Tuesday 2 September 2008

5:45 for 6:00 - CAS AGM (until 6:30)
6:30 for 7:00 - Murray McKeich: Computational Creativity

System Simulation Ltd
Bedford Chambers
The Piazza
Covent Garden
London
WC2E 8HA

Due to a poor response we regret to announce that the planned joint CAS/TESLA meeting on 2 September has been cancelled.

INSTEAD we will hold the CAS AGM followed by a talk by the New Zealand artist Murray McKeich at System Simulation. The talk is a free event and is open to the public.

Murray McKeich is a New Zealander currently resident in Melbourne Australia where he is a lecturer and researcher in art at RMIT University. Following an early career in commercial art, he has since established himself as a leading practitioner of digital media in Australasian contemporary art. Working with digital photo-media, his exhibition projects include printed imagery and animation. Described as both macabre and darkly seductive, Mckeich's art weaves visions of surreal fantasy and magic from the tiny pieces of every-day debris found in urban and domestic environments. His recent practice uses generative software to autonomously breed art-works.

Murray McKeich believes that computational tools are about to become far more intimately integrated with human creativity. Artists and designers will take on the role of creative directors while their personalized software will work for them in the capacity of highly trained, trusted and autonomous studio assistants, capable of producing finished artworks without direct supervision.

McKeich demonstrates that this form of practice is possible with current off-the-shelf software and minimal programming skill. More difficult is the psychological challenge of breaking with culturally ingrained biological models of creative process and forming new ones that are natural and native to computational agency.

• tinyurl.com/56o74o

Note: this will be our final meeting at System Simulation - a tradition that goes back 40 years. They will be moving to smaller offices later this year.