Ernest Edmonds

Ernest Edmonds (born 1942, London, England) is a British artist, a pioneer in the field of computer art and its variants, algorithmic art, generative art, interactive art, from the late 1960s to the present. His work is represented in the Victoria and Albert Museum, as part of the National Archive of Computer-Based Art and Design.

Life and work Ernest Edmonds is a pioneer of digital art. In 2017, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement In Digital Art. He also is an international expert on Human-Computer Interaction who specialises in creative technologies for creative uses. In 2017, he received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for the Practice of Computer Human Interaction. He was one of the first to predict the value of iterative design and a very early advocate of iterative design methods and Agile software development. He founded the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference series and was part of the founding team for the ACM Intelligent User Interface conference series.

Edmonds studied Mathematics and Philosophy at Leicester University. He has a PhD in logic from the University of Nottingham, is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. He has nearly 300 refereed publications in the fields of human-computer interaction, creativity and art and was a pioneer in the development of practice-based PhD programmes. Ernest Edmonds is Emeritus Professor of Computational Art at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.

Art Edmonds’ art is in the constructivist tradition and he first used computers in his art practice in 1968. He first showed an interactive work with Stroud Cornock in 1970. He first showed a generative time-based computer work in London in 1985. He has exhibited throughout the world, from Moscow to Los Angeles. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, holds some of his artwork and is collecting his archives within the National Archive of Computer Based Art and Design.

In 2014, Edmonds curated a seminal historical exhibition, Automatic Art, at GV art gallery, London.

Selected exhibitions 2017 Ernest Edmonds, De Montfort University Gallery Leicester UK Constructs, Colour, Code: Ernest Edmonds 1967–2017 2013 Ernest Edmonds, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney Transformations: Digital Prints from the V&A collection, Royal Brompton Hospital, UK 2012/3 Light Logic. Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK Selected New Acquisitions. Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2012 Intuition and Integrity, Kinetica, London; Lighthouse, Brighton; Lovebytes, Sheffield, Phoenix, Leicester Transformations: Digital Prints from the V&A collection, Great Western Hospital, Swindon, UK Visualise Poetry, Language, Code, Cambridge, UK 2010 Grid Gallery, Vivid festival, Sydney 2009 When Ideas Become Form—20 Years, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney Cities Tango, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney and ISEA, Belfast 2007 Ernest Edmonds and Alf Loehr, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney Speculative Data and the Creative Imaginary, National Academy of Sciences Gallery, Washington DC ColorField Remix, WPA\C Experimental Media Series (performance), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC 2005 White Noise, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne Ernest Edmonds and David Thomas, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney Minimal Approach… Concrete Tendencies, Tin Sheds Gallery, University of Sydney 2004 Australian Concrete Constructive Art, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney SIGGRAPH Art Exhibition, Los Angeles GRAPHITE Art Exhibition, Singapore 2000 Global Echos. Mondriaanhuis, Amersfoort Constructs & Reconstructions, Loughborough University 2000: Relativities, Bankside Gallery, London, and tour 1999 Galerie Jean-Mark Laik, Koblenz Science in the Arts—Arts in Science, Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest 1994 Digital Arts, The Mall Gallery, London Friends of Mesures. Vervier and Antwerp 1990 SISEA, Groningen—collaborative performance Avant Garde 1990, Manege, Moscow Art Creating Society. Museum of Modern Art, Oxford Heads and Legs. Liege (one-person) including a collaborative performance 1989 Constructivism versus Computer. Galerie FARO, World Trade Centre, Rotterdam Re-Views: Contemporary systematic and constructive arts. The Small Mansion Arts Centre, London 1988 Null-Dimension. Galerie New Space, Fulda (and 1989, Gmunden, Austria) 1985 Duality and Co-existence. Exhibiting Space, London (one-person). 1975 2nd International Drawing Biennale. Middlesbrough Art Gallery, Cleveland, and tour 1972 Cognition and Control. Midland Group Gallery, Nottingham