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Leonardo
Vol. 40, Issue 2 (2007)

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.

ONLINE ACCESS: Subscriptions to Leonardo include access to electronic versions of journal issues available on The MIT Press website.

ORDER: Subscriptions, individual issues and articles can also be ordered from The MIT Press.

PAST ISSUES: Browse tables of contents and abstracts of past issues of Leonardo and LMJ

LEONARDO 40:2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

After Midnight

Overdetermination and Its Discontents

by Marcia Tanner

Artist Statements

Folding Circles Is Wholemovement

by Bradford Hansen-Smith

In Memoriam: Kirill Sokolov (1930-2004)

by John Milner

New Biological Habitats in the Biosphere and in Space

by Zbigniew Oksiuta

Artist's Article

Generative Systems and the Cinematic Spaces of Film and Installation Art

by Mike Leggett

ABSTRACT: The author's informal research in the 1970s explored iterative and generative systems using motion-picture film. His approach was practice-based and occurred in the context of artists studying the structure and materiality of the film experience. Based on historical and contemporary notes he accumulated about his film Red+Green+Blue, the author evaluates the generative art that emerged using this analogue-based medium in the light of recent discussion of digital and binary-based interactive installations.

General Articles

The Generative Process, Music Composition and Games

by Nyssim Lefford

ABSTRACT: The generative process through which artistic creators render artworks calls upon many perceptual and cognitive abilities. Because perceptions are knowledge and context dependent, creators and non-creators perceive structure in artworks differently. Analyses of artworks decoupled from the creating artists' perceptions offer an incomplete understanding of the generative process. The author's music composition games offer insight into the perceptions and styles of creators and provide a basis for empirical studies by enabling creators and non-creators to share a context and knowledge of constraints. Game results point toward more informed models of the generative process and new opportunities for the generative arts.

Electronic Music for Bio-Molecules Using Short Music Phrases

by X.J. Shi, Y.Y. Cai and C.W. Chan

ABSTRACT: The authors explore protein sonification issues using Morse code theory. Short musical phrases based on protein amino acids are used to compose protein music. Rhythms and tunes familiar to teenagers are also investigated, with the aim of producing different genres of protein music. A special musical instrument, the Chinese guzheng, can be employed to play the protein music. Experiment is carried out with different proteins, including the HIV main protease. It is hoped that this study can help unveil the mysteries of nature and motivate students to learn biology.

Historical Perspective

From the Avant-Garde: Re-Conceptualizing Cultural Origins in the Digital Media Art of Japan

by Jean M. Ippolito

ABSTRACT: Misconceptions concerning digital artists in Japan make them out to be mere followers, savvy with technology but not necessarily the conceptual originators of their work. Examining the aesthetic and philosophical content of their work, however, reveals that their attitudes toward the exploration of process, performance and the inherent nature of materials come from innovative and daring avant-garde groups of the 1960s and 1970s in Japan, including the Gutai and Mono-ha groups, whose ideas predate those of the New York avant-garde schools, even outside of the technological milieu.

Theoretical Perspective

Crossing Conventions in Web-Based Art: Deconstruction as a Narrative Device

by Christopher Robbins

ABSTRACT: The author explores the thesis that crossing the boundaries of genre within a medium requires the reassignment of defining constructs and can be used as a tool for deconstructing the medium. In this process, elements considered impartial or invisible become consciously manipulated tools, deconstructed and reassigned as narrative devices. The author posits that this reassessment is essential for the continued development of any medium or genre and discusses reasons for its recent renewed prominence. The author traces convention-crossing in several media, revealing attributes that are redefined by subversions, and explores subversions of digital media constructs, before discussing his own forays into web-based works that hinge on the artifice of convention.

Special Section: ArtScience: The Essential Connection

Emerging Congruence between Animation and Anatomy

by Rob O'Neill

ABSTRACT: The worlds of animation and anatomy have a long-standing connection based on both direct and indirect collaboration. The author surveys a number of projects in which anatomists have consulted on animation projects or animation techniques have been used for data gathering and analysis. The author describes his own work in light of this connection.

A Reclusive Artist Meets Minds with a World-Famous Geometer: George Odom and H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter

by Siobhan Roberts

ABSTRACT: The author discusses the wide-ranging correspondence of renowned geometer H.S.M. (Donald) Coxeter with George Odom, an artist who has made several geometric discoveries while living in seclusion. Coxeter was responsible for bringing these insights to wider attention.

Special Section: Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts

Introduction: Documentation and Conservation of the Media-Arts Heritage (DOCAM)

by Jean Gagnon and Alain Depocas

The Media Art Notation System: Documenting and Preserving Digital/Media Art

by Richard Rinehart

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes a new approach to conceptualizing digital and media art forms. This theoretical approach will be explored through issues raised in the process of creating a formal declarative model (alternately known as a meta-data framework, notation system or ontology) for digital and media art. The approach presented and explored here is intended to inform a better understanding of media art forms and to provide a practical descriptive framework that supports their creation, re-creation, documentation and preservation.

Special Section: From the Leonardo Archive

The Cybernetic Stance: My Process and Purpose

by Roy Ascott

ABSTRACT: There is apparently a paradox in that, as artists, some of us become progressively process-oriented, but continue to produce art objects. For me this is necessary since I work on two levels from a common set of attitudes: on the social level, elaborating plans for a Cybernetic Art Matrix; on the intimate level making individual art works. Both processes are concerned with creating triggers--initiating creative behaviour in the observer/participant. Modern art is characterized by a behaviourist tendency in which process and system are cardinal factors. As distinctions between music, painting, poetry, etc. become blurred and media art mixed, a behaviourist synthesis is seen to evolve, in which dialogue and feedback within a social culture indicate the emergence of a Cybernetic vision in art as in science. My artifacts come out of a process of random behaviour interacting with pre-established conditions. The Cybernetic Art Matrix is seen as a process in which anarchic group behaviour interacts with pre-established systems of communications, hardware and learning nets. In both cases the prcoesses are self-generating and self-critical. Basically they are initiated by creative behaviour, annd in turn give rise to its extension in other people.

Leonardo Reviews

Reviews by Jan Baetens, John F. Barber, Martha Blassnigg, Andrea Dahlberg, Rob Harle, Amy Ione, John Knight, Mike Leggett, Michael R. Mosher, Martha Patricia Niño M., Robert Pepperell, Alise Piebalga, Eugene Thacker and Stefaan Van Ryssen.

LeonardoVol. 40, Issue 2 (2007)