Laurie Spiegel — Mother of VAMPIRE
Back in the ’70s if you wanted to play with color and sound you had to know how to program a computer since color wasn’t democratized yet. This wouldn’t stop today’s pioneer. So coupled with Rand tablet and FORTRAN IV code that she wrote, Laurie Spiegel gave birth to VAMPIRE.
Back in the ’70s if you wanted to experiment with computers, you probably wanted to be at Bell Labs. There, people like Ken Knowlton created the first eDSL called BEFLIX, used for computer animation. In that creative environment was that Spiegel found GROOVE (Generating Realtime Operations On Voltage-controlled Equipment).
What was GROOVE? In Spiegel’s words:
GROOVE consisted of a general purpose computer, various input and output devices (sensors, controllers, analog audio modules, displays, memory) and several libraries of FORTRAN IV and assembly language code modules, all interconnectable by programs written by individual users for specific pieces or purposes. Each user would write FORTRAN programs consisting of library calls and original code, to interface these component modules, both hardware and software, via whatever logic one wished to try.
How did you interface with GROOVE? You had a variety of input devices: “knobs, pushbuttons, a small organ keyboard, a 3D joystick, an alphanumeric keyboard, card reader, several console and toggle switches” explains Spiegel in an article describing the system. As output, you had devices like “2 washing machine sized one megabyte hard disk”.
GROOVE was mostly used to make sound, as you could expect by the name of a device where you plug an organ keyboard… but Spiegel got winded with the idea of modifying it and see if she could create images with it.
So here she is writing FORTRAN IV code and assembly to come up with a system that could produce images in real-time, all in a DDP-24, a machine whose processing power is minuscule compared to today’s computers.
But 32k of RAM, or a slow CPU weren’t a limiting factor for Spiegel’s creativity. Her limitation? The machine provided too few DACs where to connect all kinds of devices.
Using GROOVE, was that she created VAMPIRE (Video And Music Program for Interactive Realtime Exploration/Experimentation), which was an interactive system that mixed color with music. We are talking here about producing realtime images as she draws freehand on the Rand tablet. Today this might seem like nothing, but keep in mind that this is the ’70s where your Apple computer looks like this:
Here’s an image that Spiegel produced with VAMPIRE. Visit her website to find more.
The Hacker Spirit
One of the things that caught my attention about Spiegel is that she embodies the hacker spirit of transforming the devices available to her, to make them do things for which they weren’t designed for. Her transformation of GROOVE into VAMPIRE is just one example.
Here’s a quote from an interview where she asked how did she get involved with computers:
I got involved with computers and music out of frustration with other ways of doing music, in part, and also because of the incredible potential that they had for combining the best of all other worlds: The memory, the logic, the ability to actually interact with sound in real time…
I think in a way that explains the birth of so many software projects: people that is not satisfied with the status quo, and have an urge to hack into it, to transform it.
The complete freedom to define any kind of world you wanted it, and work in it.
As she says, this is ultimately why we love computers, because they let us be free into our own creations.
Like any other vampire, this one consistently got most of its nourishment out of me in the middle of the night, especially just before dawn. It did so from 1974 through 1979, at which time its CORE was dismantled, which was the digital equivalent of having a stake driven through its art.
Advent Calendar — Help us make it a book!
From December 1st until December 24th we plan to release one article each day, highlighting the life of one of the many women that have made today’s computing industry as amazing as it is: From early compilers to computer games, from chip design to distributed systems, we will revisit the lives of these pioneers.
Each article will come with an amazing illustration by @SebastianNavasF
If you want to see these series to become a book with expanded articles and even more illustrations by Sebastián, then subscribe to our newsletter below.
Credits
- Illustration: Sebastián Navas
- VAMPIRE sample picture taken from Spiegel’s website: http://retiary.org/ls/btl/ls_btl_art.html
References
- Spiegel, Laurie. A Quick Description of the GROOVE Hybrid System (http://retiary.org/ls/btl/groove_quick_description.html)
- Spiegel, Laurie. Graphical Groove: Memorium for a Visual Music System (http://retiary.org/ls/writings/vampire.html)
- Part 1: Laurie Spiegel Bell Labs Interview 1984 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzOJtZYsGSA)
- Four Electronic Artists Reflect on the Influence of Composer Laurie Spiegel (https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/10/09/laurie-spiegel-feature/)
- Kane, Carolyn L. Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer art, and Aesthetics After Code. The University Of Chicago Press, 2014.
