Editorial

Ubiquitous Computing, and Time

by Curtis E.A. Karnow

The Leonardo Gallery

Curated by Michele Emmer

Includes work by Victor Acevedo, Valentina Barucci, Jos de Mey, Sandro Del-Prete, Robert Fathauer, Helaman Ferguson, Kelly M. Houle, Matjuska Teja Krasek, Makoto Nakamura, Istvan Orosz, Peter Raedschelders, Dick A. Termes

Artists' Statements

They said that when I was born I looked just like my mother

by Mike McMillin

Story Telling in Virtual Reality

by Hisham Bizri

Synesthésies

by Dora Feïlane

Artists' Article

Virtual Unreality and Dynamic Form: An Exploration of Space, Time and Energy

by Richard D. Brown

ABSTRACT: Early twentieth-century art, including the works of Duchamp and the Cubists, attempted to portray aspects of a reality that were beyond sensory perception, such as multiple perspectives, the fourth dimension and curved space. Virtual reality (VR) now offers artists a soft medium for creating artificial experiences of space, time and energy through mathematical models. In this article the author outlines his artistic explorations leading to the creation of Alembic, an alchemical VR installation that challenges the representational simulation of reality often associated with the medium of VR.

Experimental Visual Experience Devices

by Joshua Levine

ABSTRACT: This article introduces the concept of Experimental Visual Experience Devices (EVEDs), which the author defines as artistic inventions that alter the participant's visual perceptions of the external real world. The aim of EVEDs is to place the participant in a slightly altered visual reality in order to cause him or her to see real things anew. The article describes several works of participation art that can be seen as historical precedents to EVEDs. The author discusses two EVEDs that he invented: Whirld is a cylindrical room mounted on an axle that functions as a spinning camera obscura; Portable Whirld is a hood that functions as a portable camera obscura. The author describes how the two sculptures reshape the spectator's visual perceptions, and suggests some forms that future EVEDs might take.

General Article

Nature, Technology and Art: The Emergence of a New Relationship?

by Ursula Huws

ABSTRACT: The three-way relationship between nature, technology and the human subject has been a problematic and shifting one in the history of Western art and thought. In this article, the author begins by summarizing this history, pointing to the inadequacy of most theoretical accounts in the face of the growing interpenetration of the <169>natural<170> by the <169>technological<170> resulting from such developments as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence. The author goes on to argue that the convergence between scientific developments in the field of artificial life and the emergent art movement points to the development of a new understanding of this relationship and a new role for the artist.

Design Languages

Growth, Structural Coupling and Competition in Kinetic Art

by Georg Nees

ABSTRACT: The author considers systems capable of growth within the framework of the aesthetics of kinetic art and George Rickey's morphology of movement. He explains fundamental growth types as the kinetic aspects of a class of structurally coupled autonomous systems. Two paradigms are treated with examples: the settling of clans competing for space and the concurrent sprouting of up to three plants. The author uses and explains his method of morphography, which generally requires of the artistically inclined scientist the design and usage of computer-generated figures called morphograms.

On the Cognitive Functioning of Aesthetic Emotions

Roger Pouivet

ABSTRACT: This article seeks to show that we cannot accept an opposition between aesthetics and logic on the basis of the distinction between aesthetic emotion and cognition. This false distinction is founded on another ill-founded one between private states of mind and public languages. Echoing works by R. de Sousa, we can talk about the rationality of emotions. Following N. Goodman and I. Scheffler, we are conducted to the notion of cognitive emotions. If there are aesthetic emotions, they are likely cognitive. The notion of supervenience seems very adequate to show how aesthetic emotion, even aesthetic pleasure, can be related to cognitive experience.

General Note

Raisonné: of Nicolas De Staël

by Harry Rand

Extended Abstract

A 3D Flight over Vermeer's Delft in 1660

by Kees Kaldenbach

Leonardo Electronic Monographs

Pour une typologie de la création sur Internet

by Annick Bureaud

Art et technologie: La Monstration

Annick Bureaud, Nathalie Lafforgue and Joel Boutteville

LEA Abstracts

by Peter Manning, David Ryan, Bulat M. Galeyev, Patrick Lichty, Stephen Pevnick

Leonardo Reviews

Reviews by Wilfred Niels Arnold, Robert Pepperell, Yvonne Spielmann, Roy R. Behrens, David Topper, Fred Andersson, George K. Shortess, Steve Thompson, Molly Hankwitz, Kasey Rios Asberry and Roger Malina

Endnote

A Crisis in Contemporary Art?

by Hervé Fischer

Leonardo/ISAST News