Lillian Schwartz’s small apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is crowded with artwork and computers. Macs from several decades share space with video editing decks from the 1980s. Dozens of versions of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa peek out from shelves and desktops*. At 87, Lillian is still working with the help of assistants, finding new takes on the vibrant films that have defined her career and influenced generations of artists.
I’ve come to the apartment to make a short film for the Eyeo Festival, and in-between takes the conversation veers wildly. Calligraphy in post-war Japan. Salvador Dali’s urine. Arno Penzias on a stepladder. These stories all curl around a common core, though: an astonishing thirty-three year adventure in collaboration at the forefront of technological thinking.
The story starts with a piece of Lillian’s called Proxima Centauri, a kinetic sculpture involving a glass globe, a ripple tank, and a slide projector. Later in the 1968 it would appear on Star Trek (as a prison for Spock’s brain) but that spring it was a part of a show called The Machine at the Beginning of the Mechanical Age, at the Museum of Modern Art. At the opening, Lillian met computer graphics pioneer Leon Harmon, who extended a pivotal invitation:
“And then he said to me: Would you like to come to Bell Labs?”
In the sixties, the most innovative place on the planet was in New Jersey. Headquartered in Murray Hill, Bell Labs was an absurdly productive center for research. Famous for its long hallways and deep pockets, the facility attracted the best minds from all around the world. A short list of inventions and discoveries from Bell Labs’ first first five decades of operation include the transistor, UNIX, information theory and the cellular telephone.
Lillian quietly moved into the ground floor of the labs (where she had to push for the installation of a women’s bathroom, since the only existing one was near the typing pool), and began three decades of collaboration with a diverse group of scientists and engineers including Harmon, Ken Knowlton, John Chambers, and Max Mathews. Lillian made algorithmic prints and kinetic sculptures and laser etchings, but mostly she experimented with film, testing countless ideas about how computation could inform and transform cinematic media.
Lillian’s stories from Murray Hill are shining examples of collaborative practice. Take for example her 1976 film Papillon, which emerged from conversations with the statistician John Chambers, who was working on methods for visualizing statistical models. Lillian offered advice for selecting color, and Chambers in turn taught her how to modify the computer code to get more diverse results.
“He said, just change the numbers. Print it out. See what happens.”
Papillon (scored by Mathews) was exhibited as part of a diptych, its fluid forms side-by-side to Chambers’ formal scientific results. This framing embodies the magic of what was happening with Lillian at Bell Labs: it was science and art, instead of science or art. I heard many more stories from which followed the same pattern: brief conversations over lunch would lead to long collaborations, fruitful for both parties involved. The legacy of these collaborations lies not only in the artworks that were created but also in tools and techniques which Lillian developed, many of which were first-of-their-kind.
Many things have changed for Lillian since those heady days at Murray Hill. Her husband Jack died a few years ago, and she spends most of her time alone. Post-Polio syndrome, along with lingering effects of radiation exposure from her time in Japan in 1946, make mobility difficult. Recent eye surgery has left her sensitive to bright light, meaning long periods of screen time can be painful. One thing that hasn’t changed is her commitment to her work and her thirst for collaboration– she meets with student volunteers nearly every day* to make new films and to explore new ideas.
The Wikipedia page for Bell Labs lists hundreds of famous scientists, dozens of monumental discoveries and eight Nobel prizes. Writing (and re-writing) that history, it’s easy to skip over the role that Lillian played there: the conversations, the collaborations, and the many artworks, tools and ideas that resulted. With this omission, though, we skip one of the most engaging and fundamentally human threads in the story of Bell Labs. It’s a story that we need to remember.
Because it places art alongside science & engineering. Because it reminds us to look for collaboration across all kinds boundaries. Because there are so many Lillian Schwartzes who are looking for their Murray Hill, and so many Bell Labs who need to find their Lillian Schwartz.
“The thing that was wonderful about the labs is that people didn’t always close their doors.”
Here’s the film that we shot that day at Lillian’s apartment:
Notes:
- Lillian’s work with the Mona Lisa was one of the first examples of computational image analysis: http://lillian.com/art-analysis/
- Lillian is currently looking for volunteers to work with her on new work. If you’re interested, please contact me, and I will put you in touch.
- This article barely scratches the surface of Lillian’s astounding creative output. Visit her site to see (a lot) more.
