Leonardo
Volume 33, Number 3
Contents
2000
Leonardo is a print journal, edited by Leonardo/the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and published by the MIT Press. Subscriptions and individual issues can be ordered from the MIT Press.
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Pages 167-168
Editorial
Rudolf Arnheim: The Coming and Going of Images
Artist's Article
Frank Pietronegro: Investigating the Creative Process in a Microgravity Environment
Abstract
The author, an interdisciplinary artist, discusses his creation of art in a microgravity environment as part of the 1998 NASA Student Reduced Gravity Flight Program. He discusses his three-dimensional "drift paintings," which floated in the air along with his body in microgravity. The author posits that the transcendent quality of the creative process can help keep the human spirit alive during long-term space missions.
Artist's Article
Mario Markus: A Scientist's Adventures in Postmodernism
Abstract
The author provides an account of his everyday experience as a physicist, which allows him to witness research on chaos as a science of convergence: the elite with the masses, the scientific disciplines with each other, modern physics with Giordano Bruno's philosophy, and science with mysticism and art. He also outlines how chaos theory displays postmodern features and dissolves the boundaries between the "two cultures."
Pages 187-190
Artists' Statements
- Jacquelyn Martino: Clerestory
- Robert Dell: Hitavaettur and the Implications of Geothermal Sculpture
- Sam Woolf: The Sound Gallery: Project Statement
Pages 191-196
General Article
Guy Levrier: The Pathway Between Art and Science
ABSTRACT
The author describes his understanding of the place and purpose of his art in the context of our late twentieth century: as an artist, he does not accept a place in the current "death of art" situation. He agrees that abstract art is not self-explanatory although its meaning exists in the collective unconscious. To explain his effort, he has found metaphors in quantum physics that enable him to link his artistc process to the dynamics of progress found in science rather than to those of regression found in the arts.
Pages 197-202
General Article
Dorothy Washburn: An Interactive Test of Color and Contour Perception by Artists and Non-Artists
ABSTRACT
The author explores Richard Latto's proposition that art communicates effectively because artists manipulate basic features of form that the human perceptual system has evolved to detect. She offers an empirical test of the correlated proposition--that viewers of art use these same features to assess art. The author presents the results of an experiment in which both artists and non-artists were asked to discern and draw shapes in patterns defined by iterating dots. She finds that both groups used color in the case of positive shape and form edge in the case of negative space, thereby confirming that both makers and viewers of art focus on the same kinds of features to recognize and assess form.
Pages 203-205
Technical Note
Asok Sen: Mathematics, Computers and Visual Arts: Some Applications of the Product-Delay Algorithm
ABSTRACT
The author experiments with a product-delay algorithm as a means of creating graphic designs on a computer. With the product-delay algorithm and a little imagination, it is possible to create a wide variety of artistic patterns, several examples of which are presented here.
Pages 207-213
Historical Perspective
Bulat Galeyev: Georgy Gidoni: Another Renascent Name
ABSTRACT
The author discusses the life and work of Georgy Gidoni, artist-inventor of the early days of the Soviet Union. Nearly forgotten, Gidoni's works and ideas shed light on the spirit and the artistic and ideological atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. in the decades following the Revolution.
Pages 215-221
Artists' Note
Michael Poast: Color Music: Visual Color Notation for Musical Expression
ABSTRACT
In this article, the author describes Color Music, an alternative notation system for musical expression. The system uses colors and shapes--powerful tools of expression--in conjunction with sound to form a new language for musical notation. The author briefly describes the history of color/sound relationships since the time of Aristotle and discusses the use of color in scores by Alexander Scriabin, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Krysztof Penderecki, Gyorgy Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen and other contemporary composers who recognized color as a tool of expression for musical notation. He also discusses the psychology and musical meaning of colors, along with the role of performers as interpreters of Color Music, and the use of standard musical forms as structural devices for applying color to scores. He describes his Color Music: Toccata and Fugue (1995) in detail.
Pages 223-224
On-Line Resources
Pages 225-236
Leonardo Reviews
Daniela Kutschat, David Topper, Kasey Ashberry, Wilfred Niels Arnold, Jacques Mandelbrojt, Will Marchant, Yvonne Spielmann, Ye. V. Sintzov, David Cox, S.V. Sintzova and R.F. Saifullin, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Richard Kade.
Pages 237-238
Endnote
Richard Kade: De Profoundis Adumbrative Reflections?
Pages 244-246
Leonardo/ISAST News
