Image Attribution: Peter Beyls via MultimédiaLab

The Department of Music and The ARTS Lab would like to invite you to a free-public presentation by noted artist/composer Peter Beyls on Thursday, Nov. 3 at 6:30 pm, at the ARTS Lab.

1601 Central Ave NE, just west of Central & University; look for the door with wooden steps on East side of building.

Peter Beyls is a Belgian born artist/composer. Beyls initially studied electronic engineering and music at the Royal Music Conservatory in Brussels, and since the early seventies has had numerous teaching, research, collaborative and other creative involvements throughout Europe. In 1977 Beyls became a visiting scholar at the Electronics Experimental Department of the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, and worked at the Structured Sound Synthesis Project headed by Bill Buxton at the University of Toronto, at the School of Music at CalArts, and at Osaka Arts University, Japan.    He has designed, built and composed for numerous analogue and then digital audio/music synthesis and processing systems over almost 40 years.
Beyls served on the board of directors of ISEA for many years. He currently teaches aesthetics of new media at the St Lukas Hogeschool, Brussels; and coordinates research at the Interaction Lab of KASK, and teaches theory of new media Faculty of Fine Arts, University College Ghent.    Beyls also pursues research in real-time evolutionary computing at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR) at the University of Plymouth, UK.

Sharing aesthetic decision making with machines

manipulated b&w television, 1975

I have been investigating digital media for producing art since the early Seventies, in particular, exploring the potential of software towards the formulation of artistic ambitions.

My motivation for writing software to make art is based on the belief that the software medium constitutes a vehicle for introspection – software talks back to the artist, recursively providing information on ones intentions.

Cellular automata movie, 2000

Writing computer programs becomes a channel for self-discovery as it were.

I am interested in dynamical systems in art and science and I’m fascinated by the complexity as found in natural and social systems.  I wonder how the private imagination of the artists relates to all this and how, for instance, aspects of personal creativity could be formalized and implemented in a functional program.

I will describe the various models I have been exploring over the years – from random speculation to complex rule-based systems to distributed agents-based systems thriving on self-organization.  All work is rooted in procedural thinking and manifests itself in a variety of formats: drawings, photography, interactive audiovisual installations as well as performance  work.  Open debate on the meaning and significance of computing in the arts is encouraged.

Read publications by Peter Beyls on JSTOR

1. Chaos and Creativity: The Dynamic Systems Approach to Musical Composition

   Peter Beyls

   Leonardo Music Journal
   Vol. 1, No. 1 (1991), pp. 31-36

   Published by: The MIT Press

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1513118
2. Discovery through Interaction: A Cognitive Approach to Computer Media in the Visual Arts

   Peter Beyls

   Leonardo
   Vol. 24, No. 3 (1991), pp. 311-315

   Published by: The MIT Press

   Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575573