Collection: Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Csuri continued with this experimentation on other drawings, including one of a hummingbird in flight. Csuri produced over 14,000 frames, which exploded the bird, scattered it about, and reconstructed it. These frames were output to 16mm film, and the resulting film Hummingbird was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in 1968 for its permanent collection as representative of one of the first computer animated artworks. Also in 1968, Csuri was one of the featured artists at an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and his work in computer animation was featured in the catalogue titled "Cybernetic Serendipity - the computer and the arts," published that year by Studio International. This publication was the one of the first collections that dealt with "...the relationships between technology and creativity."
Historical Significance
In 1967, Csuri began creating animations. Again, the artist used his drawings as the foundation for his creative exploration with the computer. With Artist into Frog, Aging Process, and Hummingbird, Csuri expanded his notion of object transformation to include the morphing of human faces and animals. Today, morphing is characterized by a seamless transition between forms. Csuri’s early fragmentation animations foreshadowed morphing technology. However, the artist, more interested in modern art than photographic realism, used the time-honored artistic relationship between form and abstraction to accomplish the seamless morphing transition between the forms. Hummingbird, the film, gained international acclaim when it stunned audiences at the fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Brussels and received an award. It was subsequently exhibited Czechoslovakia, Israel, Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and Yugoslavia.