John Whitney, Sr. is well known as an American animator, composer and inventor. He is widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation, and there is a wealth of material to review.

John Whitney’s Permutations is a piece from 1966 and, like much of his work, is highly influenced and inspired by music and mathematics:

In PERMUTATIONS, each point moves at a different speed and moves in a direction independent according to natural laws’ quite as valid as those of Pythagoras, while moving in their circular field. Their action produces a phenomenon more or less equivalent to the musical harmonies. When the points reach certain relationships (harmonic) numerical to other parameters of the equation, they form elementary figures.

- John Whitney