[spectre] [CAS] Annual Jasia Reichardt Lecture 2026: William Latham on Evolutionary Art, AI, Interaction and Immersive Organic Worlds

[Paul Brown]

The Computer Arts Society 2026 programme launches

CAS Annual Jasia Reichardt Lecture 2026
Evolutionary Art, AI, Interaction and Immersive Organic Worlds

Speaker:  William Latham;  Moderator:  Bronaċ Ferran
18:00 GMT, Wednesday, 21 January 2026
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/

William Latham will cover the history of his work. He will start with his early work as a student in the 1980s at the Royal College of Art where he developed his FormSynth hand-drawn evolutionary systems through to his later Mutator and FormGrow software developed at the IBM UK Scientific Centre in Winchester from 1987 to ’93, where he began his long-term collaboration with mathematician Stephen Todd. Together, they produced many of the images for which he is best known today using Mutator to create strange organic forms from an alternative evolution. He went on to work in VR, creating immersive organic worlds influenced by his ten years working in Rave Music and Games. His most recent work in collaboration with Google DeepMind entitled Evolution and Foundation AI uses AI to drive and steer the evolutionary process replacing the human selector with the computer. He will share insights and anecdotes from the journey so far and the people who have influenced him and address the challenges of harnessing evolutionary and AI processes for his creative goals.   

William Latham is a pioneering UK digital artist well known for his evolutionary art created at IBM in the late eighties. After twelve years as a Creative Director in Rave Music and Computer Games, he became a Professor at Goldsmiths (University of London). His art is in the Centre Pompidou, the Henry Moore Institute, the V&A Museum and many other collections. His VR and generative work have been shown widely internationally, in recent years particularly in Germany and China. Currently, William and his long-standing collaborator, Stephen Todd are working with Google DeepMind to use AI to drive and steer the evolution of their organic art.  This work was shown for the first time in the Evolution and Foundational AI exhibition in London in late 2025, sponsored by Google DeepMind.  William is a co-founder with Prof Frederic Fol Leymarie of The Creative Machine Exhibition, now touring China.

https://www.evolutionandfoundation.com/

Dr Bronaċ Ferran is a London-based curator and writer. In 2012 she curated the first bringing together of William Latham’s print and digital works in an exhibition entitled Poetry, Language, Code, at Cambridge School of Art. She has written exhibition catalogue essays recently for several leading institutions internationally, including CAS, LACMA, the Mayor Gallery, MAC-USP in São Paulo, TATE and Victoria Miro. She is also a contributor to Right Click Save and Studio International magazine.

The presentation will be followed by a reception and an opportunity to view the current CAS exhibitions.  The event will be recorded and uploaded to the CAS YouTube Channel.

This hybrid event is In-Person and via Zoom.  It is open to the public and is free, but you must book your place here: https://ComputerArtsSociety210126.eventbrite.co.uk <https://computerartssociety210126.eventbrite.co.uk/>
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Our next meeting will be Manna: Epigenetics, Conflict and Intergenerational Trauma and other works featuring Anna Dumitriu in discussion with Cécile Bourne-Farrell and Professor Rachel Kerr, on Wednesday, 18 February 2026.  In-Person and Zoom.

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