Tim Jenison will be the featured speaker at Startup Grind San Antonio at noon on March 25th at Geekdom in downtown San Antonio.
Jenison is the founder of NewTek, a video graphics software and hardware company. He is an inventor, entrepreneur and now artist and filmmaker, in San Antonio.
Jenison is the star of the documentary, Tim’s Vermeer, produced by his friends Penn Jillette and Teller. It documents his nearly six-year long obsession to prove a link between technology and art.
Jenison developed a theory in 2008 that the 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, who was known for his use of light and realistic paintings with photographic qualities, had used a camera obscura and a comparator mirror to create his paintings. He later revised his theory to involve a concave mirror and comparator mirror. In the hour and twenty-minute documentary, Jenison re-creates Vermeer’s painting The Music Lesson using those tools.
Jenison, who didn’t consider himself an artist, travelled the world to do research on Vermeer. And he eventually recreated a room from Vermeer’s house in a warehouse on the outskirts of San Antonio. He spent a year there recreating the room, its furnishings, textiles and more and then to paint The Music Lesson. He also had to find materials to create the paints that Vermeer used.
At one point in the documentary, Jenison admits he would quit if the cameras weren’t rolling and holding him accountable.
In the end, he paints the Music Lesson and he’s 95 percent sure that Vermeer used similar tools in his paintings.
The documentary is currently playing in Austin and San Antonio. It is well worth seeing.
And if you’re able to attend Startup Grind San Antonio Tuesday at Geekdom, you can meet Jenison in person and ask him questions about NewTek or Tim’s Vermeer. You can get your ticket, which includes lunch, here.
Tag: Penn Jillette
NewTek is one of the hidden gems of a technology company in San Antonio.
Tim Jenison co-founded NewTek, a desktop video graphics software company, in a storefront in downtown Topeka, Kansas in 1985. The company made the Video Toaster.
Jenison later relocated the company to San Antonio. NewTek continued to make innovative products like Lightwave 3D software used for special effects in movies and television shows. And in 2005, NewTek released the Tricaster, which allows people to do live video streaming with the production capabilities of a full studio in a backpack-sized piece of hardware.
NewTek is a little slice of Hollywood in the Alamo City. Filmmakers from all over the world visit its headquarters to meet with Jenison and his staff.
Jenison is one of those genius entrepreneur/inventors who always seems to be thinking up the next big thing.
And that next big thing is “Tim’s Vermeer,” a documentary.
Jenison teamed up with Penn Jillette, the film’s producer, to create the documentary “Tim’s Vermeer,” which will debut in Austin and San Antonio on Feb. 28th, according to this schedule just released by Sony Pictures Classic.
In the one hour and 20 minute long documentary, Jenison “attempts to solve one of the greatest mysteries in all art: How did 17th century Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer (“Girl with a Pearl Earring”) manage to paint so photo-realistically — 150 years before the invention of photography? The epic research project Jenison embarks on to test his theory is as extraordinary as what he discovers,” according to news release.
Jenison spent eight years on the project and travelled the world to research it. In the project, he attempts to paint a Vermeer. But he’s not a painter. He’s a computer graphics guy.
The movie has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, the New York Times and the even The Economist and has received rave reviews.
