Ernest is a pioneer computer artist for whom combining creative arts practice with creative technologies has been a life-long pursuit. 

In 2017 he won the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art. The only other UK artist to be so recognized is the late Harold Cohen. Edmonds transdisciplinary achievements are demonstrated by the fact that in 2017 he was also awarded ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for Practice in Human-Computer Interaction. Having shown his work internationally for over 50 years, he has recently exhibited in Venice, Leicester, London, Denver, Vancouver, Beijing, Shanghai, and Rio de Janerio. His work is described in “Generative Systems Art: The Work of Ernest Edmonds” (Franco, Routledge, 2017). 

Edmonds is Emeritus Professor of Computational Art at De Montfort University and Chairman of the Board of ISEA International, whose main activity is the annual International Symposium on Electronic Art that began in 1988.  

Edmonds has published over 400 books and papers, and exhibited his art across the globe. He recently exhibited in Venice, Leicester, London, Denver, Vancouver, Beijing, Shanghai, and Rio de Janerio. His work is described in the Routledge book by Francesca Franco, “Generative Systems Art: The Work of Ernest Edmonds”.  His most recent book is “The Art of Interaction: what HCI can learn from Interactive Art”, published by Morgan & Claypool. He is Founding Editor of the journal Knowledge Based Systems, an Honorary Editor of Leonardo and Editor-in-Chief of Springer’s Cultural Computing book series.

Fabrizio is an award-winning computer artist, designer, researcher, writer and curator with international experience and a special interest in the relationships between Art, Design, Digital Media, Gamification, and Technology. His expertise lies in the development of creative coding and its exchanges with philosophical questions. He is a member of the IOCT (Institute of Creative Technologies) at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, supervising PhD students and teaching creative code.

Poltronieri has participated in international exhibitions and festivals such as the Ars Electronica, in Linz, Austria, presenting artworks and live performances that plays with the relationship man-machine. With his solo artistic practice, he became an award-winning artist, with a long list of exhibitions. His artworks are in prominent collections such as that of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, including artworks from his ‘Visual Theogonies’ series (Dionysus and Calliope).

Poltronieri has a PhD in Semiotics from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC/SP), Brazil, with a thesis about the role of chance in computational art.

In 2011-2012, he was awarded a fellowship by a Brazilian federal government agency to develop a Postdoctoral research project on the early days of computer art at the Royal College of Art in London.  His second Postdoctoral research was at Leuphana Universität’s Gamification Lab, in Lüneburg, Germany, which reflected on how the universe of video games and the notions of gamification and post-history affect language production mediated by digital apparatuses.

Poltronieri is also an expert on the work of Vilém Flusser, having written many articles about Flusser’s philosophical concepts.

He is a master of the main programming languages and frameworks used in design, digital media, interactive design, physical computing and machine learning, such as C++, Ruby, Python, Switch, Java, Processing and TensorFlow.

Currently, Poltronieri is researching Creativity & Artificial Intelligence, applying machine and deep learning techniques to the production and design of narratives, moving images and objects.

Both Ernest and Fabrizio are exhibiting works at the Art AI Festival which will be co-located at the Dubai Expo 2020, respectively Cities Tango and ArchXtonic. Artworks in Dubai are located in the British Pavilion.

In October 2021, millions of visitors from across the world will travel to Dubai for the start of Expo 2020, a six-month long celebration of technology, culture, education and business at which countries from around the world will showcase their very best innovations in areas like space exploration, AI, healthcare, arts, culture and sustainability.

Each country will have its own pavilion at the 4.38 square kilometre Expo site, being constructed in south Dubai.

The UK pavilion is being operated by the Government’s Department of International Trade (DIT) and De Montfort University, one of the Art AI Festival supporters, is working closely with the team as one of the pavilion’s only official founding partners. This means De Montfort University will have a continuous presence at one of the world’s biggest, highest-profile exhibitions, showing the world its high-impact research, innovative approaches to sustainability, and creating unparalleled experiences for students through the event.

De Montfort University is supporting the co-location of Cities Tango and ArchXtonic at the Expo.

You can find a recording of the artists talk on our YouTube channel HERE