[spectre] Catherine Mason : A Computer in the Art Room

[Oliver Grau]

Dear Spectre Listmembers,

guess this might be interesting for this list.

Best

Oliver 

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A Computer in the Art Room: the origins of British computer arts
1950-80

Norfolk: JJG Publishing, 2008
ISBN 978-1-899163-89-2

This book analyses the major routes into computer based arts in Britain
from the post-World War II period, with artists informed by cybernetics,
to 1980 with the advent of personal computing. It argues that new
frameworks for collaboration between arts and sciences were established
during this period evident particularly in academic institutions and
artist-led initiatives. A re-organisation of the art educational system,
an expanded notion of the art object encouraged by the artistic
counter-culture of the 1960s and for a brief time, a sympathetic
governmental framework enabled art with a techno-scientific basis to
flourish particularly within schools of art and design. The field of
early computer arts is a rare example of inter-disciplinary
collaboration within modernism in Britain in the period. It is this
diversity which has a major bearing on how the art was and continues to
be perceived by the art world. Artist-led initiatives, again largely
located outside the mainstream art world, were an integral part of the
development of computer arts. Formal and informal networks organised by
practitioners were able to address the challenge of exhibition and
dissemination of work in a field that was not necessarily readily
accepted or understood. 

A Computer in the Art Room uncovers and records the history of an
artistic practice that is little known and in particular the crucial
role played by a number of art schools in fostering cross-disciplinary
collaborations which continue to contribute to Britain*s leading role
in the education and production of contemporary art.  The complexity and
rarity of computers during the period meant that any art form based
around them was bound to be a specialised branch of art, highly
dependent upon support and funding to exist.  Before the onset of
user-friendly systems, proprietary software and personal computers,
these artists built relationships with scientific institutions in order
to gain the access required to further their artistic aims. This was a
unique period in which art students could learn to program computers. In
this book, for the first time, a direct link is traced from tutor to
student through the British art school system which provided many with
opportunities to do precisely this.  Early British computer arts with
its emphasis on craft, materiality and interactivity, is not only one of
the last aspects of modernism, but also provides a gateway to
understanding postmodernism. The book contains over 140 illustrations,
many never before published.

The book is aimed primarily at an audience of practitioners, students
and academics particularly but not limited to the fields of fine art and
design, the new media arts, computer graphics, special effects, art
history, humanities, curators, arts management, cultural theory and
research, computing and the history of technology.  

Contents list:
Foreword by Professor Clive Richards, Coventry School of art & Design
Introduction										
Chapter One	White Heat: A Background		
Chapter Two	British Art Postwar: The Independent Group and
				Cybernetics						
Chapter Three	*Causing an Uproar!* Richard Hamilton and Victor
				Pasmore*s Basic
Design				
Chapter Four	A Cybernetic Art Matrix: Roy Ascott, Stroud Cornock and
			Stephen
Willats				
Chapter Five	The Cybernetic Art of Edward Ihnatowicz		
Chapter Six	A Room of Our Own: Cybernetic Serendipity and The
			Computer Arts
Society				
Chapter Seven	Crafting Code: The Polytechnics and Computer
Arts	
Chapter Eight	A Computer in the Art Room? The Experimental
				Department at the Slade School
of Fine Art
Chapter Nine	Bits in Motion: Pioneering British Computer Animation
Conclusion										
Sources
Endnotes
Index

Biography:

Catherine Mason was born in Australia, raised in the United States and
trained in art history in London, gaining degrees from the University of
London and City University.  Since 1994 she has been involved in the art
world variously as an educator, researcher and exhibitions organiser. 
In 2002 she began researching the history of British computer arts at
Birkbeck, University of London as part of the CACHe Project (Computer
Arts, Contexts, Histories, etc.: http://www.e-x-p.org/cache/index.HTM),
funded by the UK*s Arts & Humanities Research Council:
http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/.  As part of this she assisted with the
re-formation of the UK-based Computer Arts Society
(http://www.computer-arts-society.org/), co-edited with Dr Charlie Gere,
Dr Nick Lambert and Paul Brown the MIT publication White Heat, Cold
Logic (2009) and negotiated with London*s Victoria & Albert Museum the
donation of an important American collection of international computer
art.  In 2006 she produced Bits in Motion, a screening of early British
computer animation, at London*s National Film Theatre.  Her book, A
Computer in the Art Room: The Origins of British Computer Arts 1950-80,
published in 2008 records the untold story of computer arts activity
within art schools.
http://www.catherinemason.co.uk/