Leonardo
Vol. 39, Issue 1 (2006)

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.

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LEONARDO 39:1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorial

The Leonardo Scientists' Working Group

After Midnight

Spicy Little Things from Budapest

Artists' Statements

The International Transentient Cartographicacy Project

A Walk on the Retinas of the Extreme Sciences: A Minimalist Concept for an Internet-Based Light Art Fa?ade in Munich

Generative Flowers as a Language of Forms for the Visualization of Binary Information

Space Art 2004: Science, Technology and the Arts Workshop

From Méliès to Galaxy Quest: The Dark Matter of the Popular Imagination

ABSTRACT: This paper was stimulated by the film Galaxy Quest (Parisot, 1999), which collapses the fictitious dimensions of space travel into the scientific perception of real space travel in order to reveal some insights into the cultural construction of space. The paper argues that an interrogation of cinema can reveal the fragility of our knowledge and the underlying imperatives that the social construction of space responds to. A revisionist overview of the issue of professional interfaces in the popular arts is followed by a discussion of the influence of space technology and natural space phenomena on human personal and collective belief systems in order to open the way for an outline of the concept of participatory cultures and the relationship between fiction and science.

What Is the MARS PATENT and What Does It Do?

ABSTRACT:The authors invite readers and others, including aliens (provided they claim to have female first names), to submit "things" to the MARS PATENT project for interplanetary exhibition on Mars and on the Internet. The MARS PATENT High Reality Machine will teleport sculptures, theories, web art and other things, imaginable or not fully imaginable, to the exhibition site on the red planet. The authors have also established the Oldenburg-Reiche Prize, an open competition challenging artists, scientists and others to come up with a satisfying explanation for how the High Reality Machine works.

Astro Black Morphologies: Music and Science Lovers

ABSTRACT: A compressed series of possible histories of science in modern music, the text outlines the themes of poetic and historic correspondences between music, cosmology and the body that informed the making of Astro Black Morphologies/Astro Dub Morphologies, a multimedia installation and live sound-art performance by Flow Motion in which data from possible black hole Cygnus X1 is transformed into an immersive electronic sound-and-image environment.

General Articles

Internet Artworks, Artists and Computer Programmers: Sharing the Creative Process

ABSTRACT: Internet artwork no longer refers to the concept of a finalized object, but rather to a dynamic process, a collective, open and interactive device. Due to the increasing sophistication of tools, the design of an Internet artwork now requires hybrid skills. The necessary cooperation with computer specialists in order to create suitable programs thus changes the status of the artwork and its author. This paper presents an ethnographic case study of cooperation between a computer programmer and an artist. It examines the processes of shared design, negotiated authorship and artwork appropriation. From an analysis of the means of communication, various technical media and "intermediary tools," the author focuses on role allocation, task sharing and artwork appropriation as the artwork is modified throughout the creative process.

Infinity and Accident: Strategies of Enfoldment in Islamic Art and Computer Art

ABSTRACT: Computer art and Islamic art, the two largest bodies of aniconic art, share a surprising number of formal properties, two of which are explored here. The common properties of computer art and classical Islamic art can be understood in light of moments in the history of Islamic philosophy. In these two cases, Islamic Neoplatonism and Mu'tazili atomism are shown to parallel, respectively, the logic of relations between one and infinity, and the basic pixel structure, that inform some historical monuments of Islamic art as well as some contemporary works of computer art. It is suggested that these parallels are in part a result of Islamic influences on Western modernism and thus that the genealogy of computer art includes classical Islamic art and the philosophies that informed it.

An Artist's Works through the Eyes of a Physicist: Graphic Illustration of Particle Symmetries

ABSTRACT: The paper presents remarks by a physicist and a graphic artist on an artwork series produced by the artist. They associate the colors and twists represented in these graphics with the properties of subatomic particles--their structures and connections. The authors use graphical representation to visualize the inner structure of atoms, the classification of quarks and the metaphorical names of abstract physical properties. No textbooks that make visible these basic properties by means of art are currently available. Artistic visualization brings these "mysterious" physical objects closer to the understanding of students and the general public and leaves physicists better able to discover new secrets of the internal structure of quarks and their properties.

Special Section: Melilla Colloquium

The Philippine Triad and Western Dichotomous Philosophies: A Contest of Traditions in Three Audio-Performance Projects

ABSTRACT: The author's three projects draw upon her analysis of a triumvirate of social roles in ancient Philippine society, especially in connection with the maintenance of ritual in that society. Each project addresses the historical function of ritual as well as how it is carried over into art.

Technoetic Pathways toward the Spiritual in Art: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Connectedness, Coherence and Consciousness

ABSTRACT: The coherence of living systems may be due in part to an information network of biophotons emitted by DNA molecules. This network can be seen as parallel to the telematic networks that connect the planet. Nanotechnology can play a significant role in the emergence of a moistmedia substrate for technoetic art. Immaterial connectedness confers a spiritual dimension on both telematic art and quantum mechanics. Field theory supports the contention that the material body may be a consequence rather than a cause of consciousness. A technoetic art may locate its ground in the triangulation of connectivity, syncretism and field theory.

Contemplations on Our Physical Links to the Universe: Searching for and Finding the Hidden Harmony

ABSTRACT: The author discusses the evidence and consequences of our indissoluble physical links to the entire universe. He finds that the apparent conflicts in fundamental physical theories regarding issues of causality and locality are not real conflicts based in the physical world. He presents an emergent worldview interpreted in the context of a cultural, philosophical and linguistic background in which a strong tension between inseparability of the whole and the local causal flow of events seems not to exist. The existence of the whole can be felt in the parts, as something real, measurable and undeniable. Its simplicity and harmony are spiritually enriching and emotionally moving.

An Open Letter to the Melilla Conference Participants

Leonardo Reviews