Abstract
The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2021 Conference (EVA London 2021) is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, of which the CAS is a Specialist Group. Of course, this is a difficult time for all conferences, with the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, the EVA London 2021 Conference is an online conference, as it was in the previous year as well. We continue with publishing the proceedings, both online, with open access via ScienceOpen, and also in our traditional printed form. Over recent decades, the EVA London Conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts has established itself as one of the United Kingdom's most innovative and interdisciplinary conferences. It brings together a wide range of research domains to celebrate a diverse set of interests, with a specialised focus on visualisation. The long and short papers in this volume cover varied topics concerning the arts, visualisations, and IT, including 3D graphics, animation, artificial intelligence, creativity, culture, design, digital art, ethics, heritage, literature, museums, music, philosophy, politics, publishing, social media, and virtual reality, as well as other related interdisciplinary areas. The EVA London 2021 proceedings presents a wide spectrum of papers, demonstrations, Research Workshop contributions, other workshops, and for the sixth year, the EVA London Symposium, in the form of an evening panel session with invited contributors. The conference includes a number of other associated online evening events including ones organised by the Computer Arts Society, Art in Flux, and the Lumen Prize. A feature of EVA London, started in 2018, has been a Research in Education Day, immediately after the main conference, bringing together students and associated staff from universities in the London area to enable presentations and networking. In the circumstances, we now aim to hold this in conjunction with EVA London 2022. As in previous years, there are Research Workshop contributions in this proceedings, aimed at encouraging participation by postgraduate students and early-career artists, accepted either through the peer-review process or directly by the Research Workshop chair. The Research Workshop contributors are offered bursaries to aid participation. In particular, EVA London liaises with Art in Flux, a London-based group of digital artists. The EVA London 2021 proceedings includes long papers and short "poster" papers from international researchers inside and outside academia, from graduate artists, PhD students, industry professionals, established scholars, and senior researchers, who value EVA London for its interdisciplinary community. The conference also features keynote talks. This publication has resulted from a selective peer review process, fitting as many excellent submissions as possible into the proceedings. This year, submission numbers were lower than previous years, mostly likely due to the pandemic forcing the conference online. It is still pleasing to have so many good proposals from which to select the papers that have been included. EVA London is part of a larger network of EVA international conferences. EVA events have been held in Athens, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, California, Cambridge (both UK and USA), Canberra, Copenhagen, Dallas, Delhi, Edinburgh, Florence, Gifu (Japan), Glasgow, Harvard, Jerusalem, Kiev, Laval, London, Madrid, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague, St Petersburg, Thessaloniki, and Warsaw. Further venues for EVA conferences are very much encouraged by the EVA community.