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Forthcoming Meetings - 2008
CAS-Xtra CAS is pleased to announce a CAS-Xtra - a joint meeting with TESLA@UCL. Note this is not our usual day, date or time. This meeting is free and is open to the public. Anna Valentina Murch Thursday 12 June 2008 - 5:30 for 6:00 Recent Large-Scale Public Artwork Garwood Lecture Theatre, South Wing, University College London Gower Street, London, Post Code Nearest tubes - Euston Square, Warren Street, Euston Instructions for finding: Or you can ask the porters at the Main Gate for directions. Anna Valentina Murch is an artist who works primarily with the medium of light and whose work focuses on creating places that lead the viewer on a sensory and psychological journey that measures time and provokes memory. Since 1980, her work has been involved with designing and building large public art projects, sometimes working collaboratively with architects, engineers and other artists. These large-scale public works incorporate ambient elements such as light, water and sound, to create experiential places. This has allowed her to take her personal creative investigations to another level by widening the focus to explore the definition of place and venues for community interaction. Anna Valentina Murch received her MA in Environmental Media, Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and a Graduate Diploma from the Architectural Association in London, England. Through the Computer Arts Society she exhibited an installation at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. In the late 1970's she moved to San Francisco and developed many works in galleries and museums. Her recent permanent Public Art installations include: St. Louis Metro System, and the Muni Metro Extension, San Francisco California, Queens Civic Court House, New York, Arroyo Suite, Century City, Los Angles, Waterscape, Civic Center plaza in San Jose, California, Water Scores, for the Performing Arts Center plaza in Miami, Florida. She is currently a Professor of Art at Mills College, Oakland, California. http://annavalentinamurch.com/
Past Meetings 2008 (listed most recent first) David Plans Casal Tuesday 3 June 2008 - 6:30 for 7:00 pm MPEG7 and genetic co-evolution: Sound Improvisation Strategies Room G22, Nearest tubes - Euston Square, Warren Street & Russell Square Musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire cultural heritage of an improviser in a single flash. This workshop will introduce a case study of evolutionary computation techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7 techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improviser and her unconscious mind, to probe and unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice. David Plans Casal is a musician and researcher, and digital technologist at Brunel University. His research focuses on artificial intelligence and music. He has given concerts at IRCAM (Igor Stravinsky Hall), the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, and several London venues. His research proposes that musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire cultural heritage of an improviser in a single flash. He uses evolutionary computation techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7 techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improviser and her unconscious mind, to probe and unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice.
Nick Lambert, Doug Dodds, Jeremy Gardiner, Lanfranco Aceti and Honor Beddard Tuesday 6 May 2008 18:30 for 19:00 ‘Parallel Evolution: the Patric Prince Collection and the emergence of SIGGRAPH as a North American computer arts venue’ System Simulation Ltd The Computer Arts and Technocultures Project, a joint venture between Birkbeck and the Victoria & Albert Museum, recently received AHRC funding to research and digitise the Patric Prince Collection of computer art. Birkbeck had already collaborated with CAS and SSL through the CACHe Project and this resulted in CAS’s collection of computer art being donated to the V&A. Computer Art and Technocultures is studying the wider area of international computer art as it emerged in parallel with the developing computer graphics industry, especially in conjunction with SIGGRAPH during the 1980s. The interchange between new technologies and artistic practice, and also the opportunities afforded by an art show attached to a major conference, ensured that SIGGRAPH became one of the principal nodes for computer art. Patric Prince was closely connected with the art show and chaired it in 1986. We will consider how her collection connects with the art show (especially the retrospective on computer art she put together in 1986), how new artists and technologies were represented, and whether the situation of computer art has changed since the area was discussed in a special SIGGRAPH in 1989. The members of the Computer Arts and Technocultures team will each examine different aspects of the project, with presenters including Nick Lambert, Doug Dodds, Jeremy Gardiner, Lanfranco Aceti and Honor Beddard.
Cynthia Beth Rubin Tuesday 1 April 2008 6:30 for 7:00 Still Digital after all These Years: System Simulation Ltd Art on the edge once meant Painting. Not clean, representational, neat painting, but messy, expressive, abstract painting. Then the computer came along. Touted as a procedural machine, no one expected intuitive, non-procedural painters to turn to pixels. Why were so many expressionist painters drawn to the computer in the buggy days of mid-1980s, and how did it transform their visual language and output? What are they doing now? As one of the artists who made the leap, Rubin will discuss her own leaps, give an overview of the work of other artists, and look at how the computer continues to change concepts of imagery as it becomes a more available medium in previously less technologically advanced countries. Cynthia Beth Rubin is a digital artist working in 2D and 3D imagery, interactivity, and animated images. Trained as a painter, she turned to digital art in 1984, creating works drawn from cultural memories and nature. Rubin’s work has been shown in diverse venues including the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Pandamonium Festival in London, the Lavall Gallery in Novosibirsk, the DeLeon White Gallery in Toronto, and numerous editions of international conferences such as ISEA, ArCade and SIGGRAPH. Her works can be found in several books and journals, including Art in the Digital Age by Bruce Wands, The Computer in the Visual Arts, by Anne Morgan Spalter, and Painting the Digital River, by James Faure Walker. Rubin's studio is in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Sue Gollifer Tuesday 4 March 2008 6:30 for 7:00 Beyond the Screen System Simulation Ltd Sue Gollifer will talk about her artwork, which has developed in the last thirty years according to a rigorous programme of formal experiment, through which sets of relationships evolved between shapes, colours and tones. Her talk will also make reference to a number of digital art exhibitions which she has curated since 1995: ArCade1 1-V, GAMUT I & II and the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery’04 Synaethesia. What lessons if any can be drawn/learnt from any of these exhibitions, particularly ArCade, who’s original intention and objective was to demonstrate how using new technology could be used in fine art practices to create, on the one hand, a new media and on the other a hybrid link between both old and new technology, creating a convergence of ideas, disciplines and practices Sue Gollifer is the Course Leader for an MA in Digital Media Arts and in Printmaking and Professional Practice, at the University of Brighton. She has been a professional artist/printmaker for over 30 years. Her primary research is into 'the impact of new technology within the practice of Fine Art’. She has been the curator of a number of Digital Art Exhibitions including ArCade, the UK Open International Exhibition of Digital Fine Art Prints (1995 – 2007) and the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery’04. She serves on a number of National and International Committees and is the Assistant Editor of Digital Creativity, a Journal published by Taylor Francis/Routledge.
Alan Sutcliffe Tuesday 19 February 2008 6:30 for 7:00 Recent Graphics and Animations using some Maths 6:60 for 7:00; System Simulation Ltd A simple method to generate irregular but smooth curves will be described, together with shading to give 3-d forms. The method uses the repeated addition of differences of differences of differences in one co-ordinate for unit change in the other co-ordinate. Drawing in the XOR mode gives unexpected benefits in this context. The anatomy of the XOR operator applied to grey-scales and colours will be illustrated. This is an extended version of the talk given at the Bridges Conference at Donostia in July 2007, updated with some more recent animations based on these and other mathematical methods. In 1967 Alan Sutcliffe wrote a program, to compose electronic music, which ran on an ICL 1900 computer. The music was realised, from a paper tape of the score, in the electronic music studio of Peter Zinovieff. When this won second prize in the International Computer Music Competition at IFIP 68 in Edinburgh he was prompted to propose the formation of a Computer Arts Society that he chaired until 1979. During 2007 he has exhibited in Bremen, Graz, Donostia and Karlsruhe. An early graphic, thought lost, turned up in the CAS Collection during its hand-over to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Alan now edits PAGE – the bulletin of the CAS.
Past Meetings 2007 [listed most recent first] Ernest Edmonds Monday 3 December 2007 6:30 for 7:00 The Nature of Interaction in Digital Art Computer Arts Society Public Meeting System Simulation Ltd Ernest Edmonds and Stroud Cornock presented a paper about interaction in a CAS session at the Computer Graphics 1970 conference. This presentation describes Edmonds' latest Shaping Form series of interactive works shown this year in Washington DC and Sydney. These works develop over time as a result of their interaction with the world. The use of the word interaction is reviewed and alternative approaches to describing the concept explored. In particular, a systems view is taken and contrasted with an action/response model. A refined view of such interactions is proposed in which artwork and audience are said to influence one another. Ernest Edmonds has been an invited presenter in, for example, the UK, France, the USA, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia. He has many publications in the fields of art, creativity and interaction and has exhibited throughout the world, from Moscow to LA. He is editor-in-chief of the Leonardo journal’s Transactions. He is currently Professor of Computation and Creative Media at the University of Technology Sydney.
Richard Brown 6:30 for 7:00PM, Tuesday 2 October 2007 Venue: In my talk I will show examples of three artworks, Alembic, Biotica and the Mimetic Starfish that use real-time 3D computer simulations and interactive interfaces to enable participants to engage with complex, emergent and mimetic processes. In contrast to digital media, I will also show how these processes can be realised in alternative artworks using electrochemical, electromagnetic and electrostatic systems, some of which were shown at the recent Pask inspired exhibition "Maverick Machines" in Edinburgh. Biography: In 2001 Richard was invited as Artist in Residence at the Centre for Electronic Media Arts (CEMA), Monash University. In 2002, an award from NESTA (the National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts) enabled Richard to work as an independent artist and researcher, between 2002 and 2003 he was based in Australia as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Victorian College of Arts, Melbourne University. In 2004 Richard moved to Edinburgh where he participated in the EPIS entrepreneurial scheme hosted at Edinburgh University, Scotland. In 2005 he won an Ideasmart award to develop a novel interactive lighting system and is currently Research Artist in Residence in Edinburgh Informatics.
Keith Armstrong Australian media artist 6:30 for 7:00, Tuesday 10 July 2007 Ecology, Performance and Collaboration - Embodying Intimate Transactions Venue: As part of this year's EVA Conference, Australian media artist Keith Armstrong is giving a talk for CAS Intimate Transactions is a dual site, telematic installation currently been shown in the US. It allows two people located in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using only their bodies (predominantly their backs and feet), using two identical interfaces called 'Bodyshelves'. During a 30-minute, one-on-one session their physical actions allow them to individually and collaboratively explore immersive environments. Each participant's own way of interacting results in quite different, but interrelated animated and generative imagery, real time generated audio (seven channels), and three channels of haptic feedback (felt in the stomach and back). This experience allows each participant to begin to sense their place in a complex web of relations that connect them and everything else within the work. Intimate Transactions is an investigation in creating embodied experiences that are both performative and improvisational by harnessing individual, performative languages of 'untrained' bodies as a means to engender understandings of 'ecological' relationship. It arose from a deep collaboration between media artists, performance practitioners, sound artists, hardware and software engineers, a furniture maker and a scientific ecologist. Our entire process was informed by a praxis-led approach to art making that stressed embodied connectivity and inseparability. This allowed us to understand how participants might move within the constraints of a particular interface, allowing us to shape and form the overall phrasing and sensibilities of their experiences, whilst maintaining the unique nature of their collaborative experiences. In this presentation Keith will discuss his practice-led research approach and illustrate the presentation with videos, images and sound. (www.intimatetransactions.com). Keith Armstrong is an Australian/English interdisciplinary media artist, Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Creative Industries Research Fellow and has just finished a Visiting Professorship at Calpoly State University, California, working in collaboration with their Liberal Arts and Architecture Faculties. His recent work Intimate Transactions, created with the Transmute Collective, received an Honorary Mention in the 2005 Prix Ars Electronica and featured in the 2005 Ars Electronica Festival in Austria. His latest interactive installation, Shifting Intimacies, was presented at the ICA London in March 2006. Email: keith@embodiedmedia.com
Joint Meeting with the Colour Group 2pm, Wednesday 20 June 2007 COLOUR IN COMPUTER ART Venue: The meeting starts at 14.00. Abstracts as provided by the speakers are shown below: The Painting Fool - a First Look I'm interested in the question of what it means for a piece of software to be creative in the visual arts. In the talk, I will outline the notion of the creative tripod, where programs have to exhibit signs of skill, appreciation and imagination in order to be taken seriously as creative individuals. Most graphics programs used for the production of art concentrate entirely on enhancing the skill base of a human user. However, software such as Cohen's AARON could be said to have a degree of imagination and software such as Machado's NEvAr have a degree of appreciation. I will describe the current state of my SEPIA software and present some paintings that have resulted from using this software. I will also give some demonstrations of The Painting Fool (which uses SEPIA, and can be seen as my alter ego) putting together artworks. I'll present the first draft of my manifesto for software as art and of a manifesto for The Painting Fool. Naturally, the usage of colour has played a very important part in the development of SEPIA. I became interested in how to transfer art from the computer screen to the canvas, and two of the images I've produced have been painted by Brian Ashworth, an artist friend of mine. While Brian was able to mix the colours required because of his artistic abilities, I was interested in whether a novice painter (like me) could be shown not only where to put the paint on the canvas, but how to mix the paints to achieve the desired colours. With my business partner, Glen Pearson, this led to us setting up the CraftByNumbers service that produces full paint by numbers kits from a photograph provided by the customer. Part of the kit includes a colour mixing guide, which tells our customers how to mix triples of Daler-Rowney acrylics using our "dip and blob method" to achieve roughly 30 colours needed for their painting. In the talk, I'll discuss this, and describe the tortuous days that Glen and I spent mixing more than 1000 combinations of Daler-Rowney paints. Dr. Simon Colton is a lecturer in Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computing, Imperial College, London. His interests are in how to use AI techniques to produce programs that exhibit creative behaviour. He has written more than 70 publications on the topic of automatic scientific discovery, with an emphasis on mathematical creativity. His work has been recognised with a best paper award at the AAAI conference in 2000, and his PhD won the BCS/CPHC distinguished dissertation award in 2001. Firstly as a hobby, and more recently as work for the Machine Creations Ltd. company, he has developed various pieces of graphics software to explore the question of computational creativity in the visual arts. This has led to a commercial endeavour (www.craftbynumbers.com) and an artistic endeavour (www.thepaintingfool.com). Pieces produced by his software were exhibited in the "Computer Generated Art" group exhibition at Imperial College in 2006.
Colourfied: an evolutionary ecosystem of colour In biology, evolutionary synthesis is a process capable of generating unprecedented novelty, i.e. it is creative. It has been able to create things like prokaryotes, eukaryotes, higher multicellularity and language through a non-teleological process of replication and selection. We would like to adapt, on a metaphoric level, the mechanisms of biological evolution in order to develop new approaches to computational creativity. In Biology, the physical processes of replication and selection take place in an environment, populated by species that interact with and modify this environment, i.e. an ecosystem. Processes from biological ecosystems serve as inspiration for computational artificial ecosystems. The aim is to structure these artificial ecosystems in such a way that they exhibit novel discovery in a creative context rather than a biological one. Colourfield is a simple experiment in machine assisted creative discovery. It uses the metaphor of an adaptive ecosystem. A population of colours exists in a 1-dimensional world, and the colours are "grown" from a gene that expresses natural weights towards neighbouring colours along with an innate "personal" colour. The colours exist in a colour ecosystem, whereby luminance and chromatic values determine the supply of resources that feed an individual colour's growth (hence, its ability to change colour). Through a series of feedback mechanisms, and via an evolutionary process, colours adapt to their environment, often forming fields of colours that are aesthetically pleasing to the observer. The project is one of a number of experiments illustrating the usefulness of the ecosystem metaphor for creative discovery in artificial systems. Jon McCormack (Monash University, Australia) is an Electronic Media Artist, co-director of the Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA) and Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Impossible Nature - a book about his work was published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in 2004.
Mutating Colour William Latham will discuss the use of colour in his Computer Artworks during the period 1987 to 1993 at IBM UK Laboratories & more recently on the Mutator 2 Project from 2005 at Goldsmiths College (University of London) using "real world" DNA data input from the Bioinformatics Group at Imperial College. Originally trained as artist he will explain his approach to colour from his very early computer artworks through to the DNA automatically generated colour schemes in his multi-coloured recent animated films. Topics include:- Colour for labelling elements of structure, 3D texture & proportional colouring by banding, mutating RGB values & navigating parametric colour space, the relationship between form & colour, the importance of white, the tricky relationship between colour, lighting and material values to get the right look, the benefits of stealing colour & lighting schemes from the Masters (e.g. Rembrandt, Magritte), animating colour for emotional response or retinal pleasure, colour in art & colour in scientific visualisation. The work will be contextualised in relation to Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Karl Sims & other computer graphic artists. Using specific examples from films & images during this period, including examples of different colouring programming systems used. Excerpts from:- "A Sequence from the Evolution of Form", "Organic TV" & new 3 minute film called "The History the Species" will be shown. From 1987 to 1994 William Latham worked for IBM in their Advanced Computer Graphics and Visualisation Division at IBM Hursley near Winchester , and his Mutation work achieved world wide recognition at SIGGRAPH and other events and a number of IBM patents were published. He was co-author with Stephen Todd of the book “Evolutionary Art and Computers” published by Academic Press that is still recognised as a key work in this area. His organic artworks and films were shown worldwide in major touring exhibitions of the UK , Germany , Japan and Australia. William was CEO & Creative Director of computer games developer Computer Artworks Ltd from 1994 to 2003, hit games produced included The THING (Playstation2, Xbox and PC) that sold in excess of one million units worldwide, and was Number 1 hit in the UK and Germany . The Thing was published by Vivendi Universal in USA and Europe, and by Konami in Japan and the Far East . (The Thing game was the sequel to the cult John Carpenter Film The THING starring Kurt Russell). In 2004, recognising the ongoing increase in games budgets and increasing new investment from financial organisations outside the games industry William founded Games Audit Ltd. Games Audit Ltd is a project management and audit operation for the games industry and offers a wide range of services. Clients include Ingenious, Add Partners, IDGVE. From 2005 to April 2007 Latham was Professor of Creative Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University and in April 07 became a Professor in The Computing Department at Goldsmiths College ( University of London ). He continues to remain CEO of Games Audit. William has an MA from The Royal College of Art and a BA from Oxford University
Colour, Symbol and Ambiguity I am not an intuitive colourist and tend to use colour in my work in a symbolic sense to “tag” different areas of an image and differentiate the image plane. In this talk I will discuss two recent time-based generative works – 4^16 – and – 4^15 Studies in Perception. In the former I attempted to find a set of four colours that would emphasise the ambiguity of a geometry that could be interpreted as having either a horizontal/vertical or diagonal construction. In the latter the colour (and most of the other controls governing the work) are random. Here I have been surprised by the consistency and quality of the colour in contradiction to my initial expectation that the work would often devolve into mud. Paul Brown is an artist and writer who is based on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. His pioneering work in the computational and generative art dates back to the early 1970’s. He is currently the Chair of the Computer Arts Society and a visiting professor of art & technology at Sussex University where he is working on a project to evolve a robot that can draw. Joint meeting with the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts at Middlesex University. Art that Makes Itself 4:45 to 5:45pm Tuesday 1 May 2007 Paul Brown
Paul Brown was working with concepts of systems, process and interaction in the 1960s when he discovered computers at the Cybernetic Serendipity show at the ICA in 1968. Since 1974 his work has involved computational processes and he is now acknowledged as a pioneer of generative and a-life art. In this talk he explains his early influences, his work over four decades and ends with an overview of his most recent project where he is working with a multi-disciplinary team to evolve a robot that can draw. See also: Location: Middlesex University, London, EN4 8HT Cat Hill Campus: Room 137 More information about this and other Lansdown Lectures see http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk Paul Brown was born in Halifax, England in 1947 and has lived in Australia since 1988. He founded Middlesex' National Centre for Computer Aided Art and Design (NCCAAD) and Centre for Advanced Study in Computer Aided Art and Design (CASCAAD - now the Lansdown Centre) in the mid 1980s.
How Cybernetic Serendipity changed my life/career - excursions in mathematics and computer art 6:30 for 7:00, Wednesday 18 April 2007 John Sharp Computer Arts Society - public meeting I read chemistry at Oxford and spent some time in Industry, mainly as an analytical chemist, but soon after I left University I went to the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the ICA which changed what I felt I wanted to do. I had been using conventional media to produce similar work based on mathematics (mostly geometry) and would have really liked to move onto computers, but it was another 10 years with the Apple II before I was able to fulfil that dream. Previously the only contact I had had with computer art was as member 142 of the Computer Arts Society. In learning computing from that point, I changed careers mostly writing computer documentation, initially setting up the document department at Epson UK. I also taught geometry and art part time. Since the CAS in its first life folded, apart from students, my main contact with other artists working in a similar area was sporadic until I became part of the Bridges Conferences on Mathematical Connections in Art Science and Music. In 2006 I was instrumental in bringing it to London and was one of the major organisers. Through Bridges and the Internet I have worked with many other artists and this talk is the about the wide range of work I have produced using the computer both two and three dimensional, including the paper sculpture I am most widely known for: Sliceforms and how I have worked with other mathematical artists at Bridges. London Knowledge Lab,
Some Awkward Questions: Techno-Arts and Artists in Academic Settings A Computer Arts Society open discussion led by Alan Sutcliffe Earning money by teaching has been common and honourable for artists, compromising their time but not their art. The role of technology in the arts has brought new academic settings for artists. Art work is subject to the standards of research, and gets distorted. Some conferences and research seem based on naive notions that art is about expression, beauty, emotion and now communication. More like oblique and evocative. Academic freedom and artistic freedom are important and different. Nick Lambert's office (formerly the CACHe office) 43 is roughly in the middle of the east side of Gordon Square The snack bar will be open before the meeting
Some Puzzles in Depiction, Tuesday 6 February 2007 Is the horizon straight or curved? A discussion, open to all, led by Alan Sutcliffe System Simulation Ltd
Past Meetings 2006 John Lansdown and the Genesis of Computer Art Dr. Nicholas Lambert, Birkbeck College John Lansdown was a founder member of the CAS and the pioneer after whom the Lansdown Centre is named. To date, the history of computer graphics has tended to be dominated by the record of American contributors, but in the CACHe project, Nick and his colleagues have revealed the history of the UK contribution in which John Lansdown was a key figure. Nick will look at several early articles John Lansdown wrote in the 1960s-70s and consider how clearly he foresaw the potentials and development of modern computer art. A joint meeting between the Lansdown Centre at Middlesex University and the Computer Arts Society. Tuesday 12 December 2006 The campus is a simple Tube ride from central London, and within easy reach of the M25. Location in Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/yhpcgy Admission is free.
Harold Cohen A meeting of The Computer Arts Society in association with the Dept. of Computing, Imperial College. Tuesday 14th November 2006 Imperial College Abstract For the past twenty years the AARON Program has been a rule-based "expert system," steadily accumulating higher levels of expertise in coloring its images. Its rule-base has also become increasingly detailed and complex, to the point where making changes, or adding new rules, often resulted in broken code buried elsewhere, deep in the Program. A few months ago its author, Harold Cohen, abandoned this long-developed, highly successful system in favor of a remarkably simple algorithm, which not only performed as well as its predecessor, but also extended the range of AARON's coloring strategies. This algorithmic approach is now in its third version, and the Program exhibits a high level of control over the "kind" of coloring it does. In this talk, Cohen describes the color technology underlying the new approach and how twenty years of accumulated expertise were collapsed into a few lines of simple code and how and why it works as well as it does.
Stepping Stones in the Mist, 28 September 2006 The next CAS meeting will be held in collaboration with the Stepping Stones in the Mist Paul Brown This presentation is an idiosyncratic and non-rigorous account of my work as an artist who has been involved in the field now known as Artificial Life for over 30 years. To give the audience some context I begin with a few opinions that define my position within the visual arts (which is far from the current mainstream) and then go on to describe early influences from the 1960s and 70s that have framed my involvement in the field of computational arts. This includes some examples of my work from this period. The latter part of the essay describes my working methodology and includes examples of my more recent work and ends with some speculations about where I may go in the future. About the Speaker Paul Brown is an artist and writer who has been specialising in art and technology for over 30 years. In 1984 he was the founding head of the UK's National Centre for Computer Aided Art and Design and in 1994 he returned to Australia after a two-year appointment as Professor of Art and Technology at Mississippi State University to head Griffith University’s Multimedia Unit. In 1996 was the founding Adjunct Professor of Communication Design at Queensland University of Technology. From 1997-99 he was Chair of the Management Board of the Australian Network for Art Technology and is currently chair of the Computer Arts Society. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards for LEA, the e-journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (MIT Press), and the journal Digital Creativity (Routledge). From 1992 to 1999 he edited fine Art forum, one of the Internet's longest established art 'zines and he is currently moderator of the DASH (Digital ArtS Histories) and CMCA (Computational Models of Creativity in the Arts) e-lists. His computer generated artwork has been exhibited internationally since 1967 and is currently on show in Europe, Russia, the USA and Australia. During 2000/2001 he was a New Media Arts Fellow of the Australia Council and he spent 2000 as artist-in-residence at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) at the University of Sussex in Brighton. From 2002-05 he was visiting fellow at the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he worked on the CACHe (Computer Arts, Contexts, Histories, etc...) research project. He is currently (2005-08) a visiting professor and artist-in-residence at the School of Informatics, University of Sussex where he is working on a CCNR project to evolve robots that can exhibit creative behaviour. Examples of his artwork and publications are available on his web site at: Paul's site
The power of 00000000s and 11111111s, Monday 10 July 2006 Computer Arts Society Speaker: Lin Hsin Hsin Venue: System Simulation Ltd, Bedford Chambers Synopsis The combination of digital technology and the easy accessibility of drag and drop, cut and paste, morph and tween, music samplers and computers, networks and downloads have irrevocably changed the way art, sound, music and animation are produced and perceived. As digital art, music and animation spawn to become a profound means of expression in their own right, a new breed of technology must be forged to set new directions of creating and generating different genres of art, music and animation. However, the interest and assimilation of new and untried technologies is not based on a sure wager on notions of the "borrowed", nor it is based on converting the "analog world" to the digital, or even the digitally recorded sources. As such, the speaker attempts to reload the fundamental of zeros and ones, formulating and formatting the simplicity (or complexity) of the basics to generate art, sound, music and animation. Duration: 1 hour, Q&A c15 mins Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum: http://www.lhham.com.sg/ Biography Lin Hsin Hsin is an artist, poet and composer from Singapore, deeply rooted in information technology. She was born in Singapore. She graduated in mathematics from the University of Singapore and received a postgraduate degree in computer science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She studied music and art in Singapore, printmaking at the University of Ulster, papermaking in Ogawamachi, Japan and paper conservation at the University of Melbourne Conservation Services. Hsin Hsin has held solo exhibitions in Singapore, Amsterdam and San Jose, California, USA. She has participated in exhibitions across Asia, Europe, North America and South America. In 1985, she was awarded a silver medal by the SociÈtÈ des Artistes FranÁais, Paris. In 1987, she received the IBM Singapore Art Award. Her artworks are in private, public and museum collections in Asia, Europe and North America. Lin Hsin Hsin is a digital media pioneer. She has created the 1st digital music in 1985, 1st 3D digital art in 1987, 1st digital animation in 1989 in Singapore. In 1994, she set up one of the earliest virtual museums in the world, the Lin Hsin Hsin Art Museum. Lin Hsin Hsin created Web art and Net art in 1995, and she has developed interactive Web art since 1997. She pioneered virtual sculpting in 1999 in Singapore; it was exhibited in Paris, France.
AIKON: Artistic~Automated IKONograph, Thursday 29 June 2006
Creative Cyborgs, Tuesday 16 May 2006 The next CAS meeting will be held at the A Map is here. The restaurant will be open and food and drinks will be available.
Bits in Motion: Early British Computer-Generated Art Film Supported by the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise, Birkbeck University of London and held in conjunction with the Computer Arts Society. This event is taking place under the larger banner of Node.London ’06 Season of Media Arts. Tuesday 7 March 2006 at 6.10pm at the National Film Theatre in NFT3. This showing features rare and little-known works from the beginnings of British computer animation as well as onstage discussions with pioneers from the early days of this field and will include discussions with leading practitioners of the time. The event marks the culmination of CACHe, an extensive research project at Birkbeck into the untold stories behind the early days of British computer arts. The screening and discussion will take audiences on a journey through previously lost or obscure material, from the first computer animation made in Britain, to the appearance of computer graphics in commercial TV and film. Artists and practitioners who were active at the time, including Stan Hayward (creator of Henry‘s Cat) and Malcolm Le Grice, Dr Charlie Gere and Dr George Mallen will introduce the work and take part in panel discussions with pioneers. Tickets £8.20, concs £6.25, NFT members £7.20, members‘ concs £5.25 Box Office 020 7928 3232 BFI NFT site Early British Computer-Generated Art Film is presented in partnership with School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck, supported by AHRC and LCACE. Bits In Motion takes place as part of NODE.L, a series of events related to technology and art taking place throughout March in venues across London. For more information, see http://nodel.org
Interaction - the art and the science, Monday 23 January 2006 The Computer Arts Society Open discussion led by George Mallen Monday 23 January 2006 - 6:30 for 7:00pm Venue: System Simulation Ltd. We begin our 2006 program (& best wishes for this New Year to everyone!) with an open discussion led by George Mallen of System Simulation. George is an original co-founder of the Computer Arts Society and his involvement in human computer interaction dates back to his work with Gordon Pask at Systems Research in the 1960's. He was closely involved in the development of the Eco Dome - one of the first large scale immersive interactive artworks - that was first exhibited at the CAS Show Interact in 1973.
Past Meetings 2005 The Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, Tuesday 13 December 2005 6:30 for 7:00pm Stephen Boyd Davis, Head of Centre Ralf Nuhn, 3rd year PhD student Nye Parry, sonic artist and composer, member of Lansdown Centre staff Sama'a al Hashimi, 2nd year PhD student
Sampling Practice 15 November 2005 Speakers: Jane Harris, Jeanine Breaker, Gordana Fontana Giusti and Martin Woolley 15 November 2005 Venue: Room 305 on the Bridge, Central Saint Martins College,
The University of the Arts London, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP Central Saint Martins provides specialist education and research in the fields of fine art, fashion and textiles, film, video, and photography, graphics and communication design, three dimensional design, theatre & performance and interdisciplinary art & design. The college has always engaged with highly creative practice in its teaching and maintained this focus more recently across the rapidly expanding research community. The meeting will therefore focus on the ways in which original practice-led research can be explored in a variety of hands-on contexts, by extending the boundaries of what is possible through digital communication and information technologies. The event will include five presentations on current project work across fine art, fashion, textiles, performance and urban planning. Discussion themes will include 'visualising the unseen', cultural mapping, design & emotion and globalising performance.
6:30 for 7:00 Tuesday 18 October 2005 The three-year AHRC-funded CACHe project - Computer Arts, Contexts, Histories, etc... - came to an end in September 2005. The project focused on the early computer arts, from 1960-80 and especially on activities in the United Kingdom. One outcome of this initiative was the re-formation of the Computer Arts Society. Paul Brown will talk about the background to the project, its aims, objectives and outcomes - and Dr. Nick Lambert will discuss and give the first public demonstration
of the project's key outcome - an online searchable multimedia database
of Early British Computers Arts that is based on the SSL Musims software
and which will shortly be available via the Arts and Humanities Data
Service. http://www.ahds.ac.uk 6:30 for 7:00 Tuesday 26 July 2005 Art and Robotics a discussion led by Alex Zivanovic Alex Zivanovic will lead a discussion on the use of robots in art. The scope will include both robots used to generate art (e.g. Aaron) and robots as art ("cybernetic sculpture" e.g. The Senster). Alex will give a brief overview of both past and contemporary work, leading to an open discussion. The particular topics will depend on the interests of those taking part but could include:
Venue: System Simulation Ltd. Bedford Chambers, The Piazza, Covent Garden, LONDON WC2E 8HA CAS is collaborating with BLIP at their next meeting:
BLIP - The Interactive Mind and Art(efacts)
7:30 - late, 19 July 2005 Please email info@blip.me.uk to put your name on the guest list
and mention you are CAS. 6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 21 June 2005 The University of Greenwich first offered a BSc (Hons) in Multimedia Technology in 1995 The degree was designed for students wishing to use computers for creative purposes in the arts and entertainment worlds as well as the traditional computing industry This talk will discuss the issues involved in running such degree courses, and how they have developed in a fast-changing multimedia world, and will present work produced by students in the last ten years On this visit it will also be possible to see the Computer Museum at Greenwich http://computermuseum.gre.ac.uk/
6:30 for 7:00pm Monday 23 May 2005 CACHe (Computer Arts, Context, Histories, etc.) joint event with the Computer Arts Society. The AHRC-funded CACHe Project in the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck is presenting an update on the progress of their research into the history of computer arts in Britain. All are welcome at this event which will include a discussion of issues around archiving and digital imaging with demonstration of the custom-designed database by Nick Lambert, Research Fellow. PhD Candidate, Catherine Mason will present some of her research into early British computer animation, including screening of selected early films. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hafvm/cache With thanks to the London Knowledge Lab and the School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birkbeck.
6:00 - 9:00pm Thursday 19 May 2005 Members of the Computer Arts Society are invited to the opening of INSPIRE, the annual Multimedia Technology degree show at the University of Greenwich. INSPIRE presents this year's crop of new media graduates from Greenwich: a chance to see the work of multimedia technology graduates as they come onto the job market. On show will be creative websites, edutainment, digital video, interactive television, 3D animation, and computer games. The show is open to the public 12 - 4pm Friday 20 and Saturday 21 May
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 12 April 2005 The New York Digital Salon Speaker: Bruce Wands Venue: Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW Directions: Ian Gulland is building #30 here. A printable map with travel instruction is here. Director of the New York Digital Salon talks about the history of this influential institution. http://www.nydigitalsalon.org/ This talk is presented in association with the Creativity and Cognition 05 Conference
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 22 March 2005 Tony Longson's pioneering work was recently featured in the
Scratch Code show at New York's Bitforms Gallery. 6:00 for 6.30pm Wednesday 16 March 2005 The Patric Prince Collection Speaker: Douglas Dodds, V&A Museum Venue: V&A Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL, Tel: 020 7942 2000 The Patric Prince Collection of digital art and its place in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Douglas is Head of Central Services in the V&A's Word & Image Department, which incorporates the National Art Library and the Museum's prints, drawings and paintings collections Prints and Drawings Study Room
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 15 February 2005 Given the ease of access to vast amounts of information in our online, broadband worlds, are there specific roles for artists in interpreting and guiding users through the jungle of information, by making "works" or by other means? If there are, what should the CAS be doing to promote such activities? If not, what other roles could artists adopt in this arena? Discussion evenings are relaxed informal conversations about topics of immediate interest and beyond. All welcome
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 1 February 2005 Musical Chords and Mathematical Necklaces: Composing Scores for an Electronic Piano Speaker: Alan Sutcliffe, co-founder CAS Venue: BCS London HQ, First Floor - The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA. The Davidson Building is on the east side of Southampton Street about 50m from the Strand The number of necklaces of 12 beads each black or white is the same as the number of chords of 0 to 12 notes from an octave of semitones Peter Zinovieff and Alan Sutcliffe are collaborating on a system to compose printed scores and realise them on an electronic piano One piece will use all the chords there are The context of this project will lead to talk of composition and improvisation and of music that no-one would compose
Past Meetings 2004
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 14 December 2004
6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 23 November 2004 Painting with Tools which can't Exist Speaker: Tom Kemp Venue: System Simulation Ltd, Bedford Chambers, The Piazza, Covent Garden, London WC Directions 6:30 for 7:00pm Tuesday 19th October 2004 Edward Ihnatowicz Cybernetic Sculptures and The Senster Speaker: Alex Zivanovic, Imperial College London Venue: Room 542, Mechanical Engineering Department, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2BX Edward Ihnatowicz was a Cybernetic Sculptor active in the late 1960's and early 1970's. His ground-breaking sculptures explored the interaction between his robotic works and the audience, and reached their height with The Senster, a large (15 feet long), hydraulic robot commissioned by the electronics giant, Philips, for their permanent showplace, the Evoluon, in Eindhoven in 1970. The sculpture used sound and movement sensors to react to the behaviour of the visitors. It was one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art and remains unparalleled to this day. The talk will focus on his cybernetic sculptures and explore his ideas about Artificial Intelligence and embodiment. More details at http://www.senster.com |
Still from Infinite Permutations - V1,