Panel Statement

Panel: Compumorphic Art: The Computer as Muse

This paper will in­tro­duce the panel theme of com­pumor­phic art and place the phrase in terms of the de­vel­op­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­te­r­ial art forms and inan­i­mate/dig­i­tal con­tent. Fur­ther­more, the no­tion that com­pumor­phic art­works refer to not only the vi­sual aes­thetic of the dig­i­tal com­puter but may also re­flect or ques­tion the emo­tion val­ues and on­to­log­i­cal qual­i­ties we com­monly as­sign to com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies will be dis­cussed.
I will also de­scribe re­cent ex­am­ples of my own art prac­tice as an ex­am­ple of com­pumor­phic art.

• Ian Gwilt is a Pro­fes­sor of De­sign at Sheffield Hal­lam Uni­ver­sity. He holds an MA in In­ter­ac­tive Mul­ti­me­dia, con­ferred by the Uni­ver­sity of Balears (UIB) in Spain, and the Royal Col­lege of Art (RCA) Lon­don. He has a Phd from the Col­lege of Fine Arts at the Uni­ver­sity of New South Wales ex­am­in­ing the the­ory and prac­tice of mixed-re­al­ity art. In the last 15 years he has shown and  cu­rated in­ter­ac­tive in­stal­la­tions, rapid pro­to­type sculp­tures and dig­i­tal art­works at a num­ber of in­ter­na­tional new media events, gal­leries and ex­hi­bi­tions. His cur­rent prac­tice/re­search is con­cerned with aug­mented re­al­ity and loca­tive media, the graph­i­cal user in­ter­face as cre­ative/cul­tural arte­fact, and ex­plor­ing new forms and con­texts for in­for­ma­tion de­sign and post con­sump­tion vi­sual com­mu­ni­ca­tion.