Leonardo | Page 361 | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Leonardo

LEON 38.2 - 37°C: From the Inside of a Being to the Thin Line of Life

An observer entering the installation 37°C becomes a part of the inside of an organism. This is a warm and dark environment in which living human skin cells are displayed. The aim of the project is to confront observers with a fragile boundary between life and death, to envelop them within the presence of life. Life does not have clear demarcations. On the precarious edge, it can either slip into death or come back to life. The author's work seeks to present the experience of such intermediary states of existence.

LEON 38.2 - Stereoscopic Synergy: Twin-Relief Sculpture and Painting

Two accelerated-relief sculp-tures depicting the same scene from slightly different viewpoints can serve as sculpted stereo-scopic half-images—or “twin-reliefs.” Unlike traditional relief sculpture, which compresses sculptural space, twin-reliefs expand it, creating lifelike illusionistic depths. Viewed binocularly in a large Wheat-stone stereoscope, the twin-relief's virtual world appears colorful, atmospheric and life-size— even infinitely deep.

LEON 37.1 - A Universal Grammar for Visual Composition?

The author has identified four fundamental organizational principles common to both organic form and the creation of visual composition. The author proposes that our perceptual system has evolved to respond to these principles (perceptual primitives) due to the necessity of recognizing the diversity of organic forms on which our survival depended during our earlier evolution. The evidence shows that these four principles occur widely throughout humankind's aesthetic expression in different cultures, epochs, art forms and media.

LEON 37.1 - A Symphony of Sensations in the Spectator: Le Corbusier's Poème électronique and the Historicization of New Media Arts

This essay seeks to historicize the technological production of artistic virtual space, which is often misconstrued as having originated with contemporary new media art production. The author critically investigates Le Corbusier's Poème électronique, a 1958 automated multimedia performance commissioned by the Philips Corporation for its pavilion at the World's Fair in Belgium, as a paradigmatic example of much earlier attempts to create a spatialized, virtual experience in the spectator.

LEON 37.1 - Multifractal Fingerprints in the Visual Arts

The similarity in fractal dimensions of paint “blobs” in samples of gestural expressionist art implies that these pigment structures are statistically indistinguishable from one another. This conclusion suggests that such dimensions cannot be used as a “finger-print” for identifying the work of a single artist. To overcome this limitation, the authors have adopted the multifractal spectrum as an alternative tool for artwork analysis. For the pigment blobs, it is demonstrated that this spectrum can be used to isolate a construction paradigm or art style.

LEON 37.1 - The Digital Art of Marbled Paper

The author describes his development of a computer-based paper-marbling tool, based on a traditional Turkish art form in which marbled-paper figures and patterns are created on the surface of a liquid bath. Similar works can be obtained by simulating fluid flows on a computer, using the Navier-Stokes equations as the physical model of the fluid flows. The author has created an application program that includes marbling tools. Such a program must run in real time, so that hand-eye coordination is required of the user. Real-time simulation of fluid flows requires much processor power.