For more than fifty years, artists, scientists and programmers have used computer software to create innovative artworks that explore aspects of chance and control. In this lecture Douglas Dodds will provide a fascinating overview of the history of digital art and design, highlighting artworks in the Chance and Control exhibition and the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.

Douglas Dodds is a Senior Curator in the V&A’s Word and Image Department, which holds the Museum’s collections of prints, drawings, paintings, photographs and digital artworks. Douglas is the lead curator for Chance and Control, and he is also responsible for the V&A’s internationally important digital art collection. Previous exhibitions include Digital Pioneers (2009-10) and Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life (2013).

Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers

Since the 1960s, artists and programmers have used computers to create prints, drawings, paintings, photographs and digital artworks.

Chance and Control draws on the V&A’s rich international collection of computer-generated art and includes work by pioneering digital artists such as Frieder Nake and Georg Nees – who produced some of the earliest computer art – through to the younger generation of artists practicing today.

It offers viewers the rare opportunity to trace the chronological development of digital art, exploring how aspects of chance and control shaped the creative process and produced vivid and original artworks.

Created by the V&A – touring the nation.

Primary exhibition funder the Tyrer Charitable Trust.

Thanks to exhibition funders The Westminster Foundation, and supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

www.chestervisualarts.org.uk