William Latham's Computer Artworks

In 1990 Mark Ayres was commissioned by artist William Latham (then Visiting Fellow at the IBM UK Scientific Centre) to compose a score for his Computer Art film The Evolution of Form. The result was highly successful - winning awards at computer arts and graphics festivals - and Mark went on to provide music for three more short films: The Conquest of Form (composed in 1990 for a film William made in 1989), The Process of Evolution (1990), and Mutations (1991). In addition, Mark scored a television documentary on William's work (Art and the Computer: An Insight into the Work of William Latham, 1989), and a CD-ROM, The Garden of Unearthly Delights (1993).

Since then, William Latham has started his own company, Computer Artworks. A new CD-ROM, Organic Art - The Art of William Latham (1996), also features Mark's music, and received rave reviews.

William Latham's work is inspired by his fascination with the processes of Evolution and Mutation - Charles Darwin and H.R. Giger are big influences! He describes his work as "Organic Art", and his images do have a very organic feel to them, despite being generated on a computer - but then William uses pixels the way other artists use watercolours or oils. To quote Barry Barker, writing in a programme for an exhibition of William's work in 1988, "he (William) uses the computer as an extension of his imagination, creating images which are free from the physical restraints of gravity and material. His sculptures exist within that twilight space between the human mind and the machine."

The films feature computer generated objects slowly evolving and mutating until they reach a final form. In scoring them, I try to reflect the organic nature of the images by using heavily-treated real-life sound samples. I mutate the sounds using samplers and computers to match the pictures, all the time maintaining a strong melodic and rhythmic line which itself changes over the course of the action until it reaches a final resting point and resolution.