Liquid Crystal Concrete:
British Cybernetic Art

The first in a series of summer research seminars on The Arts of Postwar Britain 1945–1965 with Catherine Mason and Ernest Edmonds.

Catherine Mason: British Cybernetic Art: The Origins of Digital Art

There is more than a fifty-year history behind contemporary digital art and an important part of that history is British; it originates in the somewhat forgotten science of cybernetics and is intimately connected with art schools. The field of cybernetics came to prominence postwar, and the study of how machine, social and biological systems behave offered a means of constructing a framework for art production in which artists could consider new technologies and their impact on life. Concepts of behaviour and process, media dexterity, interdependence and co-operation began to enter art. Pioneers include Roy Ascott, Gustav Metzger, Stephen Willats and others who saw art as a system involving feedback between creator and audience. Their ideas were largely promulgated through experiments in art schools, adapting Basic Design pedagogy for a new technological age.

A direct link can be traced from tutor to student through art schools from postwar artists, (including Richard Hamilton), who, inspired by science and what might be termed a “man machine interface”, began considering the use of computing but did not yet have access to it, through to artists in the early 1970s, who were able to access the technology (predominantly in polytechnics). The proposed session will elucidate the crucial role of cybernetics in art schools, including Ealing College of Art and the work of Ascott, in incubating cross-disciplinary collaborations which contributed much to Britain’s later leading role in the education and production of digital arts.

Catherine Mason in Conversation with Ernest Edmonds

Ernest Edmonds is a pioneer in the field of computer and computational arts. He saw the invention of computing as a conceptual leap forward for humankind and set about asking what this could mean for art. His work is rooted within the constructivist tradition and often incorporates interaction where the viewer becomes an active participant and colour, structure, time and interaction influence each other.

It is precisely because of the work done by pioneers such as Edmonds and his peers from the late 1960s that the artistic possibilities of computers were even realised. Thinking about computation in this way opened a whole new creative world, the repercussions of which can still be seen today in many aspects of culture, from Hollywood special effects to computer games to contemporary digital art.

Professor Edmonds has exhibited internationally, and this discussion will centre on the role of cybernetics as a catalyst to the early field of computer arts in Britain and its legacy for art today, whilst allowing us insights into his artistic process.