Brian Reffin Smith is a British (and since 2020 also German) artist, writer and musician with degrees and backgrounds in both science and art. He lives in Berlin. The first-ever winner of the Prix Art Electronica in Linz, Austria, in 1987, he used computers in art since the late 1960s. He also works in areas of Zombie theory, cybernetics and ‘Pataphysics, all applied to art, performance, writing and music. He has taught at the Royal College of Art, many UK and French art institutions including the École nationale supérieure d’art, Bourges, France where as Professeur, Art & Info, he was for 25 years a French civil servant. He is a book and peer reviewer for Leonardo. His 1983 book “Soft Computing: Art and Design” has become a cult text, and his earlier books for children such as an “Introduction to Computers” became world-wide best sellers, some being translated into well over 20 languages including Welsh, Icelandic, Finnish and Urdu. They attempted to reorient the idea of a computer towards creativity. A frequent invitee to conferences, he is often the “cabaret turn”, being known for unusual, funny (though finally serious) performance lectures, which start off traditionally academic but rapidly expand. He often ‘Zombifies’ participants, asserting that this frees them of any preconceptions. His online text “43 Dodgy Statements on Computer Art” was described by Wired as “Timeless”. He is interested in the “Détournement” or “hijacking” of ideas, theories, practices and systems from other disciplines, to make art. Smith advocates the retrieval of ideas from the past of computer based arts, arguing that these have not been fully explored and can still be revolutionary, and contribute to contemporary, especially conceptual, art. His artworks are shown internationally. He became a Zombie in 1998.