In July 1991, ANAT held the first of its Winter Schools in Computer Aided Art, Design and Manufacture. The rationale behind the inauguration of Winter Schools was to supplement the extremely popular Summer Schools held by ANAT, which are unable to answer the growing needs of the arts community with regard to training in the field of computer aided art. ANAT decided to initiate a program of state based schools, beginning with a school for South Australian artists. ANAT hopes that other states will follow this lead and organise training programs based on the ANAT model in their own states.
There were eight places available for the two week course, for South Australian artists. The artists who participated were: Michael Hutchings, Greg Holfeld, Josie Starrs, Bev Puckeridge, Sue Berry, Robert Farnan, Leah Grycewicz and Wayne Macintosh.
One of the students at the Winter School described the experience as follows:
‘…the ability to experiment endlessly…the lack of physical clutter and the lack of frustration of working with physical matter. These facilitated long hours of focused productivity. The positive attitudes of the tutors helped enormously too. Another exciting window that was opened was the Art-Science linkage. The notion of a more open-ended creativity, of an exploration of the physical world…we could not be but absorbed by the straight and obvious potential of this medium… One could not help but be taken by the sense of excitement, the energy levels, and the feeling of shared discovery we saw in practitioners in this area…What a fortnight!’ Rob Farnan
It was not necessary for the artists to have computer experience. The artists who attended were largely inexperienced in computer usage, or had a very basic introduction to them for word processing.
Phil George and Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Sydney based computer artists and lecturers, both exemplary graduates of a previous ANAT Summer School, were employed as tutors at the school. Over ten days, Lynne and Phil taught the students animation, painting and manipulation on Macintosh computers.
