Sean Clark

De Montfort University | DMU · The Institute of Creative Technologies

Welcome to the 2024 Computer Arts Society Members’ Exhibition. This year’s show takes place at the BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT offices at Moorgate in London and runs throughout July, August and September 2024, with a preview taking place on the 26th of June.

Leicester is a city of around 350,000 people located in the UK’s East Midlands. Despite its relatively small size, it is served by two universities – the University of Leicester and De Montford University – and has an active contemporary digital arts scene. It also has a significant place in the history of computer arts in the UK, starting in the l...

This paper discusses the digital dissemination and interactive learning model of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), emphasizes the importance of ICH inheritance, and points out the limitations of existing digital dissemination methods such as WebAR, VR, live streaming and MOOC online education. Due to the impact of COVID-19 and the development of...

The EVA series of conferences began in London in 1990 under the title “Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts”. Established by James Hemsley, interest in EVA spread across Europe, and beyond, resulting in a large network of EVA groups and Archive, although these had not been catalogued. These materials, together with the contents of the EVA London...

The Computer Arts Archive is a not-for-profit company based in Leicester that collects, exhibits, and promotes computer arts for the benefit of artists, audiences, curators, educators, and researchers. The archive looks to collaborate with other collections, museums, and galleries to explore the impact of digital culture and ensure that computer ar...

This short paper describes the work of the Computer Arts Society and its affiliated Computer Arts Archive CIC.

Alex May developed Algorithmic Photo- graphy to capture data and reveal hidden or unnoticed information in his own mov- ing image artworks using bespoke com- puter vision algorithms that he has coded in C++.

The artwork featured in this catalogue was exhibited at BCS Moorgate in London between July and December 2023. The work includes pieces selected from an open call to members of CAS, together with invited works from other members and associates.

An exploration of Leicester and Leicestershire's computer art history featuring artwork by Stroud Cornock, Ernest Edmonds, Stephen Scrivener, Dominic Boreham, Brian Reffin Smith, Graham Bate, Stephen Bell, and Sean Clark.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Quantel, the company that first brought digital art and graphics to the masses, the Computer Arts Society are revealing twenty pieces of digital art created on Quantel's Paintbox in the 1980s by some of the world's most famous artists. More information: https://computer-arts-society.com/exhibit...

In 2022, members of the Computer Arts Archive constructed a rebuilt version of Ernest Edmonds’ pioneering artwork Communication Game and presented it at the EVA London 2022 conference (Clark and Carroll 2022). This project continues in this vein by presenting a rebuild of another pioneering work, Stephen Scrivener’s Homeostasis a.k.a. The Machine.

The conservation of digital art and displays is increasingly important for long-term access and exhibition of such artifacts, with respect to both museums (Boiano et al. 2022; Falcão & Ensom 2019) and archives. Sometimes this can be achieved by rebuilding artworks (Clark & Carroll 2022). The need for organisations and funding to aid in the conserva...

The current mobile apps of traditional handicrafts fail to deeply explore the culture connotation and artistic features of traditional handicrafts, leading to the weakening of the artistic value of all levels of culture contents in the traditional handicrafts design, which is not conducive to the effective transmission of culture contents in the tr...

Paul Brown pursues his work in the traditions of Constructivism, De Stijl, Art Concret and Conceptual & Systems Art. He discovered digital systems as an artistic medium at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the ICA in London in 1968. His main focus has been developing “bottom-up” AI or A-Life systems earning him an international reputation as...

With the development of educational technology, the way of learning is changing at amazing high speed, and the traditional classroom is gradually shifting to the way of blending learning. In order to remove the dependence of STEAM education curriculum on offline teaching and the single online teaching content and form, this paper summarizes the pre...

In recent years, the development of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) provides new opportunities for the protection and inheritance of traditional handicrafts. Cantonese porcelain (CP) is one of the most important intangible cultural heritages in China based on its special cultural content and unique form of expression. However, according to the surv...

The Computer Arts Archive was established in Leicester, UK in early 2020 in order to preserve and develop the CAS50 Collection, a collection of computer artworks brought together in 2018 and 2019 to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Computer Arts Society. This paper presents work undertaken to expand the archive throug...

The purpose of this research is to explore a novel framework of traditional handicraft creative practice towards Human-Engaged Computing (HEC). First, this paper investigates the development of traditional handicraft interactive learning from the perspective of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Second, this paper demonstrates the importance and inn...

To solve the problems of inefficient learning caused by the complexity, fragmentation and lack of personalization of traditional handicraft learning resources. Based on the method of pattern configuration extraction and reuse, this paper takes the innovative design of Canton Porcelain pattern as an example. For the first time, sorting the knowledge...

The newly-established Computer Arts Archive provides a home for The CAS50 Collection and related materials from the Computer Arts Society, plus those of individual artists. The archive was incorporated as a Community Interest Company in January 2020 and now has an office and storage facility in Leicester. This paper documents the recent additions t...

This thesis is concerned with the development of art systems, and in particular digital art systems. That is, digital artworks that are able to interact with each other, as well as their human viewers or participants. The communication may be over distance via the internet, or in a shared space via sound, light and movement. The concept of the conn...

Sensory Drawing Data reflects on a collaborative research project between Esther Rolinson and Sean Clark. It focuses on the use of computational processes to identify underlying structures and behaviours in Esther Rolinson's drawings. The purpose of this is to define a movement language that can be used to control lights in Rolinson's installation...

The Computer Arts Society was founded in 1968 and in 2018 mark its 50th anniversary. To mark this occasion a celebratory exhibition of artwork by twelve computer artists associated with the Society over the years was held in Leicester and Brighton. This publication documents this exhibition.

In this paper and demonstration we present a Virtual Reality reconstruction of a 500 year-old pailou gate, or memorial archway, that is currently located at Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT). The small roofed structure was built during the Ming Dynasty in Shanxi Province. In 2013 it was acquired by GDUT and in 2014 it was installed in the c...

Drawing Structures and Light Movements is an experimental artwork consisting of a computer screen showing digitally captured drawings and an LED matrix showing the movement patterns and rhythms derived from them. It has been developed as part of Esther Rolinson and Sean Clark's on- going research into techniques for translating Esther Rolinson’s dr...

Founded in 1968, the Computer Arts Society has long explored such ideas. From early artworks using cybernetics, to algorithmic systems involving evolution and growth, to artists using the blockchain, immersive technologies, AI and robotics, the Society has provided a forum for the latest thinking in the arts and computing.

This exhibition brings together a diverse range of work by digital artists from De Montfort University in Leicester, UK and Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, China. It is part of a developing collaboration between the two Universities. The work featured includes print-based, video and interactive work from both Universities, togethe...

This article is concerned with an on-going exploration of flow and connectedness by an artist technologist who has always been interested in the intersection of art and technology. He describes himself as a ‘systems artist’, since his interests are primarily related to the systems-like nature of the world around us and he sees the systemic behaviou...

This paper describes “Signal” a new connected digital artwork created by Esther Rolinson and Sean Clark. In common with much of their collaborative work, including the award-winning artwork “Flown” (Rolinson & Clark 2016), Signal began as a hand-made drawing by Esther Rolinson, before being developed in to a light piece and then an Internet-connect...

At CHI2015 our Art.CHI initiative led to a two-day workshop, an art catalog and presentations during Interactivity. The long-term plan is to turn this into a regular feature of CHI. For CHI2016 we will additionally use a gallery space within the Conference concourse. This workshop will invite digital artists to present their work, discuss its immed...

Tango Apart: Moving Together is an interactive digital art system that has two or more communicating parts in different locations. Although each part is able to work independently, they also operate together, connecting the different locations and providing an aesthetic communication channel and creative participation. In particular, the work will...

'Flown' is a sculptural installation by artist Esther Rolinson. It is a hand-folded animated acrylic structure that has been constructed through the process of drawing, model making and research into materials and technology. This is a proposal to exhibit a developed version of 'Flown' using generative programming and the addition of an interaction...

At CHI2014 our two day workshop "Curating the Digital: Space for Art and Interaction", led to a set of recommendations to the SIGCHI Executive for future two day workshops at CHI2015 and CHI2016, in which interactive artworks would be the focus of presentation and discussion. The Executive and the chairs of the upcoming conferences accepted these r...

This article covers the conception and development of Empedia, a new locative software environment for mobile phones specifically designed for expanded archives, documentary and heritage/historical interpretation, using situated and collaborative learning, at resonant and related sites. It will examine our developmental methods employed through a n...

Dropsketch is a Smartphone drawing system that enables users to anonymously create and share simple black and white sketches of their surroundings. The free app, available for iPhone and Android devices, contains an easy-to-use sketching tool and the facility to 'drop' completed sketches on a shared map. It makes use of the Smartphone's built in po...

ColourNet is a digital art system composed of a set interactive and interacting artworks. Although the artworks are able to work independently, they can also operate together to provide enhanced possibilities for human interaction and creative participation. We describe the ColourNet digital art system and demonstrate how people can interact with a...

In their pioneering paper “The Creative Process Where the Artist is Amplified or Superseded by the Computer” (1973) Cornock and Edmonds describe a model for the classification of artworks according to their systemic behaviour. In this presentation I revisit this model, discuss its subsequent development (Edmonds, Turner & Candy, 2004) and present a...

This paper describes a shared workspace system known as the LookingGlass. The system allows pairs of geographically distributed designers to work together in real-time via a computer-based shared drawing surface, a video link and an audio link. The system integrates many of the features found in previous shared drawing surface systems and additiona...

Shared view systems allow groups to share single-user computer applications whilst working in distributed collaborative settings. While these systems are useful for sharing applications in situations where all members of a group have similar skills, they are not so suited to situations where group members have differing skills. In some contexts cer...

The idea that interactive human-computer systems should enhance or augment existing work practices appears frequently in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) literature. Jonathan Grudin, when reporting on Douglas Engelbart’s address to the CSCW ’88 conference, observed that “his [Engelbart’s] principal interest lies in describing or identifying the...

This paper describes an experiment in which teams of two designers used a shared computer 'sketchpad' to generate design concepts for products while geographically separated by a distance of over 16 300km. The aim of the large separation, which included a large time-zone difference, was to examine critically the capability of the sketchpad to provi...

This is a conference paper. This paper describes current research at Loughborough University in the field of Computer Supported Co-operative Working (CSCW). The project, which is funded by the Information Engineering Directorate (IED) within the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC), is titled 'Establishing the Communicational Requirement...