CAS Events

From Drawing to Light: The Making of THEMIS

How does an intuitive drawing on paper become a 30-metre digital light installation? Join us on Thursday 15th October 2026, 5.30–7.30 pm Lecture Theatre RUS 203, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

About the Talk

Join multimedia artist Esther Rolinson for a special conversation exploring the making of THEMIS, her major new public artwork for Merlin Place in Cambridge. Rolinson will have an open discussion with exhibition curator Caroline Menezes and artist-programmer Sean Clark, who has programmed the artwork and is Chair of the Computer Arts Society. Reflecting on the Ruskin Gallery exhibition THEMIS: Seeing with Closed Eyes, the event opens a window into Rolinson’s creative process, from the immediacy of hand drawing to animation, generative systems, architecture and light.

Commissioned by Kadans Science Partner, a leading developer of real estate and ecosystems for technology-based sectors, THEMIS was created for Merlin Place, its purpose-built science and innovation building in north Cambridge. Rolinson’s work transforms more than 300 individual hand drawings into a generative system that can produce billions of possible combinations. The resulting artwork unfolds across a bespoke 30-metre LED structure on the building’s rooftop, extending the intimacy of drawing to an architectural and public scale.

The discussion will reveal how Rolinson moves between analogue and digital ways of making, and how an intensely personal studio process develops through her work with animators, programmers, architects and lighting specialists. It will consider drawing as a form of thinking: a space in which images, systems and movements can emerge before technical solutions are defined. It is also a discussion of Human-Machine agency, where technology is a catalyst for artistic creativity. The conversation offers an opportunity to look behind the finished artwork and follow the decisions and experiments through which Esther Rolinson created THEMIS.

Speakers

Esther Rolinson is a British multimedia artist whose practice brings together drawing, sculpture, light, programming and new media. Her hand drawings form the starting point for complex installations in which analogue gestures are extended into spatial, digital and generative systems. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Caroline Menezes is a curator, art historian and researcher working at the intersection of art, creative technologies and artificial intelligence. She holds a PhD in History and Theory of Art from University of the Arts London. She is currently Co-Manager of the Institute for Digital Transformation & Innovation in Berlin. Her research and curatorial practice address human-centred AI, digital culture and the historical relationship between artistic practice and emerging technologies.

Sean Clark is an artist, researcher and programmer working in digital and generative art. He collaborated closely with Esther Rolinson to program THEMIS, the rule-based system through which her drawings are combined and continually transformed. He is the chair of the Computer Arts Society, one of the world’s longest-running organisations dedicated to the relationship between art and computational technologies.