The university of Madrid computer centre. Creativity and technology in Spanish universities in the 1960s

Abstract

This article is based on information collected from the archives of the president of the Complutense University of Madrid and from interviews with Florentino Briones and Ernesto García Camarero (the first and second managers of the University of Madrid Computer Centre, respectively), Manuel Fernandez Barberá (IBM delegate), Javier Seguí de la Riva (organizer of numerous seminars), Ignacio Gómez de Liano (organizer of the Plastic Shapes seminar) and José Luis Alexanco (participating artist). The University of Madrid Computer Centre was a pioneering experience in Spain, contemporary with other developed countries in developing and applying computing to creativity, broadly understood as open to all fields of knowledge. An IBM-donated computer was used to carry out projects of various kinds related to art, architecture, language, education and medicine, among others. The University of Madrid Computer Centre seminars fostered a new mode of creation and a form of aesthetics that placed Spain in the world vanguard.