Sean Clark is an independent artist, curator, and researcher based in Leicestershire, UK. His artwork explores interaction and connectedness through the construction of audiovisual systems presented on screen, as installations, and as prints. He is the director of Interact Digital Arts Ltd and the curator of the Computer Arts Archive. He has a PhD in Computational Art from De Montfort University and in 2016 was co-winner of the Lumen Prize for 3D/Sculpture and the Art.CHI Digital Art Prize.

Having had an interest in computers since school (where, coincidently, he encountered books by Brian Reffin Smith), he went to Loughborough University in 1984 to study Computer Science. In his final year he worked with Stephen Scrivener and, after a short period in industry, returned to Loughborough to work with Scrivener as a Research Assistant in the LUTCHI Research Centre led by Ernest Edmonds.

He was an early user of the World Wide Web - having created his first website, on the subject of Virtual Reality, in 1993. He went on to work on internet projects with bands such The Shamen and Zion Train in the 1990s and co-created the digital arts group Resonance in 1994. He returned to industry in 1995, although he continued to develop his creative practice. In particular he performed as a VJ under the name "VJ Cuttlefish".

In 2000 he formed his own internet company Cuttlefish Multimedia Ltd which initially focussed on internet and CD-ROM projects for "music. arts. community". He continued to run Cuttlefish until 2020 when he left the company in the capable hands of a new management team.

Looking to develop his creative thinking further, he undertook a part-time MA in Digital Art at Camberwell School of Art between 2006 and 2008. He started a PhD at De Montfort University in Leicester in 2009. He invited Ernest Edmonds to give a talk at the University in 2011 and Edmonds became his PhD supervisor soon after. Clark completed his PhD in Computational Art in 2018.

Sean Clark has been involved in the Computer Arts Society since 2010 and is currently Chair of the group. He is an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at De Montfort University and is an International Professor at GDUT in Guangzhou, China. He remains committed to creating new artworks and capturing the history of computer art, particularly histories that are not part of the current historical canon.

The images shown here are from A Choreographer's Cartography (2005), an interactive video artwork created in collaboration with writer Raman Mundair and System One that is representative of the more 'minimal' visual style he developed during his PhD.

Artworks

More Information

• www.interactdigitalarts.uk (Current Work)
• www.cuttlefish.org (Archive)