Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture

Preface “To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan... believe... act!” – Alfred A. Montapert In this book, we present selected revised and extended papers from the EVA London Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts held between 2009 and 2012. These conferences provide an interdisciplinary forum for people with a wide range of backgrounds, ranging from visual artists to computer scientists. The initial selection of chapters was largely by the audience during ‘best presentation’ competitions at these conferences, with some additions by the editors for a more rounded overall selection. George Mallen has provided a summing up at recent EVA London conferences and provides a thoughtful foreword for this book. James Hemsley is the progenitor of the EVA conferences, which began in London, but are now held annually in a number of other venues around the world, including Berlin, Florence, and Moscow. In Chapter 1, he provides a history of EVA by way of background to this book. The rest of the book is divided into themed parts. Each has been shepherded by an editor during the reviewing and revision process and includes a short introductory chapter summarising the theme and the rest of the chapters in that part, together with some suggested reading where appropriate. The annual EVA London conferences are held on behalf of the Computer Arts Society, a British Computer Society (BCS) Specialist Group of the Chartered Institute for IT. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance and support of both organisations. The editors thank the EVA London organising and programme committees for the years 2009 to 2012, especially the organising chairs and proceedings editors (for the Proceedings for these conferences, see http://www.eva-london.org). James Hemsley and George Mallen have been stalwarts of the EVA London conference series for many years. Finally, thank you to all the participants at EVA London conferences for making them such exciting and successful events. Jonathan P. Bowen Suzanne Keene Kia Ng