Artist and programmer based in Glasgow. His work addresses coding both in terms of its low-level formal mechanisms and aesthetics and in terms of its higher-level relationships to social structures and systems. These issues are explored through software projects, written texts, discussion, and hands-on workshops.
Following on from Andy Wightman and James Hunter, Simon Yuill is also concerned with the nature of commons in Scottish life (and elsewhere) - but this stretches from the digital commons (in the form of open source code and gaming platforms) to urban-rural struggles (as in the Pollok Free State protest against road development in 90's Glasgow). Yuill's Spring_Alpha project attempted to link traditions of community education/empowerment with the process of games-making - making people aware of the rules that govern social behaviour. His recent exhibition at the CCA, Fields Factories and Workshops, was an extraordinarily rich meditation on how communities come to assert their 'commons' rights. Yuill's essay, 'All Problems of Notation Will Be Solved By The Masses', is the best elaboration of his notion of 'distributive practice' - what Douglas Rushkoff recently summed up as "program or be programmed". One of Scotland's most significant intellectuals and contemporary artists.