[spectre] [CAS] Annual Jasia Reichardt Lecture: Francesca Franco on Vera Molnar, 15 January 2025

[Paul Brown]

The Computer Arts Society is honoured to announce

The 2025 CAS Annual Jasia Reichardt Lecture:
Icône 2020 – in honour of Vera Molnar


Speaker: Francesca Franco; Moderator: Sean Clark
18:00 GMT, Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Other time zones here:  https://www.timeanddate.com <https://www.timeanddate.com/> 

This hybrid event will be held In person and via Zoom.  Booking link below.
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
25 Copthall Avenue, London, EC2R 7BP, UK
Directions here: https://www.bcs.org/about-us/our-london-office-and-event-venue/

In this talk, Dr Francesca Franco will reflect on the legacy of Vera Molnar, who left an indelible mark on the world of computer art, and whose vision continues to resonate profoundly today. A year since her passing, Molnar’s work still speaks volumes about the transformative possibilities of computational art, particularly through her late project, Icône 2020. This collaboration with Murano glassmakers, which Franco produced and curated, bridges Molnar’s early explorations with her enduring pursuit of art’s material and conceptual boundaries.

Icône 2020 encapsulates her genius: blending the precision of algorithms with the unpredictability of Venetian glass, it embodies her fascination with the notion of order and disorder, rationality and chaos. This talk will explore how Molnar’s projects, particularly Icône 2020, illustrate the vast, still-unfolding ramifications of computer art, uniting tradition and technology. Through this lens, Franco would like to honour her legacy as a visionary whose work continually shapes our understanding of art in the digital age.

Francesca Franco, PhD, is an independent curator, art historian and producer based in the UK and Italy. Her research on the history of early computer art and its pioneers has been widely published and translated. Her recent books include Generative Systems Art (Routledge, 2018), The Algorithmic Dimension (Springer, 2022), and Computer Art at the Venice Biennale (Springer, 2025). Notable curatorial projects include Vera Molnár: Icône 2020 at the 59th Venice Biennale, Algorithmic Signs (Venice, 2017), and Vera Molnár: Variazioni Icône (Rome, 2023). She has commissioned significant new works, such as Molnár's first glasswork in Murano, Icône 2020 (2021), Roman Verostko's St Mark's Apocalypse (2017), and Ernest Edmonds’s Growth and Form (2017). Francesca will serve as the 2025 SIGGRAPH Art Gallery Chair.

The event will be recorded and uploaded to the CAS YouTube Channel.

Please note – our 2025 programme of events begin at 18:00 (6pm).

This event is in-person and via Zoom and open to the public and is free but you must book your place here: https://ComputerArtsSociety150125.eventbrite.co.uk <https://computerartssociety150125.eventbrite.co.uk/>
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Please note we have no event in February - our next meeting will be the opening of 'Listen, Scoundrels! Calls to action from early CAS' an exhibition curated by Sean Carroll on 26 March 2025 in Person and Zoom.

You can see our future programme here: https://computer-arts-society.com/events/index.html