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Leonardo
Vol. 40, Issue 5 (2007)

Celebrating 40 years of Leonardo journal!

Leonardo is a print journal, published five times a year. Leonardo is edited by Leonardo/the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and published by the MIT Press.

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LEONARDO 40:5 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial

The Electroacoustic Music Studies Network

by Marc Battier

Historical Perspective

Computer Graphic-Aesthetic Experiments between Two Cultures

by Christoph Klütsch

ABSTRACT: The author presents a summary of his research on the Stuttgart School and information aesthetics as developed by Max Bense in the 1950s and 1960s. Three artists, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees and Manfred Mohr, adopted the use of information aesthetics in computer graphics. The author investigates the relation between artistic practice and aesthetic theory.

Artist's Note

The Teleporter Zone: Interactive Media Arts in the Healthcare Context

by Paul Sermon

ABSTRACT: The author discusses the recent development and implementation of The Teleporter Zone, a permanent interactive art installation commissioned by Guy's and St Thomas' Charity for the new Evelina Children's Hospital in London. The article places the production and conception of this installation in the context of the author's research in telematic and telepresent art over the past 15 years, alongside current research reports on the effects and influences of the arts on healthcare. The author also draws upon personal experiences in order to provide practical insights into the objectives and outcomes of this work in the healthcare context.

Artist's Article

Meaning without Borders: likn and Distributed Knowledge

by Ben Syverson

ABSTRACT: This paper serves as a narrative companion to likn, an artware application about the nature of knowledge, ideas and language. According to the advocates and engineers of the "knowledge representation" project known as the Semantic Web, eletronic ontologies are "a rationalization of actual data-sharing practice"; but where do artists and intellectuals fit into this data-oriented model of discourse? likn critiques the Semantic Web from a postmodern perspective. This account describes how postmodern theory was scrutinized, interpreted and ultimately expressed as "features" in likn.

[NOTE: This article is a revised version of a paper which was presented at the Electroacoustic Music Studies Conference in Beijing, October 2006 and received the Leonardo-EMS award for excellence. The full article is available to read online.]

Special Section: Lovely Weather: Art and Climate Change

0-24 Licht A Project Combining Art and Applied Research

by Angelo Stagno and Andea Van der Straeten

Between Reason and Sensation: Antipodean Artists and Climate Change

by Janine Randerson

ABSTRACT: The author, drawing on her experience as a New Zealand artist who has collaborated with meterologists, suggest that artists may enter climate change discourse by translating (or mis-translating) scientific method into sensory affect. She examines three recent art projects from Australasia that draw on natural phenomena: her own Anemocinegraph (2006-2007), Nola Farman's working prototype The Ice Tower (1998), and Out-of-Sync's ongoing on-line project, Talking about the Weather. The author cites Herbert Marcuse's 1972 essay "Nature and Revolution," which argues that sensation is the process that binds us materially and socially to the world.

Extended Abstract

The Singing Shamail: A Computer Sound Installation

by Bulat M Galeyev

Special Section: In the Light of History: Papers from the 2005 Refresh! Conference

Introduction

by Sean Cubitt

Peter Donebauer, Richard Monkhouse and the Development of the EMS Spectron and the Videokalos Image Processor

by Chris Meigh-Andrews

ABSTRACT: The author details the development of two early color video synthesizers, the EMS Spectron and the Videokalos Image Processor, and examines their influence on video-based art. The Spectron, developed by Richard Monkhouse for Electronic Music Studios, influenced both its creator and various artists in the development of video-based art and images. Artist Peter Donebauer collaborated with Monkhouse to produce the Videokalos, leading to several artworks and a series of live performances.

Re-Writing the History of Media Art: From Personal Cinmea to Artistic Collaboration

by Ryszard W. Kluszczynski

ABSTRACT: The author reinterprets the artistic phenomena that composed historical avant-garde art. His method of interpretation is an intertextual strategy that approaches the historical artifacts through recent phenomoena. The first case study is of structural film; its most important attributes appear to be artistic strategies questioning the structural/material integrity, durability and permanence of the film work. The second case study is of the avant-garde strategy of collective work, reinterpreted through the open-source and interactive art of today. the author identifies three steps in the development of the 20th century concept of joint creative work: avant-garde general strategies of artistic collaboration; avant-garde film works oriented toward creative collectivism; and colaborative artistic practices that manifest themselves in non-hierarchical strategies of contemporary interactive art.

Theoretical Perspective

Toward Other Epistemologies of Interface Culture: Dependent Origination, Tantra and Relational Being in an Age of Digital Reproduction

by Ajaykumar

ABSTRACT: The author formally and thematically reconsiders the Buddhist philosopohical concept of dependent origination in the context of technological practice. In this context, he discusses historical attempts in Tantric art to develop an integrated practice and conceive a dynamic "entity" of the body (that of the artist or the spectator), science, technology, art, architecture, philosophy, space-time in nature; and the veracity of such concepts in the context of particular new scientific insights. Furthermore, he reconsiders notions of relational being and nonanthropocentric being, and a polyphonic "I." The article aims to interrogate new ways of evolving current practice and thinking on themes related to the socialization and mediatization of "difference."

Special Section: ArtScience: The Essential Connection

Certain of Heisenberg's Arts

by Robert Root-Bernstein

Looking Beneath the Surface: The Radial Spread of Ink in Water

by Pery Burge

ABSTRACT: The author discusses her use of ink in water to create three-dimensional radial spreads (outward movements of liquid about a central point). The radial spreads form patterns as the ink moves across and in the water. The patterns have both scientific and aesthetic aspects and form the basis for seculation in both areas. They also provide an exciting new dimension to the artist's work relating to fluid flow. Unique patterns, often seen only by the eye of the camera, can be generated and preserved within one photograph or a photographic sequence.

General Note

Governing Artistic Innovation: An Interface among Art, Science and Industry

by Jean-Paul Fourmentraux

ABSTRACT: The author presents an analysis of the workings and tensions involved in the integration and articulation of academic research, artistic creation and industrial production. He makes use of the results of a study conducted among creator-researchers of a Canadian prototype for the organization of these relationships: the Montreal, Canada-based interuniversity consortium Hexagram.

From the Leonardo Archive

Scalebound or Scaling Shapes: A Useful Distinction in the Visual Arts and in the Natural Sciences

by Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Reviews by Kathryn Adams, Jan Baetens, John F. Barber, Geoff Cox, Rob Harle, Amy Ione, Michael R. (Mike) Mosher, Michael Punt, Stefaan Van Ryssen, Jonathan Zilberg.

Leonardo Vol. 40, Issue 5 (2007)