Morphogenetic Creations: Exhibiting and Collecting Digital Art

Abstract

In 2016, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) acquired a number of Andy Lomas’ works from an exhibition held at the Watermans Art Centre (Watermans in Morphogenetic creations—Andy Lomas. New Media Arts Archive, 2016a) to add to its Computer Art Collection (V&A in The V&A’s computer art collections, 2016). The exhibition, titled ‘Morphogenetic Creations’, explored how intricate complex structures, such as those found in nature, can be created emergently through computational simulation of growth processes. Following in a long-established tradition of art inspired by biology the work is at the intersection of art, science and computing. The artefacts collected by the V&A included prints, multi-screen video and stereoscopic works. This article looks at the works involved, as well as two works from the original exhibition that were not included in the acquisition, as a case study of providing digital works in a form suitable for preservation, and for display in the future when technology for playback of media is likely to have significantly changed.