(Please note that the project has now ended. The following is the text describing the team as it was in 2010.)
Our teams at Birkbeck and the V&A focus on different aspects of the project.
The team at Birkbeck consists of
- Dr Nick Lambert, the project’s Principal Investigator
- Professor Jeremy Gardiner, the Senior Research Fellow
- Francesca Franco, our Research Fellow
We are examining the historical narrative of Computer Art, its influences from and impact upon the artistic mainstream, and its theoretical underpinnings. The Patric Prince Collection is an important record of this history and the team will seek to connect it with other sources and narratives.
Nick Lambert is currently Researcher in Digital Media Art at the Department of History of Art and Screen Media at Birkbeck. Nick has been researching computer art since the mid-1990s and completed his DPhil thesis “A Critical Examination of ‘Computer Art’: its History and Application” in 2003 (Thesis Outline). It focuses on artists’ experiences of the computer and covers a wide range of approaches to computers in art. He lectures on BA and MA modules about the development of electronic and digital arts from the 1950s to the present and new forms of display systems. Nick is also working on a number of multimedia art projects including Oculus
Jeremy Gardiner is a former Harkness Fellow of the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide and in 1987 received a New York foundation for the Arts Foundation fellowship. In 2002 he was awarded a NESTA grant and in 2003 won the Peterborough Art prize for his interactive and immersive virtual artwork ‘Purbeck Light Years’. He was a founding member of the computer graphics department at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in New York. He has been a consultant for the National Trust, Clore Duffield Foundation and the British Council. Gardiner’s longstanding research in painting and digital media has resulted in the formation of www.imaginalis.co.uk whose objective is to utilise the convergence and combination of emerging technologies to produce visually and intellectually challenging works.
Francesca Franco is Research Fellow on the AHRC funded project “Computer Art & Technocultures” (CAT) at Birkbeck College and the Victoria & Albert Museum. She is a lecturer at the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck, where she teaches Critical Approaches to the History of Art. She is currently completing her PhD in History of Art on the relationship between art, technology and politics in the context of the Venice Biennale, 1966-1986, at Birkbeck. Francesca has been invited to present papers at international conferences (ISEA 2008, Singapore; AAH conference 2008, London; Re:place Media Arts Histories 2007, Berlin) and to deliver lectures at universities in Europe (UK, Italy, Poland). She holds an MA in Digital Art History obtained from Birkbeck. She has been sitting on the editorial board of Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) since 2005. See here for more.
The team at the V&A is led by
- Douglas Dodds, Senior Curator of Computer Art and Co-Investigator
- Honor Beddard, Computer Art Project Curator
Douglas Dodds is the project’s Co-investigator and the V&A’s Senior Curator for Computer Art. He is also Head of Central Services in the Museum’s Word and Image Department, which incorporates the National Art Library and the V&A’s prints, drawings, paintings and photograph collections. Douglas is also involved in a major project to digitise the Museum’s works on paper.
Honor Beddard is Computer Art Project Curator at the V&A. She holds an MA in Contemporary British Art and joined the Computer Art and Technocultures project in January 2008. She previously worked at the British Council and the Contemporary Art Society. Honor is currently documenting and cataloguing the V&A’s holdings of computer generated art, and full details of each work will be available via the V&A’s website in the near future. For any queries regarding the collections, the computer art archives, or the project, please contact Honor on info@technocultures.org.uk
Contact details:
Birkbeck
Dr Nick Lambert
Research Officer
Room G13
School of HAFVM
Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD
n.lambert@bbk.ac.uk
Tel 0781 0381 458
The V&A
Douglas Dodds
Head of Central Services & Senior Curator, Computer Art
Word and Image Department
Victoria and Albert Museum
South Kensington
London SW7 2RL
d.dodds@vam.ac.uk
Tel 020 7942 2397
