Generative: A Computer Art Documentary - Screening and Q&A

Generative, the documentary by Ben Spilling, is being screened at the V&A South Kensington on Saturday 7 November, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and V&A digital art curator Melanie Lenz. It's a special cut Spilling made just for the museum, and the screening sits inside the V&A's second Digital Art Season, On Agency, which runs until 3 December 2026 and looks at the fluid boundaries between human and machine agency.

The film itself traces the artists and engineers who first brought computers into the creative process, following their early experiments with code, chance and machines. It draws on rare archive and interviews with figures like Vera Molnar, Manfred Mohr and A. Michael Noll, and puts them alongside a newer generation of artists to show how those early ideas still shape art today. If you've never come across the pioneers of computer art, this is a good place to start.

The screening also ties into the museum's exhibition Degrees of Disruption: Vera Molnar and Generative Art, which runs until 30 May 2027, so you can easily pair the film with a look at Molnar's work. The session takes place in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, from 15:00 to 16:30, and it's free.