BOOK REVIEWS for Creative Simulations: George Mallen & the Early Computer Arts Society:
Can London establish itself as digital art capital of the world? in the Art Newspaper, October 2024
Review by Brian Reffin Smith for Leonardo, September 2024
BOOK REVIEWS for A Computer in the Art Room:
Review for Furtherfield by Rob Myers, 2011
Review by Nick Lambert for Animation, 2009
Book of the Month Review by James Poxon for IT Now, 2009
NewMediaFix by Molly Hankwitz, 2009
Not Quite Computing, Almost Art, Review by Simon Ford for Mute, 2008
Review for the Art Quarterly by Charlotte Frost, 2008
review by networked performance, Jo-Anne Green
A Computer in the Art Room synopsis
Catherine Mason deserves our full congratulations for publishing this readable important account of the unwritten history of creative computing in the arts in Britain. As first a fellow travelling observer in the Department of Design Research at the RCA, and then a practitioner and advocate, who had the benefit of being influenced by some of the key characters remembered here, the book reads like part of my personal memory ‘but it makes me realise how fortunate I was’ but also how shamefully under-supported these breakthrough initiatives were. The common thread here is genius swimming against the tide. No wonder the book has so many threads that end in curtailed funding, closed departments and migration of the experts. Compare this to Waldrop’s biography of Licklider in the Dream Machine and the lack of support for innovation, limited by the British policy is a classical tragedy. Tim Martin, graduate of the RCA & lecturer in design research.
