Abstract (Long paper)

Keywords: Interactive art, generative art, computational art, computation and creativity, Ernest Edmonds (b. 1942), art and technology.

This article explores the work of British artist and pioneer of computational art, Ernest Edmonds, and its relevance to the field of generative art. Its focus is on two important, but often overlooked, works he created: Fifty One & Fifty Two (1980) and Four Shaped Forms (Park Hill B) (2014). The article poses a number of questions about the origins and development of these works. How were these works created and what inspired their creation? How are they connected? Based upon an analysis of material held in Ernest Edmonds’s Archive, the National Archive of Computer Based Art and Design at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and a series of interviews conducted with Edmonds by the author, the article provides answers to these questions.

• Francesca Franco is Senior Research Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, where she is studying the Edmonds Archive of computational art held at the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2009–10 she was Research Fellow on the AHRC funded project  Computer Art and Technocultures at Birkbeck, University of London, and the V&A Museum. She holds a PhD in the History of Art (Birkbeck). She is an Associate Editor of Media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus. Her most recent publications include “The First Computer Art Show at the 1970 Venice Biennale. An Experiment or Product of the Bourgeois Culture?”, Relive: Media Art Histories, Cubitt and Thomas, eds, MIT Press (2013); “Exploring Intersections: Ernest Edmonds and his time-based generative art,” Digital Creativity, 24:3 (2013). Francesca’s first monograph on the history of generative and interactive art is contracted with Ashgate: Ernest Edmonds – Generative Systems Artist (forthcoming).

Full Text (PDF) p. 546-551