Peter Beyls (Belgian, b. 1950) is a pioneering interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of computer science and the arts.,Since the 1970s he has produced machine drawings, interactive music systems, audiovisual installations and robotic painting.He treats the computer as a partner in the creative process, a methodology he calls “conceptual navigation”.,,
Beyls trained as an electronic engineer in Kortrijk, graduating in 1972.In the same years he worked with Michel Waisvisz to design and build early prototypes of the crackle box synthesizer at STEIM in Amsterdam.,Composers Karel Goeyvaerts and Lucien Goethals mentored him at the IPEM studio in Ghent.He went on to study sound engineering, music and computer science in Brussels, Stockholm and Ghent, then fine art at the Slade School of Art in London from 1977.He joined the VUB Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Brussels as a researcher, directing its Media Program from 1985 to 1990.There he pioneered the use of cellular automata in computer music.,,He earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Plymouth in 2010, researching interactive music systems as complex emergent behaviour.
From 1984 he developed EWA, a personal expert system he revised for over a decade into what he called “a collaborative companion in the process of aesthetic decision-making”. He treated its rules as “discovery machines”, not as fixed specifications of knowledge.In 2014, iMAL, a digital culture centre in Brussels, staged “Simple Thoughts”, the first major survey of his work in Belgium, alongside a monograph published by MER Paperkunsthalle.,The exhibition traced four decades of machine drawings, cellular automata and audiovisual installations, and gave robot drawings made that year their first public showing.In 2018, DAM Gallery in Berlin included his work in “Computer-Grafik 1984”, revisiting a 1984 book by Herbert W. Franke that had listed him among international computer art pioneers.A further collection of his writing, Coming Full Circle (2019), was published by the Verbeke Foundation after a solo show at the Verbeke Museum.
His work has been exhibited and performed at venues including Siggraph, ICMC, Imagina and ISEA, and is represented by Gallery DAM in Berlin.,He taught digital culture for over 25 years at LUCA Brussels and the School of Arts, University College Ghent, where he founded the Interaction Lab.In 2023 his work was included in the group exhibition “Node to Node” at Kate Vass Galerie in Paris.Le Random has also commissioned him to mint archival software work on chain.
