Twenty Years of Arts Computing
CHArt Twentieth Annual Conference
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FUTURES PAST: Twenty Years of Arts Computing |
Catherine Mason, CACHe Project, Birkbeck, London, UK
A Computer in the Art Room
This paper introduces a little-recorded aspect of British arts education – the role played by educational institutions in the 1960s and 70s in fostering computer arts.
The influence of ‘basic design’, a new type of art education influenced by Bauhaus concepts, can be traced through art schools from its inception in the 1950s, with artists informed by cybernetics, through the 1960s with artists working in programmatic ways, to artists who actually used computers by the 1970s. Victor Pasmore and Richard Hamilton’s Basic Design Course was set up in 1953 at King's College, Durham University (at Newcastle upon Tyne). Roy Ascot’s Ground Course was created at Ealing Art School in 1961 and subsequently at Ipswich Civic College. From there, Stroud Cornock went on to found ‘Media Handling’ in 1968 at Leicester Polytechnic, with Cornock’s student Stephen Scrivener among the first cohort at the ‘Department of Experiment’ set up by systems artist Malcolm Hughes at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1972.
The creation of the Polytechnics, from the late 1960s onward, concentrated expensive resources into larger multi-disciplinary centres. In a number of institutions, the result was that artists had the opportunity to access expensive and specialist computer equipment and technical expertise (generally belonging to science or maths departments) for the first time.
Examples from a number of centres identified to date will be presented and the work created, equipment used and funding issues described. These include Coventry School of Art (in the process of becoming Lanchester Polytechnic), which produced the first computer animation created in a British art school, Hornsey School of Art (subsequently Middlesex Polytechnic), which produced one of the first packages for artists, PICASO (Picture Computer Algorithms Sub-routine Orientated) and the Institute of Computer Science, where Tony Pritchett created the Flexipede in 1967 - the first computer animated film in Britain.