Larry Cuba

Larry Cuba was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1950. He is an American computer animation artist and experimental filmmaker recognized for his early work with digital image making and abstract animation. Cuba earned a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree from the California Institute of the Arts.

After teaching himself computer animation in the 1970s through access to the mainframe computers at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Cuba began developing films using algorithms, mathematical relationships, timing systems, and choreographed movement. Using programming languages and graphics systems such as Fortran, RAP, GRASS, Zgrass, Python, and later Blender based tools, he wrote programs that generated changing visual forms through symmetry operations, repetition, and spatial transformations. Cuba often described his process as a form of experimentation in which images were discovered through the execution of the program itself. His work drew from abstract film, music, Islamic geometric patterns, and mathematics, with influences including Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson, and the Whitney brothers. Across films such as 3/78 (Objects and Transformations), Two Space, and Calculated Movements, he used programmed transformations, repeating visual structures, and timed movement to explore rhythm, spatial relationships, and visual perception. Cuba is widely known for creating the computer-generated Death Star briefing sequence for the film Star Wars using the GRASS graphics system.

His work has been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. He has participated in key conferences and festivals focused on computer graphics, animation, and media art, including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, ISEA, and the Punto y Raya Film Festival. Cuba received grants from the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts and completed a residency at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. His films and archival materials are held by the Academy Film Archive, which has preserved several of his works and related production materials.