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Janice (Jan) Richmond Lourie (July 9, 1930) is a computer scientist and graphic artist. In the late 1960's she was a pioneer in CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacture) for the textile industry. She is best known for inventing a set of software tools that facilitate the textile production stream from artist to manufacturer. For this process, GRAPHICAL DESIGN OF TEXTILES, she was granted IBM's first software patent. Other projects, in differing disciplines, share the focus on graphic representation. She returns throughout an ongoing career to the stacked two dimensional tabular arrays of textiles and computer graphics, and the topological structures of interrelated data.

Education
Janice studied music theory and history at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge Massachusetts. Rosario Mazzeo was her clarinet teacher. She performed in chamber music concerts in the tapestry gallery series at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and with amateur orchestras and chamber music groups in the Boston area. In 1954 she became a founding member of the Camerata of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her instruments were the tenor shawm and psaltery from the museum collection and contemporary Dolmetsch recorders.

When she received her AB degree in philosophy from Tufts University she was employed as a technical editor at Parke Mathematical Laboratories in Concord Massachusetts. Her interest in the material she edited led to work at the MIT Whirlwind computer which she combined with basic mathematics courses. She returned to school and received a master’s degree in mathematics from Boston University.

IBM
Janice was recruited by IBM. In 1957 it was common for IBM and other computer manufacturers to hire musicians as programmers because of their focus on structure. Her first assignment was to assist Dr. John (Giampiero) Rossoni who was in charge of the IBM part of the Operation Moonwatch Project then being conducted at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Operations Research
Her first major project, in Operations Research, was to implement an algorithm by Abraham Charnes to solve the machine loading problem -- a generalization of the transportation problem. In 1958 a software solution to the transportation problem was a staple operations research tool. The solution determines the pattern of delivery of one type of goods from multiple sources to multiple destinations satisfying all requirements at a minimum cost.

The generalized problem, expressed as machine loading, states that all the products may be different and may be produced on different machines. The variability of sources and destinations in this model has a drastic effect on the topological structure underlying the solution. The topology of each stage of an iterative solution in the transportation problem is a tree structure. In the generalized transportation problem the topological structure of the evolving interative solution is a set of disconnected loops each with attached branched sidechains (trees).

Since each iteration of the generalized solution proceeding toward a minimum cost objective has a new assignment of products to machines, the topological structure of loops and chains at the beginning of an iteration is broken, and a new such structure is produced. Jan analyzed the possible structures that could be created during iterations into 38 independent cases. A significance of the topological analysis is that it provided a verification method.

The resulting paper, "The topology and computation of the generalized transportation problem," graphically represents the case analysis. The interest in this paper comes from the graphic representations of the original transportation problem in the stepping stone and simplex method formulations. The corresponding IBM program, released in 1959, utilized efficient list processing (tree tracing) techniques combined with a bookeeping system for managing the loops. (At the time LISP was being developed at MIT by John McCarthy).

Textile Graphics/ Computer-Aided
Janice’s interest in weaving began at age seven when she saw an exhibit of traveling weavers from Berea, Kentucky. As an adult she studied fabric construction with Kate Van Cleve in Boston, and design with Lili Blumenau and tapestry with Maria Mundal in New York City. Her own weaving was exhibited in New York at the Pen and Brush and with Artist Craftsmen of New York from 1962 to 1982. In 1964 she made a proposal to IBM management, which was accepted, to develop a working system to translate artists’ designs into loom control information, and to develop the hardware and software to control the loom. Her first article, "The textile designer of the future," explained how working with a computer would give increased freedom to textile designers. "On-line textile designing" reviewed past attempts at automating the designing process and set forth reasons why the advent of interactive tools now made aspects of this goal feasible. Janice spent a year in three diverse textile manufacturing facilities, working alongside artists and designers, to learn the aesthetic judgments and technical skills needed to transform artwork to point paper -- the preliminary representation of production control. When her software design was complete IBM filed a software patent in 1966. It was granted in 1970. It was IBM's first software patent. Related patents  and later a book, Textile Graphics/Computer Aided, followed.

The Textile Graphics project then undertook the natural extensions to printed and knitted fabrics, and woven fabrics produced on a dobby loom. The algebraic formulation of the designs produced on a dobby loom is described in an ACM paper.

Textile Graphics, known as GRITS (graphic interactive textile system) internally, was a precursor of today's tools that allow a personal computer user to “paint” closed areas of a design with color or patterns. The 1969 paper, "Computation of connected regions in interactive graphics," addresses the problem of automatically identifying and labeling the connected regions formed by sets of closed curves -- a general problem encountered in interactive computer graphics. The first patent subsumes this capability. The subsequent patent related to connected regions, enlarged the scope of the procedure to arbitrarily large designs.

When preparation was underway for the 1968 San Antonio HemisFair, IBM chose the Textile Graphics system for its Durango pavilion. Visitors were able to draw the design on the screen and receive a swatch of woven fabric within three minutes. The complete system is described in an IFIPS paper. The visibility of both the process and the product made a clear statement of CAD/CAM. In his book, Computer History from Pascal to von Neumann, Herman Goldstine comments on the significance of this application. Interactive computer tools -- display screens, digital drawing tablets, lightpens and function keyboards -- drew interest in creative applications. Museums and art organizations saw potential applications early. The Metropolitan Museum held a conference on the potential applications of computers in Museums in 1968. Following that, in 1970,Janice and IBM colleague Alice Bonin collaborated with Virginia Burton, an Egyptologist at the museum, on an archeological paper. Jan was a focus group leader at Insight '69, a conference of the American Craftsmen of the Northeast Region held at Bennington College. Her group of experienced craftsmen explored the potential use of computers by building a small computer memory using blades of grass and clover blossoms for ones and zeroes, learning binary arithmetic, and thinking up new applications based on their personal interests. James Martin's book shows photographs of the use of interactive tools on the Textile Graphics system. Stewart Kranz interviewed Janice on the bridge between science and art.

Early in the 1970s, the president of FIT, Lawrence Jarvie, made a request to IBM for Janice to teach a course in her Textile Graphics system to FIT faculty. The faculty was composed of designers who both taught and worked in the industry. It was an opportunity for feedback. IBM gave a Geospace high resolution plotter to the school to enable the students to experiment with manipulation of digital designs and execute the production process using their internal printing facilities. The faculty course was followed by a course for FIT students. IBM gave the HemisFair loom and electronic control head to FIT. The course was hands on, taught jointly by Janice and Nitta Dooner, then acting director of the FIT Computation Center. Three of the students coauthored a paper on the course with Lourie and Dooner. Dooner, Lourie and Velderman jointly developed a system for sampling dobby textiles.

Software Engineering
In the 1970’s Janice taught a course in Software Engineering at the IBM Systems Science Institute in New York City. Experience with the FIT course and with student involvement led to two collaborative efforts on software and graphic systems design tools with Janice at IBM SSI and Nitta Dooner at IBM Watson Reearch Center. The development of the tools was used as teaching material in the software engineering course.

Amiga Graphics
In 1987, Commodore released a frame grabber for the Amiga computer, called Live!. The input was rolling pre-recorded video. Capture was triggered by pressing keyboard keys. A graphic improvisation could be produced by assigning, in advance, different keys to different graphic transformations. During performance, a user watching the rolling video on the screen selected an appropriate transformation which began and ended with a key press. Tape rolled until the next transformation was selected. The technique of assigning different capabilities to a set of keys was reminiscent of the IBM function keyboard associated with the 2250 display unit developed by IBM for automobile design and used on the Textile Graphics project.

Jan produced the video "Manhattan Live!" which was shown at the Donnell Library in 1989.

Composite Graphics
In 1995 with the release of "Scrutiny in the Great Round", a prize winning interactive video, Jan's primary tools became Adobe Photoshop and Elastic Reality. Elastic Reality combined morphing and compositing for stills and video.

She utilized a full composite technique, subsuming collage, overlay and alpha channel, allowing every pixel to be filtered by a different amount of transparency. Access to intermediate stages of the composite, for modification or standalone use, was provided by a descriptive statement form that included all the images and processes involved in producing a stage. The statement became the filename of the image, making it possible to trace the entire subtree of images from which it was developed.

Becoming
In 2002 Jan and colleague Takayo Noda presented a two part show at the National Arts Club - the dimensional collages of Noda, and a projected video poem "Becoming" by Lourie which used the Elastic Reality morphed images of Noda’s work combined with lines of traditional poetry expressing parallel themes of becoming older and younger.

Gotham
In 2004 Jan and colleague Joan Firestone presented a show at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, called "Gotham: extraordinary images of an exceptional city."

The images were based on walkabout Manhattan pictures taken jointly and composited using Elastic Reality. The Wilson Museum at the Southern Vermont Arts Center, which hosted the exhibit, was itself the subject of an independent video. The video used both morphed images of the museum as well as composited elements of its own structure.

Wood metal stone
The sculpture Rondo, by Tony Rosenthal, which stands on the sidewalk in front of the 58th street branch of the New York Public Library, caught Jan's attention on a walk. She used photographs of it in her next show. The textures of wood metal and stone in the photographs came from the bronze of the sculpture influenced by the sun and drive-by reflections. Rondo images were composited with city architecture. "Delmonico trumped" and the triple print "Escalate 1,2,3" are in the print collection of the New York Historical Society.

A symposium on creativity was conducted along with the show. Wayne Eastman's blog conveys the spirit of the subject.

Contagion of creativity
Rondo plays a major role in the next show "Contagion of Creativity". Jan spent many hours studying Rondo from different angles and under different weather and lighting conditions. The library manager John Bhagwandin offered to rotate the sculpture to take advantage of light hitting it in different ways. Small areas became enlarged total images. Printed on brushed aluminum, they can now be seen encircling the library above the bookshelves.

Crisis in wall street
Janice, who had to leave her childhood home during World War II, was motivated to learn about the Wall Street crisis in the first decade of the 21st century. The result was the show: "Crisis in Wall Street: how a home was lost. The show is in three parts -- text, poem and images. It correlates what happened with the ensuing reactions. The text and the poem match each other section by section. Each line of a verse appears on a brushed aluminum print representing the sentiment of the text. The metal prints are at the Rutgers Business School.

The first internet: the alphabet
The images in the show make use of transparency to convey the linking of today and that original time; they pay tribute to the past with modern technology.

The images are Elastic Reality composites of alphabetic characters from Photoshop and reflections-in-gleaming-metal photographs, many from "Contagion of Creativity". The twenty-six letters are printed on brushed aluminum.

Recognition
IBM outstanding contribution award 1969

IBM invention achievement award 1970

Elected to sigma xi 1958

Tufts University Arts and Sciences overseer 1999--2009

Founding member of the Camerata of the Museum of Fine Arts 1954

IBM first software patent 1970

HemisFair pavilion dedicated to display of Textile Graphics 1968

Invited to be ACM national lecturer 1971