Leonardo, Volume 37, Issue 4 | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University
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Contents

Editorial

After Midnight

Artist's Note

  • Art in the Space Age: Exploring the Relationship between Outer Space and Earth Space
    Takuro Osaka
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    The author's interest in Space Art has taken several forms, including project proposals for the effective use of the International Space Station, research on the theme of the possibility of art in outer space, and conducting interviews with astronauts. He has also performed experiments in a micro-gravity environment generated by parabolic flight. This article provides an account of his plans and the results of these experiments.

Artists' Statements

Special Section: Artmedia VIII Selected Symposium Papers

  • Reseau/Resonance: Connective Processes and Artistic Practice
    Andreas Broeckmann
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    Most Internet art projects use the Net solely as a telematic and telecommunicative transmission medium that connects computers and servers and through which artists, performers and users exchange data, communicate and collaboratively create files and events. At the same time, however, some artists are exploring the electronic networks as specific socio-technical structures with their respective forms of social and machinic agency, in which people and machines interact in ways unique to this environment. The author discusses recent projects that use the Net as a performative space of social and aesthetic resonance in which notions of subjectivity, action and production are being articulated and reassessed. This text discusses the notion of “resonance” in order to think through these approaches to network-based art practices.

  • Mapping the Database: Trajectories and Perspectives
    Sharon Daniel, Karen O'Rourke
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    The authors attempt to re-imagine classification systems as emergent systems—where names, categories and associated data structures arise from the bottom up through collective usage. Each has employed cartographic methodology as an interaction metaphor in the design of dynamic, evolving systems that allow participants to create and archive their own itineraries and maps on-line. These systems explore the aesthetic dimensions of the database. The authors have presented and tested prototypes of two developing systems, Subtract the Sky and A Map Larger Than the Territory, in a workshop/exhibition. This article provides a brief description of the premise and implementation of both projects. It concludes with some preliminary findings from the workshop/exhibition and the authors' shared research.

  • Artistic Experiments on Telematic Nets: Recent Experiments in Multi-User Virtual Environments in Brazil
    Gilbertto Prado
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    The author explores the transformation and derivations in the field of artistic experimentation on the Net. The article examines the accomplishments artists have made with the “new poetics” of the dynamic universe of telematic art, expressed in contemporary artistic production. The text introduces five distinctive projects in multi-user virtual environments that were recently produced in Brazil and then places the projects within the more general context of art on the Net.

Special Section: ISEA 2002 Selected Papers

  • ISEA 2002: Orai: Routes to and from
  • Day-Dreaming States in Interfaced Environments: Telematic Rituals in Ouroboros
    Diana Domingues
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    The anthropological effects of cyberspace grant to the interfaced body a new capacity for attempting higher and more complex levels of interaction. The author's on-line project Ouroboros provides first and second interactivity. The web site explores the seamless condition of being a reptile in interaction with various environments as it evokes the symbolism of the great world serpent Ouroboros. The author proposes that interactive technologies return us to forms of communication similar to the rituals of primitive societies. Feedback and emergent behaviors effected through tele-immersion, remote action and self-organizations related to the lives of snakes are intended to provide the sensation of being in a day-dreaming state.

  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Digital Media Arts: A Psychological Perspective on the Production Process
    Brigitte Steinheider, George Legrady, Marcelo Mortensen Wanderley
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    The complexity of digital media technologies requires artists to form teams of specialized experts integrating their contributions. Studies on interdisciplinary collaborations in organizational and scientific research-and-development teams have revealed that three processes—communication, coordination and knowledge-sharing—significantly influence their efficiency and effectiveness. This model was applied to an international and interdisciplinary digital media art production team to analyze the effects of team members' geographical dispersion, differing nationalities and heterogeneity of disciplines. The results are in accordance with previous studies of teams in corporate and scientific settings but also reveal differences between artistic and industrial product development processes.

  • Synthetic Senses
    Ted Krueger, G. C. Cupchik
  • Arte Y Electricidad
    Fito Rodríguez, Fundación Rodríguez, Natxo Rodríguez, Fundación Rodríguez

General Articles

  • Feel-in-Touch!: Imagination through Vibration: A Utopia of Vibro-Acoustic Technology, Puppetry and Multimedia Art
    Oguzhan Özcan
    Get at MIT Press

    This article introduces a conceptual design for an interactive artwork called Feel-in-Touch! Its aim is to improve the use of imagination in artworks using abstract images in the formats of interactive media and vibro-tactile aids. New technologies can visually realize every surrealistic narration we can imagine, but these technologies limit our perceptions by presenting only one way of imagining, instead of multiple alternatives. This restricts creative thinking. Working from the above assumption, this article explores how to increase the degree of imagination in an interactive artwork. The author discusses problems of the imagination in art and interactive media and summarizes current research on vibro-tactile and vibroacoustic applications. He then outlines Feel-in-Touch! and discusses the outputs of this conceptual design.

  • Chimera Contemporary: The Enduring Art of the Composite Beast
    Dave Powell
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    The author examines the history of artists' depictions of fanciful organisms that are formed by combining parts of various species. Broadly tracing the progression of this pursuit from prehistory through the Ancient, Renaissance and Romantic Periods and up to the 20th century and contemporary genetic art, the article analyzes the seemingly consistent effort to render these forms simultaneously nonthreatening or vulnerable in attitude and visually realistic. The author asks whether this practice, which seems to stem from aesthetic concerns, is sufficiently critical in regards to current trends in genetic engineering.

Leonardo Reviews

Title: 

Leonardo, Volume 37, Issue 4

August 2004