Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Revisiting and Re-presenting 1980s Micro Computer Art

2021; British Computer Society; Linguagem: Inglês

10.14236/ewic/eva2021.52

1477-9358

Sean Clark, Geoff Davis,

Museums and Cultural Heritage

The Computer Arts Archive was established in Leicester, UK in early 2020 in order to preserve and develop the CAS50 Collection, a collection of computer artworks brought together in 2018 and 2019 to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Computer Arts Society. This paper presents work undertaken to expand the archive through the development of focused collections based around areas that we feel are under-reported in the canon of computer and digital art history. The Micro Arts collection explores computer art made using 1980s "micro computers" such as the BBC Micro and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The starting point of the collection is the Micro Arts project produced in the 1980s by Geoff Davis and colleagues. We present the work undertaken so far in establishing the collection and discuss issues relating to the capture and documentation of pioneering digital artwork such as this.