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Leonardo
Vol. 41, Issue 2 (2008)

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.

ONLINE ACCESS: Subscriptions to Leonardo include access to electronic versions of journal issues available on The MIT Press website.

ORDER: Subscriptions, individual issues and articles can also be ordered from The MIT Press.

PAST ISSUES: Browse tables of contents and abstracts of past issues of Leonardo and LMJ

LEONARDO 41:2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial

Restoring the Continuum

by Piero Scaruffi

Extended Abstract

The Destruction of a Nuclear Plant

by Marisa Gonzalez

Transactions

Painting the Internet

by John Aycock

Voice Mosaic--Talking to the Web

by Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel

In the Eye of the Beholder: The Perception of Indeterminate Art

by Christian Wallraven, Kathrin Kaulard, Cora Kürner and Robert Pepperell

Historical Perspective

The Evolution of Illustrated Texts and Their Effect on Science: Examples from Early American State Geological Reports

by Carol Siri Johnson

ABSTRACT: In the 19th century, printing methods made significant advances that allowed mass production of illustrated texts; prior to that time, illustrated texts wre expensive and rare. The number of illustrated texts thus rose exponentially, increasing the rate of information transfer among scientists, engineers and the general public. The early American state geological reports, funded by the state legislatures, were among the pioneering volumes that used the new graphic capabilities in the improved printing processes for the advancement of science. They contain thousands of illustrations--woodcuts, etchings, lithographs and hand-painted maps--that may be of interest to historians of science, technology, art and culture.

General Article

Web-based Algorithmic Composition from Extramusical Resources

by Jonathan Middleton and Diane Dowd

ABSTRACT: The authors, a composer and a mathematician, demonstrate how the Web-based application "musicalgorithms" translates numbers into musical events. Details of the algorithmic process and the decisions behind mathematical scaling operations are presented in two compositions called Redwood Symphony and Dreaming among Thermal Pools and Concentric Spirals

Special Section: Leonardo Celebrates Leonardo da Vinci

The Reverse Outlining Perspective of Leonardo's Last Supper and Its Image Formation

by Tomás García-Salgado

ABSTRACT: The accurate perception of a painting's image formation depends upon three concepts: the observer's distance to the perspective plane, the aperture of his or her visual field, and the limits of the perspective plane. A comprehension of these concepts is crucial to the calculation of both the painting's image formation and the observer's vantage point. To approach this problem in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the author introduces the reverse outlining perspective method, through which it is shown how the painting's image formation can be deduced.

Special Section: Archiving, Collecting, Documenting and Conserving the Media Arts

Marina Abramovic's Seven Easy Pieces: Critical Documentation Strategies for Preserving Art's History

by Jessica Santone

ABSTRACT: This essay raises issues of authenticity, authorship and medium in a discussion of performace, documentation and re-performance. Its object of analysis is Marina Abramovic's 2005 performance series, Seven Easy Pieces, including her re-performances of Bruce Nauman's Body Pressure/ and VALIE EXPORT's Action Pants: Genital Panic. Seven Easy Pieces strives to document the past through manipulation of repetition and temporality; Abramovic's re-performances act as performative documents of the past performances she cites. Lessons learned from a close analysis of re-performance and performance documentation can provide useful insights for and promote critical thought about conservation strategies for time-based art.

From the Leonardo Archive

The Relocation of Ambient Sound: Urban Sound Sculpture

by Bill Fontana

ABSTRACT: The author describes his sound sculptures which explore how various instance of sound possess musical form. He explains the sculptural qualities of sound and the aesthetic act of arranging sound into art. Detailed descriptions of three recent works illustrate how relocating sounds from one environment to another redefines them, giving them new acoustic meanings.

Special Section: REFRESH! Conference Papers

Introduction: The Reception and Rejection of Art and Technology: Exclusions and Revulsions

by Edward A. Shanken

Gordon Pask: Cybernetic Polymath

by Mariá Fernández

ABSTRACT: Despite his influence in art, architecture and theater, British cybernetician Gordon Pask is rarely acknowledged in histories of digital culture and virtually unknown in the history of art. Pask is better known as a theoretician than as an artist or designer, although his machines, artwork and theories were closely related. This article investigates the relevance of specific aspects of Pask's theories to his best-known artwork, The Colloquy of Mobiles, to illustrate his characteristic unification of science and art, and theory and material experimentation. Select works of contemporary art are discussed to indicate Pask's significance to contemporary art practices.

From Technophilia to Technophobia: The Impact of the Vietnam War on the Reception of "Art and Technology"

by Anne Collins Goodyear

ABSTRACT: Using the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's 1971 exhibition "Art annd Technology" as a case study, this essay examines a shift in attitude on the part of influential American artists and critics toward collaborations between art and technology from one of optimism in the mid-1960s to one of suspicion in the early 1970s. The Vietnam War dramatically undermined public confidence in the promise of new technology, linking it with corporate support of the war. Ultimately, the discrediting of industry-sponsored technology not only underminded the premises of the LACMA exhibition but also may have contributed to the deminse of the larger "art and technology" movement in the United States.

Vladimir Bonacic: Computer-Generated Works Made within Zagreb's New Tendencies Network (1961-1973)

by Darko Fritz

ABSTRACT: Scientist Vladimir Bonacic began his artistic career in 1968 under the auspices of the international New Tendencies movement (NT). From 1968 to 1971 Bonacic created a series of "dynamic objects"--interactive computer-generated light installations, five of which were set up in public spaces. The author shows the context of Bonacic's work within the Zagreb cultural environment dominated by the New Tendencies movement and network (1961-1973). The paper shows his theoretical and practical criticism of the use of randomness in computer-generated art and describes his working methods as combining the algebra of Galois fields and an anti-commercial approach with custom-made hardware. It seems that Bonacic's work fulfills and develops Matko Mestrovic's proposition that "in order to enrich that which is human, art must start to pentrate the extra-poetic and the extra-human."

Leonardo Reviews

New Reviews by: Jan Baetens, John F. Barber, Anthony Enns, Enzo Ferrara, Istvan Hargittai, Paul Hertz, Amy Ione, Michael R. Mosher, Yvonne Spielmann, Eugene Thacker, Stefaan Van Ryssen, Ian Verstegen and Jonathan Zilberg.

Leonardo Vol. 41, Issue 2 (2008)