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Creative Simulations

George Mallen and the Early Computer Arts Society

herausgegeben von: Catherine Mason

Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

Buchreihe : Springer Series on Cultural Computing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Über dieses Buch

This book is centred on the practitioner-led Computer Arts Society founded in 1969 and formed to address creative computation in all the arts – performance, poetry, text, sound, sculpture and graphics. The objectives and achievements of the Computer Arts Society are presented as realised through their members and exhibitions to the mid-1970s. The Society’s co-founder is Dr George Mallen, a pioneer of cybernetic systems and cultural applications of computing.

Creative Simulations contains new research including Mallen’s early work with cybernetician Gordon Pask, whose concepts of interdisciplinarity were influential on the ground-breaking Ecogame (1970). Led by Mallen, Ecogame was a collaborative Computer Arts Society project, an early embodiment of computer technology into art and the first multi-media interactive gaming system in the UK. Pask’s influence in Mallen’s subsequent role at the Royal College of Art where he instigated the first computerlab facilities for artists, is examined. A recently discovered lecture given by Mallen is transcribed, along with reproduction of historic texts by Stephen Willats and John Lansdown (two of his colleagues), which add context to this history of interdisciplinary artistic innovation in the digital realm.

Illustrations include art works, ephemera, exhibition posters and installations, preparatory drawings, computing equipment and associated flow charts and diagrams, many appearing here in print for the first time.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

Nick Lambert introduces the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and the importance of George Mallen’s role within it from its foundation in 1969 to the present day. Lambert, a former Chair of CAS, offers his perspective on his own relationship with Mallen, whom he first met in 2002.

Nick Lambert

2. A Major Step Forward: The Computer Arts Society and Event One

Abstract

This chapter describes the origins of the Computer Arts Society, the first practitioner-led group of its kind in the UK and details the support, networking and exhibition opportunities it provided for like-minded individuals. The CAS aims came together in 1969 with Event One, their first public exhibition, which presented a topic and style of artwork that was outside the mainstream of British art at this time. Event One heralded the collaborative, cross-disciplinary nature of early British computer arts.

Catherine Mason

3. From Cybernetics to Ecogame: Computing in a Cultural Context—An Interview with George Mallen

Abstract

This chapter, in the form of an interview, describes George Mallen’s early interest in cognitive science and technological systems in his own words. It examines the time he spent working with cybernetician Gordon Pask and the influence of Pask’s Conversation Theory on Mallen’s subsequent work. This Paskian interdisciplinarity can be traced through Mallen’s early projects, detailed here, specifically the foundation the Computer Arts Society, the creation of his company System Simulation Ltd and most of all the conception and execution of Ecogame, a simulation model of an economic system and the UK’s first computer-controlled interactive game system, exhibited 1970 in London and 1971 in Davos.

Catherine Mason

4. “The Name of the Game Is…? A Personal View of the Computer Arts Society’s Project”

Abstract

This chapter reprints an important text by John Lansdown (1929–1999), a British architect and innovator of early Computer-Aided Design (CAD) techniques and computer graphics, in which he describes the conception, implementation and reception of Ecogame, (1970) an early interactive complex system referencing ecology and economics, in which he was involved.

R. John Lansdown

5. The Object is the Process: Computer Art Exhibitions of the 1970s in London and Edinburgh

Abstract

The Computer Arts Society consolidated its activities into the 1970s with several exhibitions analysed in detail here, including Computer 70, London, for which Ecogame was created, culminating in the ground-breaking Interact: Machine, Man, Society in Edinburgh, 1973. These exhibitions, international in scope and attracting a wide variety of artist participants, demonstrate that CAS members were aware of the many possible roles of the computer in creative processes and considered how best to use this technology to communicate with audiences. They show that early British computer arts did not only consist of two-dimensional graphic applications, but rather interaction and audience participation played an increasingly important role, anticipating later developments in contemporary art by many years.

Catherine Mason

6. Art, Cybernetics and Social Intervention: An Interview Between Stephen Willats and George Mallen

Abstract

This chapter reproduces an interview from 2005 between George Mallen and his long-term friend and sometime collaborator, artist Stephen Willats. They discuss their shared interest in devising interactive systems, based on the science of cybernetics, that allow participants shared art experiences mediated through the system. This was art as a system involving feedback between machine and creator, creator and audience and audience and machine.

George Mallen, Catherine Mason

7. Design as an Interesting Phenomenon: George Mallen and the Royal College of Art

Abstract

The chapter traces the story of George Mallen’s time at the RCA from 1971 to 1983, asking what Mallen brought to the pioneering Department of Design Research there, and how the RCA changed along with him. It connects his innovations to the intellectual concerns of the time including cybernetics and systems thinking, to which Mallen brought his own unique contributions. The chapter prioritises design over other disciplines, reflecting not only the primary job that Mallen was employed to do at the RCA, but also his conviction that design presents special properties as a human—and perhaps machine—activity.

Stephen Boyd Davis

8. General Principles of the Ecogame Model

Seminar given by George Mallen at the Centre for Behavioural Art, Gallery House, 1973

Abstract

This chapter publishes for the first time the transcription of a recently discovered recording of a talk given by George Mallen in 1973, at the Centre for Behavioural Art, an early British interdisciplinary ‘think-tank’ run by artist Stephen Willats in London. This Centre dealt with many ideas of interest to Mallen and fellow Computer Arts Society members, including the application of cybernetics to art. Mallen presents some of the ideas behind the conception and functioning of Ecogame, (1970), the cross-disciplinary simulation of an economic environment and interactive ‘game’, led by him and developed cooperatively by members of the Computer Arts Society.

George Mallen

9. On George Mallen, Poetry and the Future

Abstract

This chapter studies the text “Wherever Next?” by George Mallen published in 1973 and uses it as a lens to consider his approach to computer use in art, particularly the Ecogame project led by him, and the computer-generated poetry of Robin Shirley and Peter Kilgannon. Mallen reflected upon what a future computer art might look like. After a brief precis of some recent significant changes in the artworld affecting the evolution, production and display of digital art, some aspects of Mallen’s vision found in art today are considered and some conjectures put forward for a possible future role for art involving technology, based on early CAS principles.

Catherine Mason

Backmatter

Titel: Creative Simulations
herausgegeben von: Catherine Mason
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-50620-8
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-50619-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50620-8