Dear SIGCIS members, I am seeking presenters and a chair for a session on "The Computer and the Arts" at the forthcoming SHOT 2019 meeting in Milan. SIGCIS has kindly accepted to sponsor the proposal. A short description of the session is below. Please let me have preliminary expressions of interest by 4 March 2019 . If you have any question, do not hesitate to contact me at *giuditta.parolini@tu-berlin.de <giuditta.parolini@tu-berlin.de>*. Best regards, Giuditta ----------- *Society for the History of Technology*, Annual meeting 2019, Milan, 24-27 October 2019 Session proposal "The Computer and the Arts" Organiser: Dr Giuditta Parolini, TU Berlin Description: From the 1950s onwards the computer has not only been a technology used in science and business for computation and data management, but it has also become an artists’ tool. Musicians, visual artists, writers, theatre performers have begun to use computers in their work resulting in mutual contaminations between the arts and the sciences. Already in the 1960s, Jasia Reichardt, curator of one of the earliest exhibitions on digital art, *Cybernetic Serendipity* (1968), pointed out that the use of the computer in the arts generated a two-way process in which there was space not only for artists’ involvement with science, but also for scientists’ involvement with the arts. The session will explore this two-way process by presenting case studies of interactions between artists, scientists and technologies in the twentieth and twenty-first century. It will discuss the technical issues encountered in producing digital artworks, the new opportunities for creative work brought by the development of improved computer hardware and software, the changing role of the artist within digital art, and the necessity to negotiate authorship between artists, technicians and scientists. By investigating digital art and the mutual interaction between scientists and artists, the session will contribute to explore the cross-fertilisation of technology, art and design, which is SHOT’s conference theme this year. The proposal is sponsored by SIGCIS, SHOT Special Interest Group on Computers, Information and Society. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Giuditta Parolini Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin Technische Universität Berlin Institut für Philosophie, Literatur-, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte Sekretariat H23 Straße des 17. Juni, 135; 10623 Berlin; Germany https://giudittaparolini.wordpress.com/ DFG Project "Agricultural Meteorology" https://agriculturalmeteorology.wordpress.com