A History of YLEM

YLEM was started by Trudy Myrrh Reagan, an independent artist living in Palo Alto, California. Having been a member of artists' groups and observing how they functioned, she envisioned one that had a much broader focus, incorporating many disciplines not simply art. In 1981, when she began giving forums, she found that having a name of an organization, YLEM, opened doors. She could ask anyone who was doing something interesting to share what they knew. She also started a newsletter and edited it for several years.

Historic note: Ylem was the original name, since it is a real word, the primordial stuff that George Gamow said blew up in the Big Bang. In 2003, it was changed to YLEM.

1980 - Howard Pearlmutter proposes to the Homebrew Computer Club at Stanford to do a special evening of computer graphics, which featured, among other things, animations from Russia and from Los Alamos, and video synthesizer effects to rock music produced in Santa Cruz. Trudy Myrrh Reagan attends and is hooked!

She writes: "I was already doing science related art. Howard Pearlmutter's Graphics Gatherings beginning in 1980 introduced me to computers and many new friends. Among them were Stan Isaacs and his polyhedral puzzle parties, Dan Kottke and his wide-ranging interests, and Scott Kim, whose Inversions word puzzles were about to be published. They liked my art related to science. I knew artists like myself doing work related to science who would like these friends. Pearlmutter encouraged me."

1981 - Pearlmutter's Graphics Gatherings spin off from the Homebrew group, and hold regular meetings for several years. Trudy Myrrh Reagan confides to Pearlmutter her dream of starting a specifically artist group, Ylem: Artists Using Science and Technology and he assists her. It holds its first bimonthly Forum in San Francisco to expose artists to new science and technologies, and gives a podium to artists doing imaginative work with them. It goes on to validate their work in its publications, a newsletter (later, Journal), and several Directories of Artists Using Science and Technology

YLEM becomes a membership-supported, non-profit group, outside academia and the art world where the artists can be themselves.

It begins in February in Palo Alto, where a group of 15 people learn how as group, they can have exhibits together as well as meetings. And indeed, the existence of YLEM opens many doors for us.

The first YLEM Forum is at Fort Mason in SF. One speaker is Dale Seymour, publisher of math education materials, such as how to draw Escher patterns. Ruth Asawa attends, as well as the head book designer for W.H. Freeman, Robert Ishi.

The second, held at SLAC in July, features the brand new CT scans and fetal sonograms, and a skit on how computer memory works starring Scott Kim, Glenn Entis, Trudy Reagan, and Robin Samelson. Eleanor Kent and Louis Brill attend and join. They help us mightily over the years.

1981/82 - the De Anza-Foothill College District, which encompasses the home of Apple Computer in Cupertino, begins to teach computer graphics. Lucia Grossberger-Morales is one of the instructors. Mission College joins them in this.

1982 - Louis Brill of L.A.S.E.R. organizes an YLEM Forum on holography held at SLAC in Menlo Park.

Trudy and Geoffrey Chandler participate in Space Day at Foothill College exhibit. While planning the art portion of Space Day, Trudy meets with the other exhibitors. She encounters two people involved in the L5 a group promoting potential military uses of space. In contrast, our member Jon Alexandr is already worried about this. He has a display about his group, Space for All People.

Stephen Wilson moves from Chicago to San Francisco to teach at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and joins YLEM's board.

1982/4 - Eleanor Kent organizes three YLEM Computer Graphics Tours. The 1982 tour includes a visit to Ampex (famous for videotape technology), where another member, Glenn Entis, shows off its large, expensive, "turnkey" system. It has to be in an air-conditioned room. Entis now heads Dreamworks Interactive in Redwood City.

1983 - YLEM produces a computer art show as the focus of Tapestry in Talent, a huge art and music festival in San Jose. The art show is in the Convention Center (a building that now houses the offices of the Tech Museum). Trudy writes:

"I'm not sure they even knew quite what computer art was. I had the artists, I had art installation experience, so I made it big and colorful."

The work of 20 artists, mostly YLEM members, includes Jaron Lanier's "Moondust," (a computer game on a Commodore 64K machine), Scott Kim's computer-manipulated calligraphy, Lucia Grossberger-Morales' video images manipulated on an Apple II (which has no video input, but she cobbles it together), and Kenneth Knowlton's 6 X 9-foot face whose "pixels" are composed of 12 domino sets.

During this time, artists are gaining access to computer tools through universities or businesses. Difficult!

1984 - In Paris, Frank Malina, founder of Leonardo in 1967, dies. His son, Roger Malina, an astronomer at UC Berkeley, brings Leonardo to the Bay Area. It becomes Leonardo/ISAST, and is edited by Brian Rogers, teaching at SFSU. YLEM is invited to its reception at SFSU. Since then, Roger Malina and other ISAST members have served on the YLEM board, and we have collaborated on several projects, like the SolArts Festival of Jurgen Claus. It later will document many NY Digital Salons in special editions of Leonardo.

Dr. Marcia Chamberlain at San Jose State University (SJSU), organizes the first CADRE conference, held at Mission College and SJSU. An outstanding national conference of the various aspects of computer art and graphics, with many exhibits. One of these was curated by YLEM's Eleanor Kent. YLEM members participated in many ways. (The name is later adopted by the San Jose State computer art program when Joel Slayton arrives). We have many members involved. Wonderful stuff! David Healy, a graphic designer using photo typeset, sees our newsletters which were done on an electric typewriter, and offers to make it professional.

The Macintosh appears on the market, and it has graphics capability! It is the beginning of having personal computer tools make art.

1985 - Beverly Reiser becomes YLEM president, a position she holds for 14 years. She sends out a monthly YLEM Calendar, and Fred Stitt publishes the first YLEM Journal.

Fred Stitt hosts a Halloween party, a mini-extravaganza at the home he designed. The costumes are techy and outrageous, Alan Rath's in particular.

Fred's business arranges for us to have a permanent P.O. Box, which gives us stability.

1984/9 - We have a variety of field trips. At Stanford we meet Donald Knuth, the mathematician who wrote the code for what became InDesign and illustrator. There are others, like the Institute of Holography, and a geology field trip.

1995 - SIGGRAPH national trade show in San Francisco! SIGGRAPH stands for "Special Interest Group Graphics." David Healy beta tests Aldus PageMaker (later InDesign) and our July newsletter is done entirely digitally with it. Unfortunately, the new Macintoshes are not up to the job, and it is agony! But we print 100 copies extra, and give them out at this wonderful event. SIGGRAPH allows other groups to hold small Birds of a Feather meetings. Ours is a very successful slide show. Carlo Sequin at UCB, and Itsuo Sakane from Tokyo attend.

Nearby, SFMOMA devotes a whole floor to an exhibit of computer works. Lucia Grossberger-Morales is one of the curators. YLEM stages an exhibit two blocks away at Gallery on the Rim of 20 artists.

SJSU decides to offer digital arts, and hires Joel Slayton. He starts the CADRE Institute.

1988 - YLEM member Cynthia Pannucci starts Art & Science Collaborations, Inc (ASCI) in New York, holds conferences, exhibits, 1998-2005). "I think of this as YLEM East," she says.

We were always looking for free meeting space, Stanford, Oakland, San Francisco. YLEM Forums begin to be held at the Exploratorium. Staff Physicist Larry Shaw got permission for us to meet there, which lasted for 14 years.

1989 - Dutch-born Josepha Haveman, an YLEM member teaching computer art at CCAC (now CCA) is sent as YLEM representative to First International Society of Electronic Arts (FISEA), held in Holland.

1989 - Trudy Myrrh Reagan chairs a panel, "Women Humanizing High Technology," at the National Conference of Women's Caucus for Art held in San Francisco.

Spearheaded by Joel Slayton, National Computer Graphics Association (NCGA) and SJSU hold the second CADRE conference at SJSU. Some YLEM members are on its panels, like Glenn Entis of Pacific Data Image (now Dreamworks).

1990 - YLEM member Nathaniel Friedman of NYSU Albany, organizes the first of several art and math conferences. Later, member Carlo Séquin, CS at UC Berkeley, joins him in this effort.

Beverly Reiser attends ISEA in Australia as an invited speaker.

YLEM membership hits a peak of 250 members.

YLEM takes a field trip to NASA to see VR, virtual reality. In the flight simulator, the graphics are slower than the head motions of the pilots, and we are told some get seasick.

Beverly's interactive piece, Life on a Slice, is shown that the Pompidou Center in Paris.

1989/90 Mike Mosher and Trudy try to get City of Mountain View or the Santa Clara Valley Arts County Arts Council to sponsor a computer art festival, without any luck. Their members are focused on how to get computers to run their organizations. This had to wait until ISEA's conference in San Jose, 2006.

1991 - YLEM's 10th anniversary was celebrated in Sebastopol, California in the garden of Cherry Optical. At nightfall, Greg Cherry and Nancy Gorglione project laser images on the wall as music plays. Several musicians bring ingenious instruments they have invented. We toured their Holography studio with advanced equipment.

1992 - Ylem gave a Forum, "Stretching the Truth," which demonstrated the new availability of means to create alternate versions of events, whether by Photoshop, speech or video editing.

Art and the Electronic Age by Frank Popper is published in France, and mentions a dozen YLEM members.

1993 - YLEM member Roman Verostko at MCAD organizes the Minneapolis ISEA conference. Many YLEM artists are included, like Sonia Rapoport. Eleanor Kent and I attend and meet members from other parts of the country. Verostko continues work afterward to make it a strong organization.

YLEM President, Beverley Reiser interviewed by Dr. Moira Gunn, Technation, National Public Radio.

1994 - People begin to get email addresses. The World Wide Web floods the Internet. And it shows graphics!

YLEM members involved in "The Ubiquitous Art Zone" exhibit at the ACM's Multimedia '94 Conference, San Francisco, CA, as well as "Please Touch" video sculpture exhibit at Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA.

YLEM interactive Art exhibit at Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics, UC Berkeley, and YLEM program, "Jupiter and the Comets."

1995 - An YLEM team consisting of Beverly Reiser, Gary Zellerbach, Annette Louden and Barbara Lee create "Art on the Edge" for YLEM, one of the first fine arts sites on the web. It wins many prizes.

YLEM member Louis Brill is at the first Burning Man at Baker's Beach in San Francisco. He later becomes its publicist. He organizes two "Burning Man Decompression" Forums at the Exploratorium for YLEM. Dale Scott, longtime YLEM member and a fireman, is its fire marshal.

1996 - YLEM celebrated its fifth anniversary at the loft of Walter Alter in Oakland's warehouse district. Each room had scattered pieces for his latest project. One was cannibalizing cast-off PC computers to make one for composing music. About 10 people showed off their latest endeavors. His later YLEM Forum presentation lined up TVs, each tuned to a major network. We saw how the breaks occurred in sync like clockwork. Then he focused on one, and told us to shout back at falsehoods on the commercials, which was strangely cathartic.

Mexican member Laura Elenes arranges for YLEM artists to exhibit in Mexico City.

Silicon Graphics markets a workstation with a dedicated graphics chip. At an astonishing YLEM Forum demo, we marvel: "It performs all this in real time."

YLEM President, Beverley Reiser interviewed by Luc Sala, Sala Communications, Amsterdam on Dutch TV.

YLEM mentioned in ArtWeek article on art and technology by Barbara Fisher.

1998 - YLEM edits a video composed of videotapes that members have sent about their art. It makes a half hour program to be shown on local cable stations and at colleges around the country. Beverly Reiser and two ballet dancers, collaborate for a video performance in it with a computer video backdrop.

Laura Elenes arranges for an international conference of fine artists, COMAP, to be held at San Francisco State. It has a panel of five YLEM artists explaining different ways they use computers.

2000 - Loren Means, former editor of Ear magazine, re-creates the YLEM Journal. It now includes music, film and science fiction.

2001 - YLEM plans 20th anniversary events all year, including six amazing forums, and two exhibits at South of Market Cultural center (SOMART). The biggest one is planned for September, 2001. This beautiful big hall includes works by 80 YLEM artists from all over the country, including Ruth Asawa, Jim Pallas, Bruce Beasley (maquette), Kenneth Knowlton, with interactive art by Steve Wilson and Barbara Lee. Trudy Myrrh Reagan's translucent painting, Intertwingled, is suspended from the ceiling. Eleanor Kent's "digital art" is knitted.

9/11 happens just four days before the reception and our weekend-long conference. In spite of that, we swallow hard and bravely go ahead. It turns out that people are glad to tear themselves away from the horrible images on TV. The conference, planned by Robert Gelman, features among other things, Second Life, with avatars. A memorial wall is set up for people to record their feelings.

2005 - Larry Shaw retires from the Exploratorium and we no longer have access. Very few free spaces available! One is The Art Bar, which is in the Tenderloin, but we have good audiences anyway. Especially good are the ones on Black holes, and humans' journey across the globe as mapped by DNA.

ISEA is held in San Jose at the new Tech Museum. During it, YLEM celebrates its 15th anniversary in the big hall with an exhibit by two YLEM members, Gurpran Rau and Trudy Myrrh Reagan. Sylvia Pengilly shows her explorations combining her dance and music compositions on the big screen.

2008 - Trudy feels unable to do a good job on Forums anymore.

2009 - Our last Journal is published.

Membership declines, Trudy has health problems, with no group of key people is willing to step in.

However, Trudy revives the idea she had before she met technologists. She organizes a study group for her passionate interest in patterns in nature and geometry. We meet in the wonderfully restored Victorian home of Mary Teetor, whose interest in geometry was everywhere, including the tiling on her kitchen floor. “We wanted Penrose tiling, but they wouldn't do it!” Carol Biers, visiting expert on the geometry of Arabic tile designs, attends as we make light and dark cookies in shapes that tessellate. At Canessa Gallery, John Edmark shows his latest invention based on Fibonacci numbers. And in Los Altos we meet in Dale Seymour's crazy wonderful house, its garden full of very large polyhedral sculptures. We continued for about three years.

The YLEM archive is housed at the Bowes Library of Art and Architecture at Stanford.