Computer Arts Society Research Articles

Creative Simulations: George Mallen and the Early Computer Arts Society

Creative Simulations: George Mallen and the Early Computer Arts Society

Beyond NFTs: A Possible Future for Digital Art

Abstract The Computer Arts Society, founded in 1969 as a BCS Special Interest Group and still going strong in its 51st year, has seen the ebb and flow of interest in various digital artforms, writes Dr Nick Lambert, Chair of the BCS Computer Arts Society SG.

BCS AI Award for Artists

Abstract The eighth annual Lumen Prize, celebrating the very best in international digital art, took place at the Barbican Centre for Performing Arts in London on 24 October. Presenting the BCS AI Award to winners, Dave Murray-Rust and Rocio von Jungenfeld — for Lichtsuchende — was Computer Arts Society Chair, Dr Nick Lambert.

Event Two: The BCS Computer Arts Society

Abstract In 1969, the newly formed Computer Arts Society staged its first show: the aptly named EVENT ONE. However, it was another fifty years before the advent of EVENT TWO. Johanna Hamilton AMBCS asks Graham Diprose Joint Chair of EVA London, about the inspirational five day show and its legacy.

BCS Computer Arts Society Celebrates 50 Years

Abstract As the swinging 60s drew to a close, the Beatles released Abbey Road, Concorde made her maiden fl ight from France and the the world’s fi rst microprocessor was invented, the Computer Arts Society held its very fi rst exhibition

Art Space: CAS50

The Computer Arts Society (CAS) was established in the UK in 1968 by George Mallen, Alan Sutcliffe and John Lansdown and pioneered the development of computer arts in the UK and worldwide. CAS was ...

A journey – crossing boundaries

ABSTRACTDr George L. Mallen writes about his introduction to computer simulation in the early 1960s and his work with Gordon Pask, founder and director of System Research Ltd, a convergence point of cognitive science, computer technology and art. In 1969 Mallen co-founded the Computer Arts Society and helped to organize Event One at the Royal College of Art which brought computers into the art school. In 1969 he formed System Simulation Ltd and in 1970 developed ECOGAME, a system dynamics model of a hypothetical national economy, implemented at the First European Management Forum, the predecessor of the World Management Forum. Some of the ECOGAME technology was also used by Stafford Beer for the government economic decision room he designed and implemented for the Allende government in Chile in 1972–1973.

Computer Art

Catherine Mason, Chair of the BCS Computer Arts Society, looks at a collaboration between an artist and their younger self.

Computer Art

Perceptions, ideas and visions translated into mathematics. Catherine Mason, Chair of the BCS Computer Arts Society, writes.

From analogue to digital: preserving early computer-generated art in the V&A’s collections

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the UK’s emerging national collection of early computer-generated art and design. Many of the earliest works only survive on paper, but the V&A also holds some born-digital material. The Museum is currently involved in a project to digitise the computer art collections and to make the information available online. Artworks, books and ephemera from the Patric Prince Collection and the archives of the Computer Arts Society are included in a V&A display on the history of computer-generated art, entitled Digital pioneers. In addition, the project is contributing to the development of the Museum’s procedures for dealing with time-based media.

Not only computing – also art

Abstract One of the pleasures oí being in a profession as young as computing is that it is possible to have met many of its founding figures: Konrad Zuse, for example, the German engineer who could fairly lay el aim to being the first to have made a computer; Edmund C. Berkeley, the US writer who recently visited the BCS; Stanley Gill, a pioneer who also did much to help start the Computer Arts Society; as well as numerous BCS members whom 1 see from time to time. Computing and mathematics became central to my interests too late for me to have met Alan Turing – but I do know some who were well-acquainted with him from their work at Bletchley during the war or, in the following ten years, at NPL or Manchester. I first became aware of him in the mid-fifties after reading his article on solvable and unsolvable problems in the Penguin Science News. This was published in February 1954 and, as he died in June 1954, it must have been one of his last works. But it was not until the publication of his mother Sara’s biography of him in 1959 that I realised what an important and interesting figure he was.