Ken Knowlton

Kenneth Charles Knowlton (June 6, 1931 – June 16, 2022) was an American computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist. In 1963, while working at Bell Labs, he developed the BEFLIX programming language for creating bitmap computer-produced movies. In 1966, also at Bell Labs, he and Leon Harmon created the computer artwork Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I).

Early life and education Kenneth Charles Knowlton was born to Frank and Eva (Reith) Knowlton in Springville, New York, on June 6, 1931. He completed high school one year early, then entered Cornell University to study engineering physics. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he continued to a master's degree. He completed his M.S. in 1955; the title of his thesis was "X-Ray Microscopy with a Modified RCA Electron Microscope."

In 1962, Knowlton earned his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 under the supervision of Victor Yngve. His thesis was titled "Sentence Parsing with a Self-Organizing Heuristic Program".

Career In 1963, Knowlton developed the BEFLIX (Bell Flicks) programming language for bitmap computer-produced movies, created using an IBM 7094 computer and a Stromberg-Carlson 4020 microfilm recorder. Each frame contained eight shades of grey and a resolution of 252 x 184. Knowlton worked with artists, including Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz. He and VanDerBeek created the Poem Field animations. Knowlton also created another programming language named EXPLOR (EXplicit Patterns, Local Operations and Randomness).

In 1966, he prepared an animated film as an introduction to the Bell Telephone Laboratories' Low-Level Linked List Language (L6).

In 1966, Knowlton and Leon Harmon were experimenting with photomosaics, creating large prints from collections of small symbols or images. In Computer Nude (Studies in Perception I) they created an image of a reclining nude (choreographer Deborah Hay), The artwork in Studies in Perception also launched Robert Rauschenberg's Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). and Gargoyle (Studies in Perception III).

Knowlton's work had been previously exhibited at Cybernetic Serendipity, an exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from August 2 to October 20, 1968.

Knowlton co-invented Ji Ga Zo with Mark Setteducati, released in the United States on March 30, 2011. Ji Ga Zo is a puzzle in which the user assembles a mosaic from 300 shaded pieces to form a digitized image from the user's own photograph.

Personal life and death Knowlton had three sons and two daughters from his first marriage to Roberta Behrens, which ended in divorce. His second wife, Barbara Bean, died before him. He died at a hospice facility in Sarasota, Florida, on June 16, 2022, ten days after his 91st birthday.