Origins

YLEM: Artists Using Science and Technology was started in February, 1981, by Trudy Myrrh Reagan. She was a studio artist in Palo Alto, CA, painting under the name "Myrrh." At an organizing meeting, she explained that many artists gain visibility and encouragement when they know each other, exhibit together, and exchange ideas.

YLEM got access to speakers and use of meeting rooms from Stanford professor Robert McKim, author of Experiments in Visual Thinking, and graduate student Scott Kim, author of Inversions. It also met in Oakland periodically at The California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA).

It was a yeasty time, when young people at universities and companies knew for certain that what people were developing there would change the world as we knew it. They and the artists around them were giddy with delight. And the world did change.

For a more detailed history, read A Brief History of YLEM

Original Statement of Purpose

"Ylem, a non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization, exists to connect art to the driving forces in our culture: science and technology.

The Florentine Renaissance artists and the Impressionists all knew each other. Ylem exists to create such a community of artists. Studio visits, informal field trips to labs and industry, parties, and discussions forge these friendships. Access to equipment for artists has often resulted.

The artesian pressure of talent from the group opens up opportunities to exhibit and perform in an otherwise skeptical gallery milieu. Artists in Ylem use technology for positive purposes, and make abstract science ideas more concrete and approachable. They believe in the power of ideas to take form and spread, like the original matter, ylem, from the Big Bang, into the universe we see today.

Instead of merely talking shop about particular techniques, Ylem will explore the impact of new technologies on society. Will art spread like wildfire through new media channels like the web? Only if artists train themselves to use them."

Purpose and Programs

It was always the quality of imagination of artists using new technology that was important. Ylem (capitalized "YLEM" after 2000) explored the humanistic and peaceful uses to which science and technology were being put, and exposed both artists and the general public to research work at public forums and also exhibits.

As a group, it was able to organize Field trips to labs, such as the Holography Institute, NASA-Ames VR Lab, and new industries in the field of computer graphics - most now defunct; as well as studios of such artists as sculptors Bruce Beasley and visited Mills College Music Department - an incubator for early computer music. Its fifteenth anniversary party was at the home and holography lab of Cherry Optical in Sebastopol, CA.

Its popular YLEM Forums, which started immediately at Fort Mason in 1981, attracted people from all of disciplines to speak without without charge. Even members of the general public were fascinated.

After receiving our nonprofit status, it was able to sponsor artists projects applying for funding.

Scope

YLEM had a deliberately comprehensive approach: Experimental artists in all media, from digital painting to computer-mediated immersive environments, participated. Artists in traditional media using science ideas were also welcome. Situated outside academia and the commercial art world, its artists shared ideas freely and became great friends. It was an all-volunteer organization, carried forward by enthusiasm. It can't be emphasized strongly enough that having fun together made great things possible. It was a unique group in the early days, had wide appeal, and within five years boasted an international membership.

Several artists changed media as a result of access to technically adept friends who could help them, and their knowledge of new materials. For example, YLEM President Beverly Reiser changed from designing sculptures with neon and sandblasted mirrors to interactive art, and mastered web design in HTML code as well.

Technical Frontiers at Forums, on Tours, and in Publications

It was always the quality of imagination of artists using new technology that was important. One role of YLEM was to bring new developments to their attention. Its YLEM Forums and Newsletter or Journal articles, from 1981 to 2008, gave a heads-up about technical advances useful to them and impacting society as a whole.

The Art World was very skeptical of these developments. YLEM publications and exhibits furnished permanent records of their achievements, thereby giving them validation.