Leonardo

Vol. 30, No. 5 (1997)

Fifth Annual New York Digital Salon Catalog

October/November 1997

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

Introduction

Articles

M.R. Petit: The Grimm Tale: The Evolution of a Multimedia Performance

Andrea Feeser and Margaret Crane: An Online General Hospital: Constructing an Experience and Representation of Mental Health

Linda Carroli: Virtual Encounters: Community or Collaboration on the Internet?

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve: Houdini's Premonition: Virtuality and Vaudeville on the Internet

Merel Mirage: Memories of a Virtual Butterfly: The World and the Screen

Robert Wechsler: O Body Swayed to Music (and Vice Versa): Roles for the Computer in Dance

Director's Statement

Artists' Statements

Animal With No Name: Sampling Space

Juliet Martin: Can You See Me Through the Computer?

Christl Berg: Rosa antipodea

Reet K. Das: Untitled

Dayoan Daumont: El Ultimo Cemi

James Duesing: Law of Averages

Madge Gleeson: Illuminated Manuscript

Jutta Kirchgeorg: The Information Age

Serena Lin: Visible Traces

Troy Ruffels: From the Leaf Series

Jacques Servin: Beast

Keren Tzur: Rachel

Andrea Zapp: Last Entry: Bombay, 1st of July<

Gallery Artworks: Introduction

Computer Animations: Introduction

Net-Works: Introduction

SAMPLE ABSTRACTS

"Worst Case Scenarios: The Fiction of the Internet"

The narrative art project "Worst Case Scenarios" revives the techno-thematics of displacement in a series of stories in three languages on the Post Modern Culture MOO and the Web. The fictional endeavor of imagining the worst, and always failing, is embedded in the overarching cultural fantasy life of the Cold War and shows us the Internet itself as conceptual art of the nuclear era.

"Memories of a Virtual Butterfly: The World and the Screen"

The author discusses her recent work _Subject: emotions encoded_, an installation that presents a model of communication between two strangers meeting online. In this "tele-romantic" dialogue, the emotional intensity of the exchange is accentuated by a computer- generated butterfly of the genus _Morphe_. A docudrama based on the author's own experiences in the Internet's text-based virtual worlds, _Subject: emotions encoded_ considers the complexity of human relationship through the wires, from the exciting initial encounters to the conflicts that inevitably arise between physical and virtual reality.

"O Body Swayed to Music (and Vice Versa): Roles for the Computer in Dance"

Dance may be the art form closest to the human organism. But does its primal nature make it inherently resistant to computerization? Many dancers feel apprehension, if not antipathy, towards the computer for encroaching into their world. From the author's perspective as a choreographer working with computers, this is not without some justification. Yet he can also see the computer as a champion to the cause, reintroducing elements of interactivity that, while common to its primitive forms, have largely disappeared from dance. He describes his work in the context of a field reticent to embrace evolving technologies.