[Synapse elist] Bioart + Robotics

[Paul Brown]

Hi everyone - I first trained as a painter at art school in  
Manchester, UK in the mid 1960's when I saw an exhibition at the ICA  
in London that changed my life!.  It was of course Cybernetic  
Serendipity in 1968 and, from that moment on I was hooked.  From 1974  
my practice has been based almost exclusively in the computational  
domain.

Another major influence was an issue of Scientific American (October  
70) when Martin Gardner's Mathematical Recreations column featured  
John Conway's cellular automaton - The Game of Life.

I went back to university in the 1970's to learn about computers and  
was lucky to get a place at the Slade School of Art, University  
College London when it had the pioneering Experimental Dept. with  
it's own minicomputer (a 32kb system that was larger than a fridge  
and cost as much as a house).  The Slade postgraduate school was  
dominated by the Systems Group who were involved with ideas of art as  
process and autonomy.

Since then I have been developing ideas about art that can "make  
itself".  From the earliest days I included cellular automata in my  
work.

In 2000 I was artist-in-residence at the Centre for Computational  
Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) at the University of Sussex (where I  
now have a visiting position).  More recently I have been working  
together with colleague at the CCNR on a project that is attempting  
to use evolutionary robotics to create robots that can draw.

So, that's me!  I'm looking forward to this discussion and would like  
to thank Vicki for setting it up and inviting me.

Paul

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Paul Brown - based in OZ Dec 07 - Apr 08
mailto:paul at paul-brown.com == http://www.paul-brown.com
OZ Landline +61 (0)7 5443 3491 == USA fax +1 309 216 9900
OZ Mobile +61 (0)419 72 74 85 == Skype paul-g-brown
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Visiting Professor - Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
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