I made my first video in 1968 while a student at San Francisco State College. The two inch quad tape was edited as a 16 mm kinescope and was released as The Leap in 1969. It was then released by Universal Pictures in 35 mm as part of their Kinetic Art program of collected shorts. Other video works edited in this manner include Fall, 1971; Outta Space (1978) and Off On, 1968 made with Scott Bartlett and others. The soundtrack for Fall was made at the Electronic Music Studio of SUNY/Albany (Joel Chadabe, Director) in 1971, and I stayed on working there until 1978 using music synthesizers to produce abstract motion graphics as well as the university's regular media video for my brand of pantomime. The latter style is exampled by Multiple Identity Marathon which had a voice track recorded at the Synapse facilities in Syracuse and mime performed by members of Electronic Body Arts, the dance company in Albany -- my umbrella organization from 1978-83. In 1972 I was teaching at the Media Study Center in Buffalo when I met Vibeke Sorensen who today heads the USC Dept. of Animation. With our primary base of operations in Albany, we were collaborators for the next decade. In 1978 we met Dean Winkler at R.P.I. in Troy where we set up the Video Synthesis Laboratory. Later the three of us formed the working group, WTV and realized a series of music video and abstract pieces using facilities at Teletronics, EUE-Video, and R.P.I. Today Dean is President of Post Perfect in NYC.
Along with my work as an artist, I was interested in the development of technology. In 1975 I built an interface for a PDP-11 that was able to read musical scores in skyline notation. This led to development of a tracking chroma key system in 1977 which I dubbed Pantomation. Today it would be called motion capture. First developed on a PDP-8L, Pantomation was ported to an Apple II platform in 1983. It was then used with the Raytel Laser Light Show and The KoMotion pantomime company in live performances through 1987. At that time I received a method patent in optics which became my chief preoccupation and has led to development of a unique 3D scanner based on diffraction.
I teach as an adjunct at Dutchess Community College in the Art and Communications programs. I have been living for the past 11 years in Ancramdale, NY in the south east corner of Columbia County. My wife, Beverly, is a native of Buffalo, received her MFA in Computer Graphics from R.I.T. and met me as a laser light show animator in Troy, NY. Our little Ditto, David, was born in 1996.
THOMAS DITTO
Artist/Inventor/Teacher
Born: Thomas David DeWitt August 1944, New York City (NYC) Changed surname to Ditto at marriage.
Married the former Beverly J. Botto on July 14, 1994 One child, David DeWitt Ditto, born October 27, 1996
Formal Education
*1958-62 Oakwood School, Poughkeepsie, NY (Diploma)
*1962-64 Columbia College, NYC
*1966-68 San Francisco State College (B.A., Industrial Design)
Professional Employment
*1984-87 Vice-President for Research, Raytel, Inc., Troy, NY
*1987-93 Research Associate, DeWitt Brothers Tool Co, Inc., NYC
*1993- Vice-President for Research, DeWitt Brothers Tool Co, Inc., NYC
Academic Affiliations
*1975-82 Adjunct Research Associate, Electronic Music Studio, State University of NY at Albany (SUNYA)
*1982-87 Adjunct Research Associate, Image Processing Laboratory, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Trade Apprenticeships
*1965 Apprentice to Stan Vanderbeek, artist
*1969 Motion Picture Film Technician, Columbia College
*1971 Optical Printer Technician, Film Strip Lab, NYC
Teaching Experience
*1971 Central Michigan University, "Minority Workshop in Radio, Television & Film," with Dr. Robert Manning
* 1972 Northern Michigan University, "Video Production,"
* Antioch/Center for Understanding Media, "Advanced Film Production," with Dr. Gerald O'Grady
*State University of NY at Buffalo/ Media Study, "Introduction to Video"
* 1973 Danmarks Radio/TV Byen, Copenhagen, "Video Synthesis Workshop," with Ronald Nameth
*1976-7 State University of NY at Albany (SUNYA), School of General Studies, "Video Art," with Vibeke Sorensen
* 1979 RPI, Dept. of Language, Literature and Communications, "Video Art," with Dr. George Barnett
* 1981 RPI, Dept of the Arts, "Principles of Motion Media"
* 1985 RPI, Dept. of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, "Image Recording Laboratory"
*1991- D.C.C., Dept. of Communication, Performing and Visual Arts; Animation, Digital Photo Compositing & Advanced Video Production
Lectures with Media Presentation since 1971
Anthology Film Archives · Art Center College of Design · Art Institute of Chicago · Bard College · Belgian Film Archive · Berks Filmmakers · Boston Film and Video Foundation · California College of Arts and Crafts · California Institute of the Arts · Calumet College (Indiana) · Catskill Center for Photography · Central Michigan University · The Cinematheque (San Francisco) · City University of NY (CUNY) · Columbia University · Contemporary Media Study Center (Dayton) · Cooper Union · Danish Royal College of Art and Architecture · Films and Art School/UCLA · Global Village · Henie-Onstad Museum · Hotchkiss School · Ithaca College · The Kitchen · Long Beach State University · Media Study, Inc. · Millenium · Mills College · M.I.T. · The Museum of Modern Art (NYC) · National Association of Media Educators · National Film Theater (London) · New York State Library Association · Pacific Film Archives · Paul Smith's College · Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Carnegie Art Museum · Pratt Institute · Public Libraries of NYC, New Paltz, Woodstock, Poughkeepsie, and Port Washington · RPI · San Francisco Art Institute · San Francisco State University · State University of NY (Albany & Buffalo) · Syracuse niversity · The Tech Museum of Innovation · Tyler School of the Arts · University of Cinncinati · University of Iowa · University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) · University of New Mexico · University of Rochester · Upstate Films · Utica College · Vassar College · Video Free America · Virginia Commonwealth University · Walnut Street Theater (Phila.) · Washington State University · Yale University
Grants and Fellowships
1974
Creative Artist Public Service (CAPS), Video Art Fellowship
* Peg Santvoord Foundation, Video Production
* New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), WNET/TV Lab residency
1975
* American Film Institute, Film Production
* NYSCA, WNET/TV Lab residency
* National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Public Media, Fellowship to study electronic technology
1976
* NEA Public Media, WNET/TV Lab residency
* NYSCA, Construction of computer vision system for video systems (Pantomation)
1978
* Guggenheim Foundation, Video Fellowship
* NEA Media Arts, Video Fellowship
1979
* NEA Media Arts, Workshops in Pantomation at RPI
1980
* CAPS, Video Fellowship
1981
* NEA Media Arts & NYSCA, Research into new methods of image processing and computer
animation at RPI
1982
* NYSCA, Festival of Visual Music at New York State Capitol and RPI
1987
* NYSCA, Demonstrations of use of laser art in the instruction of pantomime
1993
* National Science Foundation (NSF), Diffraction Range Finding for 3-D Machine Vision
1994
* New York State Science and Technology Foundation. Range Finder for Occlusions and Cavities
1995
*Experimental Television Center, Finishing Funds
Festivals
1966
* 10th San Francisco International Film Festival, Zellerbach Award, AtmosFear
1967
* Cinethon, Toronto, AtmosFear
1968
* 3rd Independent Filmmakers Competition, Award of Merit, TheLeap
1969
* 8th Foothill Film Festival, 2nd Prize, The Leap
* 13th San Francisco International Film Festival, Gund Award for Best Short Film, The Leap
1970
* The Kinetic Art, Lincoln Center, The Leap
1971
* 5th Independent Filmmakers Competition, 1st Prize, Fall
1972
* 4th Yale Film Festival, Honorable Mention, Fall
* Berkeley Film Festival, 2nd Prize, Fall
1974
* Computer Arts Festival, CUNY, Philharmonia
* 11th Avant Garde Art Festival, NYC, Philharmonia
* 5th International Experimental Film Competition Knukke-Heist, Belgium,
Philharmonia and Zierot
1975
* Refocus 75, University of Iowa, 1st Prize, Zierot
* Urban Focus, Columbia University, AtmosFear
* 12th Annual Avant Garde Festival, NYC, Zierot
1976
* 2nd Ithaca Video Festival, excerpts from CRT
* Computer Arts Exhibition, Tokyo, Philharmonia
* VideoExpo, Woodstock, NY, Multiple Identity
* Hudson Valley Film and Video Festival, CRT
1977
* 7th Open Encounter on Video, Barcelona, CRT
* 13th Annual Avant Garde Arts Festival, CRT
* Electronic Visions, New Orleans, CRT
1978
* TV South/Sinking Creek, Tenn., This Is TV Hometown USA,
National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (NFLCP), Tour
Selection, This Is TV America
* Vermont Community Video Festival, This Is TV America
* National Conference on Public Access Cable TV, San Diego,
This Is TV America
1979
* Global Village Documentary Festival, This is TV America
* Video 79, Rome, Cathode Ray Theater
* Public Access Festival, Seattle, This Is TV America
1980
* Video Shorts, Seattle, Dancing on Lakes Unknown, with Vibeke Sorensen
* 15th Avant Garde Art Festival, NYC, My Mime
* VideoRoma 80, My Mime
* CAPS Video Festival, My Mime
1981
* Atlanta Film and Video Festival, Aquarelles
* Infinity Forum, Oakland, Koan
* Video Shorts II, Seattle, Aquarelles
1982
* AFI National Video Festival, Little Wing
* International Visual Music Festival, UCLA, First Prize, Tempest
* VideoRoma, Collected WTV works
1983
* World-Wide Video Festival, The Hague, Little Wing
* Video Culture, Toronto, Collected WTV works and Pantomation
1996
* Viper Film Festival, Austria, "True Hallucinations", DeWitt Retrospective
1997
* Video Shorts, Seattle, Forevermore
1999
* Shake the Nation, SF MoMA, Fall and OFF ON
* The American Century, Whitney Museum, Fall Festivals
Distributed Films
1966
* AtmosFear, 6 min., Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
1967
* OFF ON, 10 min, with Scott Bartlett, MoMA
1968
* The Leap, 8 min., Canyon Cinema
1971
* Fall, 16 min., NY Filmmakers Co-operative
Telecast Videotapes
1969
* "An Intraview", 28 min., Camera Three, CBS
1971
* "Fall", 28 min., Camera Three, CBS
1973
* Zierot, 30 min., Brooklyn College series, WNYC
1974
* What is TV?, 25 min., Public Access, London Weekend
1975
* Cathode Ray Theater, 28 min., VTR, PBS
1976
* CRT, 28 min., VTR, WNET
1979
* This Is TV - America, 28 min., NALCP series, cable
1980
* My Mime, 28 min., CAPS Video Festival, cable
1981
* Koan, 3 min., WTV (Dean Winkler, Tom DeWitt, Vibeke Sorensen), Night Flight, USA Cable
* Tempest, 5 min., WTV, USA Cable
* Voyage, 8 min., WTV, USA Cable, CBS Cable
1982
* Little Wing, Jimi Hendrix, 4 min., WTV, USA Cable
1990
Steel Wheels Tour, "2000 Light Years from Home" & "Paint It Black", Rolling Stones Special, 8 min., with Gerald Marks, Fox Gallery Exhibits of Computer Graphics
Gallery Exhibits of Computer Graphics
1985
* Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH, "Quake"
* Hamm-Brickman Gallery, Albany, NY, "Valentine"
1986
* Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH, "Vassar"
* Landscape Competition, Rensselaer County Counci; for the Arts, "Birches on the Verge"
* Computer Art, Catskill Center for Photography
1988
* "DeWitt ex Machina," The Hotchkiss School Gallery
1990
* CyberPunk, Suzan Cooper Gallery, Woodstock, NY
1999
*Programmed Art, D.C.C., "Hurt," "Homage to Redon," and "Escher Ipso Ditto" Interactive
Installations
1984
* "Pantomation/Painter Power," Electra, Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris
1986
* "Pantomation," with Alan Jackson (laserist), Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH
* "Laser/Pantomation," with Image Engineering, Surrealist Ball, Computer Museum, Boston
1987
* "Finger Space," Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH
1991
* "Die Fledermaus", SCAN 1997
* "Moly a hand held 3-D scanner", Technology 2007, Boston, SBIR Sensor and Instrumentation Technology of the Year
Gallery Exhibits of Videotapes and Videographics
1975
* The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, London, Zierot and Philharmonia
1976
* Artists' Video, Biddick Farm Art Centre, England, Cathode Ray Theater
1979
* The Rhythm Machine, Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC
* Political Art, Brainard Art Gallery, SUNY at Potsdam, Zierot in War Mime
* Artists' Video, Biddick Farm Art Centre, This Is TV, The Rhythm Machine , and "Underwater Adventure"
1981
* Visualizations Gallery, NYC, Dancing on Lakes Unknown,
1982
* Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH, Voyage
* Visual Music Festival, Shellnut Gallery, RPI, WTV
* The Voice in the Machine, Mercer College, NJ, WTV
* Southern Regional, Corcoran Gallery, Aquarelles
1983
* The Artist and the Computer, Long Beach Museum of Art, Tempest
* Art Show, ACM SIGGRAPH, Calypso Cameo (with Vibeke Sorensen)
* The Next Juried Show, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, collaborative work with Vibeke Sorensen
* Kathy's Waffle Shop, Albany, NY, Retrospective
* Rensselaer County Council for the Arts,"Spectrum"
1987
* Art in the Computer Age, Everson Museum, Video Wallpaper, with Dean Winkler et al
1997
Summer of Love: Revolution and Evolution, Ansel Adams Center for Photography, S.F. Art Institute, The Leap & OFF ON
Published Papers
1968
* "OFF ON, the Binary Hangup" and "Bridging the Magic Gap," Film Magazine, S.F. State Univ., No. 1
1976
* "Tom DeWitt," Video Art, Edited by Schneider and Korot, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 36-37
1982
* "Pantomation Demonstration," SIGGRAPH Film and Video Review, No. 2, Section 9 (Videotape)
* "Pantomation - A System for Position Tracking," with Phil Edelstein, Proceedings of the Second Symposium on Small Computers in the Arts, IEEE Computer Society, No. 455, pp. 61-70
1983
* "A Pantomation Interface for the Apple II," Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Small Computers in the Arts, IEEE Computer Society, No. 499, pp.
25-29
* "Interactive Tools for Computer Graphics," The Artist/Designer and Computer Graphics," ACM SIGGRAPH 83 Tutorial Notes, Vol. 18, pp. 37-
42 1983
* "Art and Technology," Proceedings of Visual Dynamics Showcase, ACM SIGGRAPH/ LA Chapter
1985
* "Pantomation, Scoring and Performance Interface," ear Magazine on New Music, V.9, No. 5, Fall '85
1987
* "Novel methods for the acquisition and display of three-dimensional surfaces," Optical and Digital Pattern Recognition, SPIE, Vol. 754, pp. 55-63
* "Visual Music - The Search for an Aesthetic," Leonardo, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 115-122
1988
* "Range Finding with Diffraction Gratings," Advanced Imaging, No. 12, July/August '88, p. A50 * "Diffraction Range Finding for Machine Vision," Proceedings of Robot-ics12/ Vision 88, SME. p. 5/139 ff
1989
* "Rangefinding by the Diffraction Method," Lasers and Optronics, V. 8, No. 7, April '89, pp. 118-124
* "3D Image Acquisition by Diffraction Profilometry," Paper Summaries, 1990 SPSE Conference, pp. 51-54
* "Dataism," Leonardo, Supplemental Issue, SIGGRAPH 89 Art Show Catalog, pp. 57-62
1990
* "A Guide to 3-D Surface Acquisition," Proceedings of SCAN 90, University of the Arts, Phila., PA, pp. 40-46
1995
* "Range-finding method using diffraction gatings" co-author Douglas Lyon, Applied Optics, Vol. 35, No. 14, p. 2510
* "Microscope with diffraction grating," co-author Douglas Lyon, Three-Dimensional Imaging and Laser-Based Systems for Metrology and Inspection, SPIE, Vol. 2599
1997
** http://www.dewittbros.com, Paul Friedlander co-author and web master
1999
* "Moly: a prototype handheld 3D digitizer with diffraction optics" Douglas Lyon co-author, Three-Dimensional Image Capture and Applications II, SPIE, Vol. 3640 (accepted for publication in Optical Engineering, Jan. 2000)
Patents
1987
* US Patent 4,678,324 awarded to Tom DeWitt on July 7, 1987 for "Range Finding by Diffraction"
1997
* Pending - PCT Number 60/034,112 Provisional filed by Thomas D. Ditto and Douglas A. Lyon on December 29, 1996 for "Variable Pitch Grating for a Diffraction Range Finding System and Concomitant Method and Apparatus"
Some Published References
1968
* OFF ON, photo, Life, Vol. 65, No. 26, p. 19 1970
1970
* Expanded Cinema, by Gene Youngblood 1972
1972
* "Fall," by John Fell, Film Quarterly 1981
1981
*"Video Art and Computer Graphics," by Vibeke Sorensen, Richmond Arts, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.
1982
* Art Show Catalog, SIGGRAPH, photo, "Voyage"
1983
* Art Show Catalog, SIGGRAPH, photo, "CalypsoCameo"
* Exhibition of Computer Graphics, NHK Culture Center, photo, "Calypso Cameo"
* "Voyage," photo, Home Electronics and Entertainment
* "Visual Music," by Ancona and Greenhouse, Videography
1984
* Art and the Computer, by Melvin Prueitt
1985
* Photonics Spectra, photo, "Tempest"
* Rensselaer Engineer, cover photo, "I Left My Heart"
1986
* Art Show Catalog, SIGGRAPH, cover photo, "Vassar"
* "Artists and Computers - A Retrospective," by Patric Prince, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
1987
* Clip, Klapp, Bum, by Body and Weibel
* Digital Visions, by Cynthia Goodman
1984-88
* Who's Who in America, Marquis Publications
1992
* Eigenwelt Der Apparate Welt, Pioneers of Electronic Art, Vasulka, Ars Electronica 1993
*About the Cover, "Making Faces", IEEE Computer Graphics, January issue
1999
* http://www.csu.ctsateu.edu/~MCCARNEY/fva/fva.html, Film and Video Archives by
Hugh McCarney
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