Stan Vanderbeek

Stan
Vanderbeek

VanDerBeek studied art and architecture first at Cooper Union College in New York and then at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met architect Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and ...

Films

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    A La Mode
    Experimental

    A La Mode
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 10 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Body
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    Computer Generation

    Computer Generation
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 29 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    What, Who, How
    Animation
    Experimental

    What, Who, How
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 8 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Arts / Artists
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    Astral Man
    Animation
    Experimental

    Astral Man
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 2 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Philosophical
    • Spiritual / Mystical
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    Wheeeeels No. 1
    Experimental

    Wheeeeels No. 1
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Found Footage
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    Wheeeeels No. 2
    Experimental

    Wheeeeels No. 2
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
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    Achoo Mr. Keroochev
    Animation
    Experimental

    Achoo Mr. Keroochev
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 2 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Political / Social Activism
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    Dance of the Looney Spoons
    Animation
    Experimental

    Dance of the Looney Spoons
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
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    Mankinda
    Experimental

    Mankinda
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 10 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Hand-Processed
    • Dance
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    Science Friction
    Experimental

    Science Friction
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 9 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Science / Medicine
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Comedy
    • Appropriation / Detournement
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    Blacks & Whites, Days & Nights
    Experimental

    Blacks & Whites, Days & Nights
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Landscape / Architecture
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    Skullduggery
    Experimental

    Skullduggery
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, 35mm, Digital file
    • Found Footage
    • Hand-Processed
    • Appropriation / Detournement
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    Snapshots of the City
    Experimental

    Snapshots of the City
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Political / Social Activism
    • Arts / Artists
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    Summit
    Experimental

    Summit
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 12 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    Breathdeath
    Experimental

    Breathdeath
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 15 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, 35mm, Digital file
    • Philosophical
    • Found Footage
    • Comedy
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    A Dam Rib Bed
    Animation

    A Dam Rib Bed
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, silent, 15 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
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    Poem Field No. 1
    Experimental

    Poem Field No. 1
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • CGI / Digital
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    The Human Face is a Monument
    Experimental

    The Human Face is a Monument
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 9.5 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Body
    • History
    • Ethnographic
    • Found Footage
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    See, Saw, Seems
    Animation
    Experimental

    See, Saw, Seems
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 10 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, 35mm, Digital file
    • Psychology / Mental Health
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    Poem Field No. 2
    Experimental

    Poem Field No. 2
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 6 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • CGI / Digital
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    Panels for the Walls of the World
    Experimental

    Panels for the Walls of the World
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 8 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • Technology
    • Ethnographic
    • Found Footage
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    Poem Field No. 5: Free Fall
    Experimental

    Poem Field No. 5: Free Fall
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 7 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • CGI / Digital
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    Poem Field No. 7
    Animation
    Experimental

    Poem Field No. 7
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 4 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • CGI / Digital
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    Vanderbeekiana
    Documentary
    Experimental

    Vanderbeekiana
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color and b/w, sound, 29 min
    Rental format: 16mm
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    Film Form No. 1
    Experimental

    Film Form No. 1
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm , color, sound, 10.42 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Dance
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    Oh
    Experimental

    Oh
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm , color, sound, 9.22 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Psychology / Mental Health
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    Who Ho Ray No. 1
    Animation
    Experimental

    Who Ho Ray No. 1
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, silent, 8 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
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    Symmetricks
    Experimental

    Symmetricks
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, black and white, sound, 7 min
    Rental format: 16mm
    • CGI / Digital
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    Euclidean Illusions
    Experimental

    Euclidean Illusions
    Stan Vanderbeek

    16mm, color, sound, 9 min
    Rental formats: 16mm, Digital file
    • Technology
    • Children / Youth
    • CGI / Digital

Biography

VanDerBeek studied art and architecture first at Cooper Union College in New York and then at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he met architect Buckminster Fuller, composer John Cage, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. VanDerBeek began his career in the 1950s making independent art film while learning animation techniques and working painting scenery and set designs for the American TV show, Winky Dink and You. His earliest films, made between 1955 and 1965 mostly consist of animated paintings and collage films, combined in a form of organic development.

VanDerBeek's ironic compositions were created very much in the spirit of the surreal and dadaist collages of Max Ernst, but with a wild, rough informality more akin to the expressionism of the Beat Generation. In the 1960s, VanDerBeek began working with the likes of Claes Oldenburg and Allan Kaprow, as well as representatives of modern dance, such as Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer. Building his Movie Drome theater at Stony Brook, New York, at just about the same time, he designed shows using multiple projectors. The Movie Drome was a grain silo dome which he turned into his ‘infinite projection screen’. Visitors entered the dome through a trap-door in the floor, and were encouraged after entering to spread out over the floor and lie with their feet pointing towards the centre. Once inside, the audience experienced a dynamic inter-dispersal of movies and images around them, created by over a dozen slide and film projectors filling the concave surface with a dense collage of moving imagery. These presentations contained a very great number of random image sequences and continuities, with the result that none of the performances were alike.

His desire for the utopian led him to work with Ken Knowlton in a co-operation at Bell Labs, where dozens of computer animated films and holographic experiments were created by the end of the 1960s. Between 1964 and 1967 Vanderbeek created poem fields, a series of 8 computer-generated animations with Ken Knowlton.

During the same period, he taught at many universities, researching new methods of representation, from the steam projections at the Guggenheim Museum to the interactive television transmissions of his Violence Sonata broadcast on several channels in 1970. He ran the University of Maryland, Baltimore County visual arts program until his death.

Archive

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