TABLE OF CONTENTS

Guest Editorial

A 21st-Century Pedagogical Plan for Artists: How Should We Be Training Artists for Today?

by Jack Ox

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After Midnight

Space-Run Artists: Cultural Activism in Contemporary Barcelona

by Jeffrey Swartz

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Gallery

The Leonardo/ISAST Student Art Contest

Organized by Piero Scarufi and Tami Spector

ABSTRACT: Winning entries from the first Leonardo Student Art/Science Contest are presented. Entrants had to be current students who blend the arts and sciences in their work, whether the medium be video, computer or music; this yielded an eclectic mix of submissions that were, on the whole, conceptually sophisticated and physically well executed.

Tami Spector: Introduction

Gallery Artists: Margarita Benitez and Markus Vogl, Byeong Sam Jeon, Hung-Lin Hsu and Cheng-I Tsai, Hiroki Nishino, Jaewook Shin, Cheth Rowe, Michiko Tsuda

The Leonardo/ISAST Art/Science Student Contest Gallery is also published on-line in the Leonardo Gallery section of the web site.

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Artists' Article

From Router to Front Row: Lubricious Transfer and the Aesthetics of Telematic Performance

by Bob Giges and Edward C. Warburton

ABSTRACT: This article describes experiments in live telematic performance linking U.S. East and West Coast dancers via Internet2. Alternating between a first-person account of one particular stage performance and a theoretical exploration of the same, the authors come to terms with the audiences' newly constituted relationship as technological ruptures alter the immersive pull of live performance.

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General Article

A Novel Use of 3D Motion Capture: Creating Conceptual Links between Technology and Representation of Human Gesture in the Visual Arts

by Gongbing Shan, Peter Visentin and Tanya Harnett

ABSTRACT: As an unfolding of time-based events, gesture is intrinsically integrated with the aesthetic experience and function of the human form. In historical and contemporary visual culture, various approaches have been used to communicate the substance of human movement, including use of science and technology. This paper links the understanding of human gesture with technologies influencing its representation. Three-dimensional motion capture permits the accurate recording of movement in 3D computer space and provides a new means of analyzing movement qualities and characteristics. Movement signatures can be related to the human form by virtue of trajectory qualities and experientially and/or culturally dependent interactions.

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Technical Article

Image Contour Fidelity Analysis of Mechanically Aided Enlargements of Jan Van Eyck's Albergati Portrait

by Marco F. Duarte and David G. Stork

ABSTRACT: A recent revisionist theory claims that as early as 1430 European artists secretly invented optical projectors and used them as aids during the execution of their paintings. Key artworks adduced in support of this theory are a pair of portraits of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati by Jan van Eyck: a silverpoint study (1431) and a formal oil work (1432). We tested whether the use of known contemporaneous mechanical methods might explain this image evidence as well as the use of optical methods, also explaining additional physical evidence. We used traditional image processing techniques, as well as "re-enacted copies" by professional artists using mechanical methods. We found that the fidelities of these modern "re-enactments" were equal or superior to those of the van Eyck works.

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Historical Perspective

Digital Art and Experimental Color Systems at Bell Laboratories, 1965--1984: Restoring Interdisciplinary Innovations to Media History

by Carolyn L. Kane

ABSTRACT: AT&T's Bell Laboratories produced a prolific number of innovative digital art and experimental color systems between 1965 and 1984. However, due to repressive regulation, this work was hidden from the public. Almost two decades later, when Bell lifted its restrictions on creative work not related to telephone technologies, the atmosphere had changed so dramatically that despite a relaxation of regulation, cutting-edge projects were abandoned. This paper discusses the struggles encountered in interdisciplinary collaborations and the challenge to use new media computing technology to make experimental art at Bell Labs during this unique time period, now largely lost to the history of the media arts.

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Special Section: ArtScience: The Essential Connection

Similarities and Contrasts in the Creative Processes of the Sciences and the Arts

by Roger Guillemin

ABSTRACT: The author describes his experiences as first a scientist and later an early digital artist, which led him to recognize both similarities and contrasts in the thinking and practice of art and science.

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Special Section: Leonardo Celebrates Leonardo da Vinci

"On the Hand from Within": Palms, Selfhood and Generation in Leonardo's Anatomical Project

Lea Dovev

ABSTRACT: This study focuses on a hand-dissection report in Leonardo's anatomical investigations, a page whose reception-history is rich with approbation and lacunae. The hermeneutic of suspicion that the author proposes explores this folio as a case for the claim that Leonardo's meandering page-configurations relay more than is revealed in his overt arguments. At issue is a tacit discourse of the palm as the epitome of selfhood, a site of intimacy that undermines the primacy of sight in Leonardo's manifest texts. The palm, a matrixial organ, is thus linked to the economy of lacks, desires and transferences that underlies Vincian art theory.

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Leonardo Reviews

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Transactions

Computational Aesthetics as a Negotiated Boundary

by Alan F. Blackwell and Neil A. Dodgson

ABSTRACT: Artists use computers in many ways; technologists produce computerised tools of various kinds. The boundary where art meets technology is in creative tension between the needs and the understanding of the two camps. The authors report on the key questions raised at a meeting between philosophers, psychologists, artists, and technologists to negotiate this boundary.

Riders Have Spoken: Replaying and Archiving Pervasive Performances>

by Alan Chamberlain, Duncan Rowland, Jonathan Foster and Gabriella Giannachi

ABSTRACT: A practical study that formed part of the larger Creator project is presented. Data, such as GPS trails, video and audio files from a pervasive-performance were used to explore multi-disciplinary understandings of such 'ephemeral' pieces. Video and audio content tagging was also explored as a device to aid in developing the archive for replay. It is recommended that projects involving artistic practice should make documentation and subsequent archiving part of their overall research strategy.

What's Up Prof? Current Issues in the Visual Effects & Post-Production Industry

by Neil Dodgson, John Patterson and Phil Willis

ABSTRACT: The authors interviewed creative professionals at a number of London visual effects and post-production houses. They report on the key issues raised in those interviews: desirable new technologies, infrastructure challenges, personnel and process management.

We Don't Do Google, We Do Massive Attacks: Notes on Creative R&D Collaborations

by Jonathan Foster, Angela Lin and Ernest Edmonds

ABSTRACT: The article presents findings from an exploratory study investigating the nature of collaborative research and development in creative industries. Participants in the study are two creative SMEs with extensive experience of participating in collaborative projects. A collective case study approach is adopted with data collected on the factors impinging on the effectiveness of such collaborations. Findings are presented at the macro and micro levels of such collaborations. The paper concludes with a summary of some of the challenges faced by small creative SMEs when collaborating with other organizations during the research and development process. Keywords: Creative industries, collaborative processes, macro context, micro context, challenges.

Rethinking Business Models as Value Creating Systems

by Ted Fuller, Lorraine Warren, Sarah Thelwall, Fizza Alamdar and David Rae

ABSTRACT: The generic notion of a business model is well understood by investors and business managers and implies a number of anticipations; chiefly that it is a replicable process that produces revenues and profits. At its heart is some replicable process, artefact or proposition around which the everyday practices are formed. There are a number of reasons why this conception is weak in the Creative Industries. The authors have identified that the rationale for 'business models' in the Creative Industries includes providing an attractor for non goal oriented creative activity, for stabilising emergent properties from creative activities and for maintaining the stability of these by anticipating revenues.

Creative Assemblages: Organisation and Outputs of Practice-Led Research

by Alex Wilkie, William Gaver, Drew Hemment and Gabriella Giannachi

ABSTRACT: In this note the authors explore the organisation of creative, practice-led projects and the variety of research outcomes they produce, in order to question assumptions about their potential benefits.

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