News
‘TIS THE SEASON TO SUPPORT LEONARDO!
Since 1968, Leonardo has worked to encourage cross-fertilization among the domains of art, science and technology through publications and art-science collaborations. Leonardo's programs and activities are made possible through the support of our community -- your generosity makes it all happen! Our gift back to you: All donors are eligible for complimentary listing in the Leonardo Electronic Directory and will have their names published online and in the print journal. It's a great way to make sure viewers interested in art, science and technology are aware of your work. Please consider donating today! Leonardo/ISAST is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; donations are tax deductible in the U.S. Find out more
LEONARDO AWARDED NEA GRANT
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced this week that Leonardo/ISAST will receive an NEA Art Works grant in support of the “Scientific Delirium Madness” Artist-Scientist Residency Project. Scientific Delirium Madness is a collaborative initiative of Leonardo/ISAST and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (DRAP). At the heart of the initiative is a month-long residency that will take place in July 2014 at Djerassi’s 585-acre retreat in the coastal Santa Cruz Mountains, south of San Francisco. The project highlights public forums featuring seven artists and six scientists selected by an international jury to participate. The project will also present documentation of the participants’ work in print and online. Shigekawa said, "The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these exciting and diverse arts projects that will take place throughout the United States. Whether it is through a focus on education, engagement, or innovation, these projects all contribute to vibrant communities and memorable experiences for the public to engage with the arts." Find out more
Events
ANNOUNCING: LONDON LASER
Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce a new addition to the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous series: London LASER. In the spirit of all LASER events, the London LASER is a program of evening gatherings that will bring artists and scientists together for informal presentations and conversation with audience members. The London LASER series is the eighth LASER program and the first of the series to take place in Europe. London LASER will be hosted by the University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science) and the University of Westminster (Broad Vision research and learning), in association with Leonardo/ISAST. The London LASER launch event will take place on 18 February 2014, 6–8 p.m. at the University of Westminster. Find out more
Publications
LEONARDO ELECTRONIC ALMANAC VOL. 19, NO. 3 AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
Live visuals have become a pervasive component of our contemporary lives; either as visible interfaces that re-connect citizens and buildings overlaying new contextual meaning, or as invisible ubiquitous narratives that are discovered through interactive actions and mediating screens. The contemporary re-design of the environment we live in is in terms of visuals and visualizations, software interfaces and new modes of engagement and consumption. This volume of LEA presents a series of seminal papers in the field, offering readers new perspectives on the future role of Live Visuals. Find out more
LEONARDO REVIEWS
New reviews for the month of December are now available online! Leonardo Reviews is the work of an international panel of scholars and professionals invited from a wide range of disciplines to review books, exhibitions, CD-ROMs, websites and conferences. New reviews for the month of November include: Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Brunton, reviewed by John F. Barber; The Grand Old Lady of Modern Art: Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase by Isabelle Fleuriet, reviewed by Kieran Lyons; Sea Change curated by Elinor Gallant and Ruth Little, reviewed by Elizabeth Straughan and Phillip Nicholson; Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind by David Herman, reviewed by Jan Baetens; and The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945) by Suzanne Césaire edited by Daniel Maximin and translated by Keith L. Walker, reviewed by Allan Graubard. Find out more
FILM QUARTERLY REVIEWS ILLUSIONS IN MOTION
In Illusions in Motion, published in the Leonardo Books Series by MIT Press, Erkki Huhtamo provides the first history of the panorama, analyzing it in all its complexity, investigating its relationship to other media and its role in the culture of its time. In his telling, the panorama becomes a window for observing media in operation. Huhtamo explores such topics as cultural forms that anticipated the moving panorama; theatrical panoramas; the diorama; the "panoramania" of the 1850s and the career of Albert Smith, the most successful showman of that era; competition with magic lantern shows; the final flowering of the panorama in the late nineteenth century; and the panorama's afterlife as a topos, traced through its evocation in literature, journalism, science, philosophy and propaganda. The latest issue of Film Quarterly (Vol. 66, No. 4, Summer 2013) features an in-depth review of Huhtamo’s book. Find out more
FIFTY MOST DOWNLOADED LEONARDO ARTICLES OF 2013
At Leonardo, we are proud of the platform we provide for members of the art-science community to share their work, research and ideas. The articles featured within the pages of the journal facilitate cross-disciplinary research in the fields or art, science and technology, and enhance communication among scientists, artists and engineers. The availability of the Leonardo archives online has helped to expand this effort, broadening the scope of the art-science audience, as well as providing access for our loyal readership. Follow the link to see the 50 most downloaded Leonardo articles of 2013. Find out more
TOP RANKING LABS ABSTRACTS OF 2013
Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), consisting of the English-language database, Spanish-language database and French-language database, is a comprehensive collection of Ph.D., Masters and MFA thesis abstracts on topics in the emerging intersection among art, science and technology. Individuals receiving advanced degrees in the arts, computer sciences, the sciences and/or technology that in some way investigate philosophical, historical or critical applications of science or technology to the arts are invited to submit abstracts of their theses for consideration. Each year, the top ranking LABS abstracts are selected to be published in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac; the highest ranking abstract is selected to be published in Leonardo. This year’s top ranking LABS abstracts are: “3D Information Place: Architecture for Vital Place-Making and Information Navigation” by Pei-Hsien Hsu; “From Function to Schema to Interaction: The Evolution of Design Language of Artifacts” by Yuelin Liu; “Photography as the Aesthetic Determination of Difference” by Daniel Rubinstein; and “Arresting Beauty: The Perfectionist Impulse of Peale’s Butterflies, Heade’s Hummingbirds, Blaschka’s Flowers, and Sandow’s Body” by Ellery Foutch. The highest ranking LAB abstract is “Personal Media and Wireless Citites: Towards an Urban Spatial Analysis” by Molly Hankwitz. Congratulations to all the authors. Find out more
Opportunities and Community Announcements
RISD SEEKS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN DESIGN
The Division of Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) seeks an Assistant Professor in Design (2D) for a full-time position with appointment to begin fall 2014. The Division is open to a radical range of approaches to Design—Western and/or non-Western, studio-based and/or post-studio, traditional media and/or new media, fine art and/or design. The successful candidate will be an individual working with emerging technologies and will have an understanding of their relationship to both traditional and new media practices. He or she will have a distinctive vision and pedagogical approach, and will be prepared to teach Design as a vital experience for a range of disciplines. Designers and artists from all disciplines are encouraged to apply, as well as those whose approach is broadly interdisciplinary. Applicants should have a terminal graduate degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience, evidence of teaching at the college level and a strong record of creative work and ongoing professional activity. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. Candidates who submit their materials by 8 January 2014 will be assured full consideration. Find out more
Call for Applications: Research Technical Lead/Software Developer
The xREZ ArtScience lab is accepting applications for a research software developer and technologist to join the art-science lab team working on data visualization, sonification and human-computer interaction. This position centers on supporting interdisciplinary research projects through collaboratively specifying, building and deploying applications with faculty and students across the arts, sciences, engineering and humanities. The applications are highly heterogeneous, spanning desktop, mobile, web, cloud and data centers and site-specific (Google glass, tiled displays, computer vision, machine learning, etc.). Technical direction, system specification / recommendation, documentation and software development are skills used daily. The lab is on the University of North Texas (UNT) campus, a comprehensive public research university with 36,000 students in the city of Denton, located about half an hour drive northwest of Dallas. Questions: Contact Prof. Ruth West at ruth.west@unt.edu. Find out more
CURIOSITY3 PRESENTS: EPIDEMICS IN ARTS AND SCIENCE
Seasonally appropriate topics at this time of year, epidemics are a vast and far-reaching concern for populations across the globe. On Monday 16 December, 7 p.m., join Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Digital Science Center and Office of Government and Community Affairs for presentations and a panel discussion featuring epidemiologist Stephen Morse, artist Lorrie Fredette and social scientist Samuel Roberts as they discuss their unique perspectives on epidemics and consider the medical and societal causes behind “plagues” both past and present. Find out more
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: CAMARGO 2014–2015 FELLOWSHIPS
The Camargo Foundation is now accepting applications from scholars working in French and Francophone cultures in cross-cultural studies that engage the cultures and influences of the Mediterranean region. Visual artists, creative writers, film/video/new media directors, playwrights, composers, choreographers and multidisciplinary artists are invited to apply for their 2014–2015 fellowship program. The program is intended to give Camargo fellows time and space to realize their specific objectives and projects within a vibrant cross-disciplinary intellectual context. Deadline to submit: 13 January 2014. Find out more
CALL FOR PAPERS: THE CULTURE OF THE ARTIFICIAL
The topic of this symposium, part of the 50th annual convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), is computational culture. The Culture of the Artificial symposium, to be held 1–4 April 2014 at Goldsmiths University of London, will bring together cultural theorists, philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and practitioners to investigate how computational artificiality and algorithmic simulation are not simply passive markers of 21st-century culture, but among the century’s most active players and decision-makers. For this symposium, AISB invites contributions that engage with the theoretical and historical foundations and implications of this phenomenon, and help to define strategies and methodologies for understanding its future developments. Deadline to submit: 3 January 2014. Find out more
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: VIS2014: D-ART 2014
The Information Visualization Society (IVS) is issuing a call for submissions from authors and artists for their 14th International Conference: Information Visualization. The conference will feature a series of symposia on the subjects of the interrelationships between disciplines, preparing artists to learn programming and preparing programmers to learn aesthetics, issues in digital art, digital art, visual learning and the history of computer graphics and art. Authors are invited to send extended abstracts or full papers for consideration. Artists are invited to submit their current digital artwork for exhibition in the iV2014 Digital Art Gallery. The conference will take place 15–18 July 2014 at the University of Paris, Descartes. Deadlines to submit vary. Find out more
CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL CREATIVITY
Computational Creativity is the art, science, philosophy and engineering of computational systems that, by taking on particular responsibilities, exhibit behaviors that an unbiased observer would deem creative. As a field of research this area is thriving, with progress being made in formalizing what it means for software to be creative, along with many exciting and valuable applications of creative software in the sciences, the arts, literature, gaming and elsewhere. The Fifth International Conference on Computational Creativity will be held 10–13 June 2014 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Original contributions are solicited in all areas related to Computational Creativity research and practice. Deadline to submit: 31 January 2014. Find out more
