Stephen Willats and the Performance of Information Flows
Dr Sharon Irish, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne
Monday 9th May 2016
6pm for 6:30 start
BCS London, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA
Map: http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf

The talk is open to the public and free but please book in advance at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/computer-arts-society-may-lecture-sharon-irish-tickets-24967770273

Abstract: In the 1970s, artist Stephen Willats explored participation and interaction within an art context. He created the means to collect, sort, code, process, and use data to foster exchanges, essentially performing information flows using computers to help examine social systems. His Edinburgh Social Model Construction Project (1973) and Meta Filter (1973-75) enacted exchanges of information among groups, instantiating Willats’s cybernetic way of thinking.

Bio: Sharon Irish is a project coordinator at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. She is completing a book on Stephen Willats. Her doctoral work in art history led to a book on the New York architect Cass Gilbert. She also published another book on the California-based performance artist Suzanne Lacy. Her current position allows her to play a substantive role in FemTechNet, an international collective of feminists of all genders working on, with, and at the borders of technology, science, and feminism, and serve as an advisory editor for the journal Technology and Culture.