elementum.art launch new cube video and Grid 88 history

Launch of new Micro Arts Cube videos and Micro Arts Grid 88
with elementum.art on Wednesday 22 Feb 2023 – Zurich Switzerland.

Georg Bak and Geoff Davis Zurich 2023 elementum.art
ZX Spectrum, Micro Arts Magazine, Grid 88 on wall – Georg Bak and Geoff Davis Zurich 2023 elementum.art
Geoff Davis & Georg Bak curator of elementum.art
Geoff Davis & Georg Bak, curator, elementum.art
MA4 Story Generator Geoff Davis
MA4 Story Generator Geoff Davis
geoff Davis Georg Bak Zurich 2023
geoff Davis Georg Bak Zurich 2023
elementum art Micro Arts drop
Catalogue for elementum art Micro Arts drop

Geoff Davis of Micro Arts Group is live on Instagram in Zurich 4pm Central European time 22/2/2023. Visit elementum on Insta to find out more.

Please click here to visit elementum.art blog for details – there are 3 posts

This is our third exhibition in three years. There are 4 of our special cube videos, and a new 88 image grid of the 40 year history, starting with my code for MA1 in 1983 (BASIC screen shot) and ending with the new Spatial VR Micro Arts gallery.

 

AI and text generation used by professional writers – Research

Geoff Davis – AI text and writing – my University of the Arts London (at CCI UAL Camberwell) research on AI text and writers, that you might have been involved in (summer 2020), is now online at

Geoff Davis AI text generation – UAL Research

https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/18621/

NEWS- Micro Arts Exhibition

There is an exhibition in November 2020 to launch the Computer Arts Archive, which features Micro Arts. POSTPONED to summer 2021.

INSTEAD, VISIT NEW SITE NOW – Computer Arts Archive (special group of British Computer Society)

Micro Arts Group Geoff Davis MA2 Various Unusual Events The Piano Bar red generative computer art
Micro Arts Group Geoff Davis MA2 Various Unusual Events The Piano Bar red generative computer art

 

 

 

Talk

Geoff Davis talking about Micro Arts, his 1980s computer art group

Computer Arts Society, 9/6/2020

Video to be posted here soon.

geoffdavis5  gmail  com

or use Contact on the this site.

Micro Arts – produced a range of computer art for popular micros, and a paper magazine. Programmed, curated by Geoff, with contributions from friends, male, female, UK, US, France.

Aim was to start a new computer arts group, educate and perhaps sell a few art data cassettes. Later it all went onto Prestel national teletext.

Modelled on art groups London Video Arts and London Film-Makers Co-op; and indie record labels. This was my social background at the time.

Was intended to be a community, inclusive, diverse, populist, grass roots political. No ‘authority’. Not academic, I left University in 1980 and wasn’t thinking of it. No CAS at the time.

Was well reviewed by mainstream computer press, see Reviews.

No internet so hard to market.

Many outputs:

  • algorithmic art and animations, MA1 by Geoff Davis and MA3 by Martin Rootes)
  • conceptual (long form 2 years, math/code art, Dada word generator etc.), MA2 by Geoff Davis
  • graphic feminist/political animations, Money Work System from SCUM Manifesto, MA2
  • text generation from a story about the 1980s epidemic of prion mad cow disease BSE, MA4 by Geoff Davis (exhibited at LFMC show, and later distributed on Prestel teletext).

I had a few stories published, this is one of my competing activities. See my section in People.

The print Magazine was free. Full of informative articles, not reviews. (Magazine is on this site.)

Prestel was on invitation from EMAP but that took some of the momentum out of it, then I started working commercially again.  See Prestel page.

Also got involved in so-called ‘pirate TV’ NetWork 21. (No pirates, but lots of art, fashion.)

For more from the various contributors see People page.

CAS was not around at this point. Only contact I had was Harold Cohen (art machines) by letter in US,  who was famously uninterested in ‘computer art’ as a scene. He told me all art was about marketing. He was in academia, which operates as a huge marketing funnel (as well as providing work for artists).

Personal history

Before Micro Arts I was working in commercial COBOL programming (using pencils) on a Univac 1100 mainframe, and also Vax minis.

After Micro Arts, networking (at Prudential, first use of networked ‘personal computers’ IBM PC ATs in dealing room, no-one there had experience of micros, it was large IBM mainframe site).

Later, worked in new computer graphics lab at Sheffield Hallam University, Psalter Lane art college (12 x Unix Apollo workstations,  2D and 3D modelling and animation, CGAL (Peter Comninos) etc.).

Later still, London Institute teaching, then web industry, apps.

Now computers and text researcher at UAL CCI, Camberwell art college. Still in early stages.

1980s

Huge change in tech from 1980 (mainframes, coding with pencils) to 1990 (workstations). Micros appeared and improved over decade.

Warhol used Amiga, etc. – computers becoming unavoidable in art, design, music, film, smaller businesses.

Early artists moved into commercial work.

What is use now?

Archive, historical.

Educational examples – what can be done with relatively simple computers – hands on – Raspberry Pi

Artworks and merchandise on sale here soon  – archival prints, reprint of Magazine, MA1, MA2, MA3, MA4 Data Cassettes, Magazine 2, previously unpublished.

 

 

Research at UAL Creative Computing Institute CCI Camberwell and other news

I’m now a researcher at University of the Arts London, Creative Computing Institute at Camberwell Art College. I’ll let you know more as this develops. Topic is AI and text generation, with various outputs. This follows my 1985 text generation program Cow Boils Head, and the work in my Middlesex Uni MA on zooming and multi-layered texts, Calm As A Dead Clam.

Calm As A Dead Clam Geoff Davis 2003
Calm As A Dead Clam Geoff Davis 2003

See here (on author site) for more on the MA interface design.

I also have a new site for my general writing and art under the name Geoff Davis Org

I’ve been published on and off (mainly off) since the 1980s, everything was in print but new editions will be published in ebook format by Story Software this year and next.

More to follow…
Geoff Davis