Talk by Stuart Mealing 7.30 pm at Lighthouse Media Centre, Brighton.

Stuart Mealing is an artist and writer based in the School of Art and Design, Exter, whose primary research interest is in the relationship between drawing, computers, AI and creativity. His talk, entitled KIWI - A Machine for Life Drawing, focused on some theoretical issues involved in constructing a drawing machine. Here is his abstract:

Most work with art-producing computers has focussed on imaginative images, often underwritten by data about the appearance of things in the real world.

I am concerned here with considering objective drawing, exemplified by life drawing, in which the physical subject is explicit and problems revolve around the making of marks to stand for that subject.

As a basis for consideration of such issues I'll describe early work on KIKI, a paper model of a computer-based machine for life drawing. KIKI derives data from the scene before her and makes goal-directed marks to represent what is seen. KIKI effectively serves as a test-bed for understanding of the processes at work in human drawing.

Also implicit in such a project are ubiquitous questions about computer creativity and machine aesthetics. As the project is at a formative stage I will be particularly interested in feedback from the Blip members.

We didn't have any works in progress at this meeting as the Sumo bar was temporarily closed down, but Stuart's talk generated a lot of discussion until the pub closed.