First Symposium on Small Computers in the Arts Held in Philadelphia

Held from 20 to 22 November 1981 and sponsored by the Philadelphia Area Computer Society, the University of Pennsylvania and the IEEE, the symposium would become an annual event and an important gathering of American computer artists in the 1980s. Roughly 150 “enthusiasts” attended with the goals of “increas[ing] the participants’ awareness of the uses of small computers in the arts and to provide a forum for information exchange in this area,” according to a report from that year in the Computer Music Journal. Christopher Morgan, editor-in-chief of Byte, gave the keynote address in 1981.