ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Ernest Edmonds' fascination with the underlying structures that he found in painting and music, and how this led to a deep concern for systems in art and the investigation of computational systems as the basis of art-making. It focuses on two important works: Fifty Two (1980) and Four Shaped Forms (Park Hill B) (2014). The chapter poses a number of questions about the origins and development of these works. How were they created and what inspired their creation? How are they connected? As with structure, interactivity has been a central concern in Edmonds' work. It emerged explicitly when he collaborated with Stroud Cornock on the creation of *Datapack in 1970. His notion of a network communication art system was then realised in his original network communication art system Communications Game, conceived in 1970 and made the following year. Through such projects, Edmonds demonstrated that art could be seen as a communication between people enabled by technology.
