Andy Lomas

{{Short description|British artist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}}

{{Infobox artist

| name = Andy Lomas

| image = Andy Lomas presenting at the EVA London 2016 conference (cropped).jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Lomas presenting at the EVA London 2016 conference{{citation| first=Andy | last=Lomas | contribution=Species Explorer: An interface for artistic exploration of multi-dimensional parameter spaces | editor1-link=Jonathan Bowen | editor-first1=Jonathan P. | editor-last1=Bowen | editor-first2=Graham | editor-last2=Diprose | editor2-link=Graham Diprose | editor-first3=Nicholas | editor-last3=Lambert | title=EVA London 2016 Conference Proceedings | place=London, UK | series=Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) | publisher=BCS | date=2016 | pages=95–102 | doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.23 | contribution-url=http://ewic.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_eva16_arts1_paper1.pdf | url=http://www.bcs.org/ewic/eva2016 | doi-access=free | url-access=subscription }}

| birth_name = Andrew Lomas

| birth_date =

| birth_place = United Kingdom

| death_date =

| death_place =

| known_for = Algorithmic art, Digital art, Contemporary art, Mathematical art, Morphogenetic art, Visual effects

| notable_works =

| movement = Digital art

| education =

| alma_mater =

| elected = University College London
Goldsmiths, University of London

| spouse =

| awards = 51st Primetime Emmy Awards Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries or a Movie (1999)
The Lumen Prize Gold Award (2014){{cite web| url=http://lumenprize.com/blogpost/lumeninfocus-andy-lomas | title=#LumenInFocus: Andy Lomas | first=Charlotte | last=Lee | date=2014 | publisher=The Lumen Prize | access-date=29 October 2016 }}

| patrons = Victoria and Albert Museum
Computer Arts Society

| website = [http://www.andylomas.com/ www.andylomas.com]

}}

File:Morphogenic digital art exhibition by Andy Lomas at Watermans Arts Centre, London.jpg Creations digital art exhibition by Andy Lomas at Watermans Arts Centre, west London, in 2016]]

File:Morphogenic sculpture by Andy Lomas.jpg

Andy Lomas (born 1967 in Welwyn Garden City, England{{cite web| url=http://zkm.de/en/person/andy-lomas| title=Andy Lomas | website=zkm.de | location=Germany | access-date=29 October 2016 }}) is a British artist with a mathematical background, formerly a television and film CG supervisor and more recently a contemporary digital artist,{{cite web | url=http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/once_a_mathematician_always_an_artist | title=Andy Lomas: Artist Profile | first=Barbara | last=Robertson | publisher=CGSociety | date=26 March 2006 | access-date=29 October 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161030074927/http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/once_a_mathematician_always_an_artist | archive-date=30 October 2016 | url-status=dead }} with a special interest in morphogenesis using mathematical morphology.{{cite web| url=http://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2014-bridges-conference-short-movie-festival/andy-lomas | title=Andy Lomas | work=Mathematical Art Galleries | publisher=The Bridges Organization | date=2014 | access-date=29 October 2016 }}

Lomas previously worked on visual effects using computer graphics (CGI) for television and films such as The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and Avatar (2009).{{cite web| url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0518224/ | title=Andy Lomas | work=IMDb | access-date=29 October 2016 }} before becoming a digital artist. In 2006 he appeared in The Tech of 'Over the Hedge', a short documentary.{{cite web| url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1066347 |title=The Tech of 'Over the Hedge' (2006) | date=2006 | work=IMDb | access-date=29 October 2016 }} With his collaborators, in 1999 Lomas won the 51st Primetime Emmy Awards Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Miniseries or a Movie for the 1999 film Alice in Wonderland.

Lomas's works are displayed in the form of videos, still images, and sculptures, produced using a mathematical programming approach. Some works include collaborative music, by Max Cooper for example.{{cite web| url=http://www.dezeen.com/2014/07/05/max-cooper-andy-lomas-seething-music-video-cell-growth/ | title=Max Cooper's music video for Seething emulates biological cell growth | first=Ben | last=Hobson | work=De Zeen | date=5 July 2014 | access-date=29 October 2016 }} His artworks are inspired by the work of Ernst Haeckel, D'Arcy Thompson, and Alan Turing.{{citation| first=Jonathan P. | last=Bowen | author-link=Jonathan Bowen | contribution=Alan Turing Virtuosity and visualisation | editor-first1=Jonathan P. | editor-last1=Bowen | editor-first2=Graham | editor-last2=Diprose | editor-first3=Nicholas | editor-last3=Lambert | title=EVA London 2016 Conference Proceedings | location=London, UK | series=Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) | publisher=BCS | date=2016 |pages=197–204 | doi=10.14236/ewic/EVA2016.40 | contribution-url=http://ewic.bcs.org/upload/pdf/ewic_eva16_ma_paper1.pdf | url=http://www.bcs.org/ewic/eva2016 | doi-access=free | url-access=subscription }}

Lomas won the 2014 international Lumen Prize Gold Award for digital art, the top category. He has exhibited at the Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio, USA), the Computing Commons Art Gallery (Arizona State University), the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and SIGGRAPH.

In June–July 2016, Lomas held a solo exhibition of his work at the Watermans Arts Centre in west London,{{cite web| url=https://www.watermans.org.uk/new-media-arts-archive/morphogenetic-creations-andy-lomas/ | title=Morphogenetic Creations – Andy Lomas | publisher=Watermans Arts Centre | location=UK | date=2016 | access-date=20 October 2016 }} which has been acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum for its collection.{{cite web| url=https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/watermans/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/27120044/VA-acquires-Andy-Lomas-work-from-Watermans-curated-exhibition-Sept-2016.pdf | work=Press Release | title=V&A acquires suite of work from exhibition curated by Watermans with artist Andy Lomas | publisher=Watermans Arts Centre | location=UK | date=2016 | access-date=20 October 2016 }} His work is also held in the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum art collection at the University of Dundee in Scotland, funded by the UK Art Fund.{{cite web| url=http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/collections/zoology/renew/lomas/ | work=D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum Art Collection | title=Andy Lomas | publisher=University of Dundee Museum Services | location=UK | access-date=30 October 2016 }} In 2019, he contributed a chapter to the book Museums and Digital Culture.{{cite book| first=Andy | last=Lomas | chapter=Chapter 17: Morphogenetic Creations: Exhibiting and Collecting Digital Art | publisher=Springer | pages=353–365 | date=2019 | editor1-first=Tula | editor1-last=Giannini | editor1-link=Tula Giannini | editor2-first=Jonathan P. | editor2-last=Bowen | editor2-link=Jonathan Bowen | title=Museums and Digital Culture: New Perspectives and Research | series=Series on Cultural Computing | doi=10.1007/978-3-319-97457-6_17 | isbn=978-3-319-97456-9 | s2cid=159043037 | issn=2195-9064 }}

By way of summarizing his technique, Lomas counts himself among those who have entered into a "hybrid" relationship with the computer, wherein the latter is used to quickly generate a series of visual images based on an original idea or algorithm.{{cite journal |author=Andy Lomas|date=9 July 2018|title=On Hybrid Creativity|journal=Arts|volume=7|issue=3|pages=25|doi=10.3390/arts7030025|doi-access=free}}

Lomas was previously appointed as a Visiting Lecturer at University College London in the Bartlett School of Architecture{{cite web| url=https://computer-arts-society.com/casarchive/cas/andy-lomas.html | title=Andy Lomas | publisher=Computer Arts Society | work=CAS50 Collection | access-date=2 April 2024 }} and subsequently became a Lecturer in Creative Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London.{{cite web| url=https://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/people/lomas-andy/ | title=Andy Lomas | publisher=Goldsmiths, University of London | location=UK | access-date=2 April 2024 }} His work is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and Computer Arts Society collections.

In 2024, Lomas produced an animation generated using morphogenesis techniques as the official video for The Sun In A Box by the electronic musician Max Cooper.{{cite web| url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ4preSeIyY | first=Max | last=Cooper |author-link=Max Cooper (music producer) | title=Max Cooper – The Sun In A Box (Official video by Andy Lomas) | website=YouTube | date=2024 | access-date=15 April 2025 }}