Zdeněk Sýkora, David Vrbík (CZ)

Zdeněk Sýkora was one of the first artists to use the possibilities of computer technology in the process of preparing a work of art. He became a model for many other generations of artists. In 1945, he began studying art education and descriptive geometry at the College of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University. The course was soon transferred to the Faculty of Education at Charles University, where Sýkora worked as an assistant from 1947 and as an associate professor from 1966-1980. From the 1960s he also taught art education at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. He gradually progressed from landscape to abstraction, and in 1964, in collaboration with mathematician Jaroslav Blažek, he created the first programmed structures using a computer. From 1973 he developed a completely new system based on randomness, which was the basis of line paintings. He appeared at major international exhibitions of constructive art, and his works are represented in many international and Czech collections. His painting Line No. 24 became part of the permanent exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2007. Zdeněk Sýkora died in Louny in 2011.

The audiovisual artist David Vrbík began his creative career in music. He is a founding member of the dance company TOW, which has appealed to the dance community with its approach to technology, especially the synchronization of audio, lights and laser projections. In 2004, together with Vladimir 518, he founded the multi-genre project SPAM, where he explores the possibilities of audiovisual language. Since 2019, he has been working on his V E K T R O S K O P, in which he addresses artists from the domestic and international digital art scene.