Wang Bo / Hutoon Studio, poster for Miss Puff, 2011

With an estimated 500 million Internet users, the Web has been called the most creative space for self-expression in China.  In particular social networking and blogging on the Internet is hugely prominent.  In this article I look at the challenges facing two Chinese artists – Wang Bo and Ai Weiwei, who use this technology within the free market/communist state contradiction that is China today.  Read it here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50489

Jennifer Steinkamp, Judy Crook 1, 2012, video installation, 13 x 10 feet (installed Greengrassi Gallery 2013). Photo by Marcus Leith, copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

Jennifer Steinkamp’s beautiful tree moves as though blowing in the wind and transforms over time as the seasons change.  This Los Angeles based artist explores ideas about architectural space, motion and perception using computer animation to engage viewers through use of transient elements in the natural world. Read more about Steinkamp and her work in this month’s BCS column here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50226

Daniel Brown, screenshot from series On Growth and Form, real-time 3D, 2013.  Collection of the University of Dundee, copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

This month my BCS column investigates an interesting commission from the University of Dundee Museum
Services who have been working with the Art Fund on a £100,000 project to explore the influence of Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson in the visual arts.  Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the Dundee Collections and the Thompson connection, this grant funding has uniquely facilitated the creation of an art work itself with an interdisciplinary concept at its heart – On Growth and Form by Daniel Brown.  Read the full article here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/50050

Out November 2013 from PWP (I B Tauris)

Herbert W Franke, Intarsien7024Var1, 2012. Generated with a digital picture-generator named ‘Intarsia’, programmed with the software system Mathematica for the ‘Demonstration Project’ of Stephen Wolfram.  Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

This month, to compliment the previous two discussions of Manfred Mohr
and Ernest Edmonds in my monthly BCS column, we feature new work by another of the great pioneers of algorithmic art - Prof. Herbert Franke.  I am especially honored to be able to share with you the first sight of one of his new graphics from the series
Intarsia, a striking art work which demonstrates his interest in complex patterns and seems to pulsate with kaleidoscopic qualities.  Full article here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/49847

Ernest Edmonds, Shaping Space, 2012. Copyright the artist, reproduced with permission.

For over forty years Ernest Edmonds has had an interest in interactivity and his current
exhibition at Site Gallery Sheffield demonstrates a career-long conversation between drawing, painting and computer-based work.  Ernest is our BCS featured artist of the month, read about Shaping Space here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/49266

Here I am enjoying Ernest’s show which continues until 2 February.

Dario Lanza, Watersun Vision number 04, C-print, unique, 120x100cm, 2012

My article for the British Computer Society this month is a selection submitted by readers of this column and members of the Computer Arts Society.  The high standard and sheer variety of works produced under what might be termed ‘computer art’, never ceases to amaze me and if you are as intrigued as I am to discover what your colleagues and fellow aficionados of the computational process have produced over the course of 2012, then don’t miss it :  http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/49107   See new work by Richard Colson, Anabela Costa, Dario Lanza (featured above), Fabrizio Poltronieri, Brian Reffin Smith and Andrew Welsby.

Shaping Space by Ernest Edmonds

Also a mention on the British Computer Society website: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/48954

Light Logic, Ernest Edmonds’s exhibition is at the Site Gallery, Sheffield (17 Nov – 2 Feb 2013).

Manfred Mohr, P1414_12214, 2011, computer controlled ink on canvas, 80 x 80cm. Copyright the Artist. Reproduced with permission.

This month we celebrate the work of Manfred Mohr, a pioneer in the use of algorithms and computer programs for art-making.  His first ever solo London show opens 16 November at the Carroll Fletcher Gallery http://www.carrollfletcher.com/ (to 20 December), a long-overdue event celebrating forty-odd years of practice for this NYC-based, German-born painter.  Read my British Computer Society column about Manfred here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/48716

Craig Morrison and Joel Cockrill, Thank You, an artwork dedicated to Alan Turing. blinc Festival, 2012.  Copyright the artists, reproduced with permission.

Alan Turing Year 2012 continues apace with a variety of events inspired by the great contribution made by the mathematician and code breaker to the history of computer science and modern biology.  For this month’s BCS column, we’re featuring the work of artists/curators Craig Morrison and Joel Cockrill who have been commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales to produce a laser and light installation honouring Turing’s life and legacy.  Appropriately entitled Thank You, Craig and Joel’s piece will be shown at the blinc digital arts festival in Conway, North Wales, and is a thanks on behalf of the media arts world, based on the very digital materials that Turing helped to invent.  According to Turing’s biographer, Turing believed in the survival of the spirit after death.  Perhaps he was right; here we are remembering him nearly sixty years after his death, his legacy surrounding us in the ever-present technology we use every day.  Read the full article here: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/48180

Also recommended is this lecture on Turing by Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, who argues that it is no surprise that Turing’s great legacy has been overlooked: “no other country other than our own great country has the ability to hide its secrets as we do.”  The belief that for 30 years after WWII it was necessary to keep the fact that Turing invented the world’s first computer a secret, meant that two generations of students grew up thinking that the single most important invention of the 20th & 21st centuries – the computer – was American.