Leonardo
Volume 29 Number 1 (1996)
Issue Contents
February/March 1996
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.
TO ORDER
EDITORIAL
ISTVÁN HARGITTAI: A Fuller Bridge
THE LEONARDO GALLERY
RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, curator; LAURA KIKAUKA; PERRY HOBERMAN; LAWRENCE
PAUL YUXWELUPTUN; MICHAEL MARANDA; MARCEL.LÍ ANTÚNEZ
ROCA; NELL TENHAAF; MIGUEL ANGEL CORONA ALBA, TRIMPIN, CÉSAR
MARTÍNEZ SILVA
Special Section:
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ART AND SCIENCE
MICHELE EMMER: Selected Papers from Participants of the International Workshop on Art and Science
ELEANORA BARBIERI MASINI: Conference Overview: The Relationship Between Art and
Science
PAUL FEYERABEND: Theoreticians, Artists and Artisans
ABSTRACT
The author discusses artists and scientists, comparing the similarities and differences of their activities and views. Providing examples of the ideas of philosophers through the ages, he uses various historical documents to support his analysis.
IRVING LAVIN: The Art of History: A Professional Allegory
ABSTRACT
Art is a form of communication linking experience and expression in visual terms. What the artist says and the way it is said are one and the same thing. The art historian seeks not only describe the form, meaning and development of material culture, but also to relate human artifacts to the thoughts, feelings and conditions that produce them. The author compares art history to the disciplines of art and science, offering five principles that define the discipline as a "natural science of the spirit."
MARILYN ARONBERG LAVIN: Researching Visual Images with Computer Graphics
ABSTRACT
Research in art history is largely dependent on photographic reproductions of original works. While it revolutionized art history, the use of photography tended to lift large works out of context, aggrandize details through cropping and sacrifice a sense of scale by showing works in isolation. The author explains that new uses of computer technology are moving beyond these limitations. Along with a team of specialists, she is creating software for constructing three-dimensional, digital representations of works of art that provide continuous, mobile views, as though the spectator were walking through the work's environment or floating through its space at a natural speed. The author discusses her initial projects with the software and its potential uses in art-historical research and education.
ILYA PRIGOGINE: Science, Reason and Passion
ABSTRACT
The cultural atmosphere that presided at the origin of classical Western science is briefly discussed. One of the most characteristic features of Western science is the formulation of laws of nature, which lead to a deterministic description in which future and past play the same role. However, these characteristics, especially time reversibility, contradict everything we see around us. Everywhere we see the arrow of time. The recent developments in non-equilibrium physics and in the dynamics of unstable systems lead to a new concept of laws of nature no more associated as much with "certitudes" as with "probabilities." This formulation includes the arrow of time and describes an open, evolutionary universe, overcoming the Cartesian duality that puts Humans outside Nature.
Artist's Article
LILLIAN F. SCHWARTZ: Computers and Appropriation Art: The Transformation of a Work or Idea for a New Creation
ABSTRACT
From ancient times, through the Middle Ages, to the
Renaissance and into the modern world, artists have learned from each other, from books and from exhibitions, appropriating and building on other artists' works. Today, each new advance in computer technology has facilitated the appropriation and transformation of a work or idea into new creations. The author discusses different ways to appropriate ideas, compositions and palettes as sources for new imagery. She provides background relating to her computer-generated works based on well-known artworks, along with examples of some Masters' use of appropriation in their own art.
Artist's Article
KAREN O'ROURKE: Paris Réseau: Paris Network
ABSTRACT
The author describes the construction of Paris Réseau, a
telecommunications "(net)work in progress" set in several time-frames. Texts, images and
sounds collected in various ways before, during and after a performance event by
members of the group Art-Réseaux at the Vidéothèque de Paris form
different
layers in the Paris Réseau guide, the hypermedia database
resulting from the project.
Theoretical Perspective on the Arts, Sciences and Technology
ZOË SOFIA: Contested Zones: Futurity and Technological
Art
ABSTRACT
With reference to the video documentary Artists in Cyberculture and other interviews
with Australian women electronic artists, the author argues that a high-tech future in
which the body is obsolete and evolutionary powers are ceded to machines is not a
universally shared vision, but a projection from a particular gendered and cultural
standpoint. It calls attention to the diversity of views technological artists may hold about
futurity, newness and bodies, and suggests that popular fascination with the "newest and
latest" need not divert artists from investigating alternatives to dominant Western
techno-logics.
SolArt Global Network
JÜRGEN CLAUS: The Solar Crystal: An Energy Autarchic Sun Sculpture
THEODOSIA H. FERGUSON: Celebrate Gaia: Aspects of Solar Art
OTTO PIENE: The Sun---The Sun---The Sun
Artists' Statements
ADAM BERG: Perseus' Hysteria
STEVE MILLER: Portrait of Isabel Goldsmith
ROBERT EMMETT MUELLER: An Experiment in Art
Extended Abstract
S. ESKINAZI: Numerical Modeling of Color
Reviews
RUDOLF ARNHEIM, ROGER F. MALINA, YURY NAZAROV
Commentaries
TOMÁS GARCÍA SALGADO, JAMES ELKINS, SONYA RAPOPORT
About the Cover
Hans Reiser and Beverly Reiser, still from Voice Garden: Labyrinth of Love,
Labyrinth of Desire, interactive CD-ROM by with music by Bill Fleming, 1995.
Labyrinths murmur and archaic spirits beckon in this tale of love and desire told in the
style of magical realism. Viewers uncover the echoes of almost forgotten goddesses in the
Labyrinth of Love and journey with a minotaur past hungering walls, through the Eye of
Desire and into the caverns of the heart. In the scene shown on the cover of this issue of
Leonardo, the viewer has been lured by a banshee into the minotaur's
labyrinth,
which is evolving through time by absorbing its visitors into its walls. Voice
Garden
is the first of a series of interactive works portraying the various evolutional possibilities
of mankind. For more information, contact beverly@idiom.com.
