Ken Knowlton

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Kenneth C. Knowlton (born 1931 in Springville, New York), is a computer graphics pioneer, artist, mosaicist and portraitist, who worked at Bell Labs.

In 1963, Knowlton invented the BEFLIX programming language for bitmap computer-produced movies, in which he and Stan VanDerBeek created the Poem Field animations.

In 1966, Knowlton and Leon Harmon were experimenting with photomosaic, creating large prints from collections small symbols or images. In Studies in Perception I they created an image of a reclining nude (the dancer Deborah Hay), which was printed in The New York Times on 11 October 1967. In 1968, the nude was exhibited at one of the earliest computer art exhibitions, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.