Exploring creative intersections: Ernest Edmonds and his time-based generative art

Abstract

This article focuses on the experience of British artist Ernest Edmonds and the influences that have informed his art practice in the past forty years. How are these influences connected? The article has an historical focus. It develops the themes within Edmonds's art and shows his connections with the ‘Systems’ artists and their forebears. In particular, the article concentrates on the encounter of Edmonds with artistic thinking about systems and process in the broad sense, as well as digital and interactive work developed from the early 1980s. As the article will demonstrate, a passion for colour, time and structure, the encounter with a number of artists inspired by Constructivism in the early 1980s, and the educational context in which Edmonds has worked from the late 1960s until the present, have offered great opportunities of interdisciplinary exchanges and ideas that had a profound impact upon the nature of his art. These influences have enabled Edmonds to explore new constructs in art through the use of technology that are a constant stimulus in his creative research, both as an artist and as an academic.

Keywords:

• computation and creativity
• interactive art
• generative art
• interdisciplinary research
• art and technology.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Ernest Edmonds, who kindly agreed to be interviewed and generously allowed me access to the material held at his studio in Hathersage, Derbyshire. For comments on earlier drafts I would like to thank Linda Candy of the University of Technology, Sydney. I would like to extend my gratitude to Doug Dodds and Melanie Lenz of the Victoria and Albert Museum for their help in making supporting research material available.

Notes

¹ Ernest Edmonds is the new director of the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester.

² The history of generative art has been analysed by many influential scholars over the last decade. For an in-depth analysis of the subject, see Paul (2003) and Brown et al, (2009).

³ Interview with the author, Hathersage, Derbyshire, January 2013.

⁴ Interview with the author, Hathersage, Derbyshire, January 2013.

⁵ For an analysis of the conceptual art historical context, see Alberro and Stimson (1999) and Alberro and Norvell (2001).

⁶ Interview with the author, Hathersage, Derbyshire, February 2012.

⁷ Interview with the author, London, May 2012.

⁸ Interview with the author, London, May 2012.

⁹ The performance took place on 16 March 1971 at the Fletcher Hall, Leicester Polytechnic: performance organiser: Gavin Bryars; pianists: Gavin Bryars and Christopher Hobbs; duration: 14 hours 30 minutes. As Bryars states in his article ‘Vexations and its Performers’ (1983), only one piano was used in this performance, but the transitions between players were acoustically imperceptible.

¹⁰ Interview with the author, London, May 2012.

Additional information

Francesca Franco is Research Fellow at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester, where she is studying the Ernest Edmonds Archive of computational art material held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her most recent publications include ‘The First Computer Art Show at the 1970 Venice Biennale. An Experiment or Product of the Bourgeois Culture?’ in Relive: Media Art Histories, Cubitt and Thomas, editors, MIT Press (2013); ‘Documenting Art as Art: the case of Notes (2000-ongoing) by British artist Ernest Edmonds,’ Visual Resources, Vol. 29, No. 4 (2013); ‘Shifts in the Curatorial Model of the Venice Biennale, 1895–1974,’ in Manifesta Journal 11, 2011. She has been on the editorial board of Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) since 2005.