“Designing the Computational Image: A History of Computers as Creative Tools” by Llach and Vardouli
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- Designing the Computational Image: A History of Computers as Creative Tools
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This panel will discuss Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design, a new book visually exploring the emergence of new methods for representation, simulation, and manufacturing linked to computers, and reflecting on their impact across design fields. The book explores the three decades following the Second World War, when government investment in university research in North America and the UK funded multidisciplinary projects to investigate the use of computers for manufacturing and design. Documenting a series of exhibitions, the book explores this period of remarkable inventiveness and traces its repercussions on architecture and other creative fields through the work of computational architects, designers, and artists working today.
Alongside a compelling visual archive showcasing hundreds of unpublished or lesser-known computational images, drawings, films, and software, the book features essays by architecture, media, and science and technology scholars offering close readings of specific images, as well as conversations and interviews with historical protagonists and contemporary practitioners. Together, these materials illuminate in unprecedented detail the confluence of technical innovations in software, geometry, and hardware with a fledging technological imaginary of design and creativity, tracing the emergence — and reimagining the potentials — of a vibrant field of interdisciplinary research and practice.
