6:30 for 7:00 Tuesday 1 April 2008

Speaker: Cynthia Beth Rubin

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

Art on the edge once meant Painting. Not clean, representational, neat painting, but messy, expressive, abstract painting. Then the computer came along. Touted as a procedural machine, no one expected intuitive, non-procedural painters to turn to pixels. Why were so many expressionist painters drawn to the computer in the buggy days of mid-1980s, and how did it transform their visual language and output? What are they doing now? As one of the artists who made the leap, Rubin will discuss her own leaps, give an overview of the work of other artists, and look at how the computer continues to change concepts of imagery as it becomes a more available medium in previously less technologically advanced countries.

Cynthia Beth Rubin is a digital artist working in 2D and 3D imagery, interactivity, and animated images. Trained as a painter, she turned to digital art in 1984, creating works drawn from cultural memories and nature. Rubin's work has been shown in diverse venues including the Jewish Museum in Prague, the Pandamonium Festival in London, the Lavall Gallery in Novosibirsk, the DeLeon White Gallery in Toronto, and numerous editions of international conferences such as ISEA, ArCade and SIGGRAPH. Her works can be found in several books and journals, including Art in the Digital Age by Bruce Wands, The Computer in the Visual Arts, by Anne Morgan Spalter, and Painting the Digital River, by James Faure Walker. Rubin's studio is in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.