The authors argue 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.

Ecce Homology, a physically interactive new-media work, visualizes genetic data as calligraphic forms. A novel computer-vision user interface allows multiple participants, through their movement in the installation space, to select genes from the human genome for visualizing the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), a primary algorithm in comparative genomics. Ecce Homology was successfully installed in the UCLA Fowler Museum, 6 November 2003–4 January 2004.

What is the value of artistic practices, techniques, inventions, aesthetics and knowledge for the working scientist? What is the value of scientific practices, techniques, inventions, aesthetics and knowledge for the artist? When does art become science and science, art? Can an individual excel at both science and art, or is even a passing familiarity with one sufficient to influence the other significantly? Guest editor Robert Root-Bernstein continues the exploration of such questions in the second installment of the Leonardo special project “ArtScience: The Essential Connection.”

The author introduces polynomiography, a bridge between the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra and art. Polynomiography provides a tool for artists to create a 2D image—a polynomiograph—based on the computer visualization of a polynomial equation. The image is dependent upon the solutions of a polynomial equation, various interactive coloring schemes driven by iteration functions and several other parameters under the control of the polynomiographer's choice and creativity.