processes faster but rather an entirely new set of tools with an entirely new set of capabilities that had yet to be taken advantage of.

Solo work
Over the span of her career, Jane Veeder has worked on many independent projects, several of which have been exhibited at the SIGGRAPH Art Show.

In 1982, Veeder created several works utilizing the capabilities of the Datamax UV-1 Zgrass Graphics Computer. She continued to use the Datamax UV-1 for several more projects in the years to come.

Veeder first exhibited her digitally synthesized work at the 1982 SIGGRAPH Art Show. At the 1982 conference, Veeder exhibited her works, Bubblespiral, Montana, Warpitpout, and Bustergrid.

Her video piece titled Montana piece would go on to become the first computer graphics video piece to be featured in the Museum of Modern Art's Video Collection.

Bubblespiral is a 2-Dimensional printed piece measuring 21.5 x 28 inches in size. Montana is an interactive piece incorporating computer synthesized graphics. The piece was displayed as a video and has a duration of 3:05 minutes. Warpitout is an interactive piece that incorporates realtime morphing of an image of the players face. The player could use the controls on the unit to distort the image of themselves in realtime. Bustergrid is another 2-Dimensional printed artwork created using computer graphics measuring 21.5 x 28 inches in size, the same dimensions as Bubblespiral

One year later in 1983, Veeder only produced one artwork that would be shown at that years SIGGRAPH Art Show, the piece, titled Floater, is a 6:12 minuter long real-time computer generated video piece. Again, two years later, at the 1985 SIGGRAPH Art Show Veeder only exhibited one work. The work exhibited that year, titled Vizgame and was a computer generated interactive artwork. The piece allowed the player to build a real-time generated animation on a 16-square grid, allowing the player to control the animation of each block.

In 2018, Veeder's piece, ???????--find which one was included in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition, curated by jonCates.

Montana
Montana was Veeder's first video piece made using real-time computer graphics and video gathered from her trips to the western mountains, with text including "Good Luck Electronically Visualizing Your Futures!", about digital graphical depictions. During her trips west with Phil Morton, she gathered video with a Sony Portapak, and produced video with Most recently, it was included in the exhibition titled Living Dead at the Walter Philips Gallery in Banff, Alberta.

is a video made using real-time computer graphics that premiered at the American Film Institute's first National Video Festival in Los Angeles.

Warpitout
Warpitout was a realtime interactive video installation which processed video of the viewer's face and was inspired by the image processor events in Chicago.