Vernon Reed
ISEA Bio(s) Available:
SISEA 1990
After receiving a BA in psychology in 1971, I went to work immediately as a jeweler, while also experimenting with painting, sculpture and photography. Knowing that the Etruscan goldsmiths worked at the absolute technological horizon of their culture, I began a search for suitably advanced technologies from the last quarter of the 20th century. The obvious answer was electro-optics and microelectronics, so in 1974 I set out to master the then cutting edge Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology. LCD technology proved hard to master, requiring a “clean room” full of special equipment for assembly, among other obstacles, but by 1975 I was able to produce the very first LCD jewels ever created anywhere in the world. The displays for these jewels utilized geometric image elements of my own design, sequenced in time by custom electronic circuits, to produce a kind of time-based, moving graphics jewels unlike anything ever seen before. After presenting my work at the Society of North American Goldsmiths Conference in 1986, it began to dawn on me that I was at least as much a computer artist as a jeweler. My work was especially well received at SIGGRAPH. [source vernonreed.com]
