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Leonardo Electronic Almanac volume
11, number 12, December 2003<br>
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ISSN #1071-4391<br>
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<br>
EDITORIAL<br>
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<br>
< Women, Art and Technology, by Judy Malloy ><br>
<br>
<br>
FEATURES<br>
---------<br>
<br>
< Stock Market Skirt and New Directions, by Nancy Paterson ><br>
<br>
< FleshMotor, by Dawn Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio ><br>
<br>
< Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication<br>
Project, by Kathy Rae Huffman ><br>
<br>
< Video Arte Povera: Lo-Fi Rules!, by Valerie Soe ><br>
<br>
< Laboratory for Ephemeral Investigations - Interactive Robotic<br>
Sculptures, by Jennifer Hall and Blyth Hazen ><br>
<br>
<br>
LEONARDO REVIEWS<br>
----------------<br>
<br>
< Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, reviewed by Cynthia
Ann<br>
Bickley-Green ><br>
<br>
< Degas Through His Own Eyes, reviewed by Amy Ione ><br>
<br>
<br>
ISAST NEWS<br>
----------<br>
<br>
< In Memoriam: Sandy Koffler ><br>
<br>
< In Memoriam: Stephen Benton ><br>
<br>
< New, simpler URLs for Leonardo websites ><br>
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< Leonardo Announces Spacearts: The Space and the Arts Database
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<br>
WOMEN, ART AND TECHNOLOGY<br>
<br>
Judy Malloy, jmalloy@mail.well.com<br>
<br>
This issue of *Leonardo Electronic Almanac* provides an introduction
to the<br>
newly released book, *Women, Art, and Technology* (MIT Press, 2003,
Leonardo<br>
Book Series). Originating over 10 years ago, when I pointed to the
need for<br>
more articles by women in *Leonardo*, the book is a comprehensive
compendium<br>
that documents the core role of women artists in pioneering and
continuing<br>
to shape new media practice. It not only situates computer-mediated
work as<br>
a central contemporary art medium, but also includes shapers of new
media in<br>
the fields of video, environmental art, information art and the
body.<br>
<br>
Body, body/mind separation, body/mind amalgamation, body as
interface,<br>
female body - the pervasive keyword "body" threads through
the narrative -<br>
from Lynn Hershman's article, which documents a progression from
her<br>
alternative identity Roberta Breitmore (created in 1971 for a series
of<br>
performances), to the body of the "guide" Marion, which
serves as in<br>
interface in Hershman's videodisc *Deep Contact*; to Dawn Stoppiello's
wired</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">body in
performances by her digital dance theater *Troika Ranch*; to Zoe<br>
Sophia's article, "Contested Futures," in which she writes,
"For many women<br>
artists working with digital media, the body's physicality is not<br>
transcended or obsolesced by technology; rather it is a source of
poetic<br>
efforts to at once use and counteract the machine's own anti-body
logics by<br>
using it as a medium to explore organic or visceral forms." Linda
Austin<br>
states that "For me as a choreographer, the fascination with
the<br>
'mechanical' is part of my insistence on the ineluctable materiality
of the<br>
body - our interface with the physical world it inhabits."<br>
<br>
Interactivity - an active relationship between the viewer and the work
- is<br>
also a compelling theme that informs much of the work, not only work
that is<br>
declaredly interactive, whether it is the user's relationship with
"Margo,"<br>
the oppressive mother whose dominating presence becomes unavoidable
when<br>
Sara Robert's 1989 interactive installation *Early Programming* is<br>
activated, or the community relationship with Nina Sobell and
Emily<br>
Hartzell's *ParkBench* (1993), a network of interactive kiosks that
enabled<br>
people in diverse New York City neighborhoods to communicate
collaboratively<br>
via the Internet.<br>
<br>
Computer graphics artist Diane Fenster, in her chapter "Diane
Fenster: The<br>
Alchemy of Vision" (written with Celia Rabinovitch), writes
"...I am also a<br>
'window maker' in that my art creates windows through which others
look to<br>
see an inner world, and to recognize themselves in that invented
space."<br>
Video/performance/installation artist Joan Jonas, speaking of the
mirror<br>
imagery in her work, writes "...I could mix the reflections of
performers<br>
and audience, thereby bringing all of them into the same time and
space of<br>
the performance."<br>
<br>
OVERVIEWS<br>
<br>
*Women, Art, and Technology*, edited by and with a preface and
introduction<br>
by myself, features overviews of the history and foundations of the
field by<br>
critic/curator Patric Prince, critic Margaret Morse, artist/educator
Sheila<br>
Pinkel, artist/networker Anna Couey and Kathy Brew, artist and
former<br>
director of the new media initiative, ThunderGulch. The foreword is
written<br>
by Patricia Bentson, managing editor of the *Leonardo Music
Journal*.<br>
<br>
In her chapter "Women and the Search for Visual Intelligence,"
Patric Prince<br>
observes that "[w]omen have participated in the computer art and
technology<br>
movement from the first decade, learning to speak the language of
the<br>
machine as well as enjoying the implementation of ideas, techniques
and<br>
experiences derived from its inherent logical involvement."
Prince points to<br>
work, beginning in the 1960s, of Collete Bangert, Lillian Schwartz,
Vera<br>
Molnar and, in the ensuing decades, Eudice Feder, Copper Giloth,
Ruth<br>
Leavitt, Nadia Magnernet-Thalmann, Barbara Nessim, Sonia Landy
Sheridan and<br>
many others.<br>
<br>
Margaret Morse, beginning with a discussion of pervasive, daily
encounters<br>
with interactivity and its relationship to the ways in which artists
utilize<br>
interactivity, looks at works such as the CD-ROM, *She Loves It, She
Loves<br>
It Not: Women and Technology* (1993), by Christine Tamblyn (with
Marjorie<br>
Franklin and Paul Tompkins) and Lynn Hershman's *Lorna* (1980-1984),
the<br>
first interactive laser artdisk. Speaking of Agnes Hegedus'
*Handsight*,<br>
Morse observes that "Handsight offers a metaphor for perception
of a virtual<br>
realm that is not matched to the physical world but rather is a view
of the<br>
'mind's eye' or of externalized imagination. At the same time, it
exposes<br>
the logic of this construction and does not participate in the
illusion. In<br>
this way, the piece both offers and deconstructs
interactivity."<br>
<br>
Sheila Pinkel documents artists who have focused on some aspect of the
body<br>
or environment in their work, including Lynda Benglis, Coco Fusco,
Suzanne<br>
Lacy, Robin Lasser, Christina Fernandez, Esther Parada and Barbara T.
Smith.<br>
"For over 500 years, women have actively participated in the
art-making<br>
practices of their time but have been excluded from history and the
system<br>
that acknowledges or communicates their ideas," she concludes.
"In the last</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">30 years, however,
women artists have managed to find opportunities to work<br>
together to expand the possibilities of content and for exhibition.
They<br>
have seen their works enter the dialogue of their time. The challenge
for<br>
women is to continue this intensity of activity, to remain true to
the<br>
interior voice that gives veracity and energy to art making, to
continue to<br>
lobby for parity and to generate innovative solutions for exhibition
and<br>
change."<br>
<br>
In "Restructuring Power: Telecommunications Works Produced by
Women," Anna<br>
Couey emphasizes the major influence network communications
technologies<br>
have had "in shaping individual and cultural perceptions across
the planet."<br>
Through interviews with early women network artists including
Sherrie<br>
Rabinowitz, Lorri Ann Two Bulls, myself, Karen O'Rourke and Lucia<br>
Grossberger Morales, Couey highlights and preserves an important
and<br>
evolving history.<br>
<br>
In "Through the Looking Glass," Kathy Brew, who for over 20
years has<br>
followed the intersection of multimedia and contemporary art, reviews
the<br>
work of artists working in multimedia, including Laurie Anderson,
Mary<br>
Lucier, Maryanne Amacher, Beryl Korot and Toni Dove.<br>
<br>
<br>
ARTISTS' ARTICLES<br>
<br>
*Women, Art and Technology* includes classic *Leonardo* articles by
Lynn<br>
Hershman, Pauline Oliveros, Helen and Newton Harrison, Nancy Paterson,
Sonya<br>
Rapoport and Steina. These articles ground the development of the
medium in<br>
such works as Sonya Rapoport's *Biorhythm* (1981-1983), which
incorporated<br>
participants' assessments of their emotional conditions; Lynn
Hershman's<br>
*Deep Contact* (1985-1990, programmed by Sara Roberts), which
situates<br>
interactivity in the realm of intimacy; and Pauline Oliveros' use
of<br>
technology in live performance, which began in the late 1950s.<br>
<br>
Interspersed with these *Leonardo* articles are artists' articles
that<br>
document the role of female creators in shaping new media art and that
were<br>
written expressly for this book. Cecile Le Prado's sound installation,
*The<br>
Triangle of Uncertainty* - documented in the article "Sound
Installations<br>
and Spatialization" - creates, in her words, a "fictive
virtual space" on<br>
the basis of sound recordings made at the southern tip of Ireland,
the<br>
western edge of France and the westernmost point of Spain. In essence,
the<br>
installation refers to the position of sound in space, constantly
chopping<br>
and changing between orientation and uncertainty.<br>
<br>
Canadian artist Char Davies discloses the ideas and implementation of
her<br>
immersive virtual-reality environments, which, as has been all of her
work<br>
of the past 20 years, are grounded in "Nature" as metaphor.
Jo Hanson<br>
documents the progression of her work from the use of technology to
eco-art.<br>
"Finally," she notes, "I ask questions about the role
of technology in a<br>
world facing (or failing to face) ecological crisis, which has the
potential<br>
to be reflected in economic and political crises. I have tried to
create<br>
work that is practical and visionary, and I offer certain practical
and<br>
visionary propositions here."<br>
<br>
In "Imagine a Space Filled with Data," German
artists/researchers Monika<br>
Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss set forth their collaboratively
shaped<br>
communications spaces. "The old metaphors have remained the same:
'Explorer'<br>
or 'Navigator' - the language of the conqueror is apparent to everyone
on<br>
the Internet," they write. "As artists, we explore aesthetic
strategies of<br>
communication processes to influence and transform the development of
the<br>
market for the community of the future."<br>
<br>
Other artist contributors include computer graphics artists Rebecca
Allen<br>
and Donna Cox; video artists Dara Birnbaum, Judith Barry, and Valerie
Soe;<br>
interactive artists Jen Hall and Blyth Hazen and Agnes Hegedus; Net
artists<br>
Allucquere Rosanne Stone and Kathy Rae Huffman; biotech artist Nell
Tenhaaf;<br>
and choreographer/dancer/musicians Linda Austin and Leslie Ross and
Dawn<br>
Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio.<br>
<br>
CRITICAL ESSAYS<br>
<br>
The book closes with a series of critical essays that compliment
the<br>
introductory overviews. Chapter authors are Jaishree Odin (writing
about<br>
Shelley Jackson's hyperfiction *Patchwork Girl*); Simone Osthoff,
whose</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">chapter
"Brazilian Counterparts: Old Histories and New Designs"
documents<br>
the work of Jocy de Oliveira, Marcia X, Lygia Pape and many others;
Zoe<br>
Sofia, writing about the work of Australian women, including *VNS
Matrix*;<br>
and Mexican critic Martha Burkle Bonecchi, who points out that
technology is<br>
not available to many Third World women.<br>
<br>
In selecting the work for this book, I acted as an artist who believes
in<br>
giving voice to each artist's description of her work. Thus, this
editorial<br>
interface does not attempt to twist the multiple approaches in this
volume<br>
into one meaning. It merely suggests a few approaches and opens the
door to<br>
other approaches that range from Steina's lifelong involvement with
video<br>
and installation to Donna Cox's algorithmic art to Pamela Z's
translation of<br>
physical movement into sound to Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison's<br>
environmental activist narratives.<br>
<br>
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE<br>
<br>
This issue of LEA includes two complete articles from the book:<br>
"Fleshmotor," by Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio and
"Video Art Povera:<br>
Lo-Fi Rules!," by Valerie Soe. Also included is part of the
article "Face<br>
Settings: An International Co-Cooking and Communication Project,"
by Kathy<br>
Rae Huffman, and short articles by artists whose work is documented
in<br>
longer articles in the book: Nancy Paterson, Jen Hall and Blyth
Hazen.<br>
<br>
These articles serve as an introduction to *Women, Art and
Technology*, a<br>
comprehensive book that includes 36 chapters and documents the work of
over<br>
100 artists.<br>
<br>
*Women, Art and Technology* is available from MIT Press at<br>
<u
>http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=D1716CC8-E9CC-4<span
></span>EDA-991B<br>
</u>-40C7EEAE4A56&ttype=2&tid=9905, from Amazon at<br>
<u>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134241/leonardoonlin-20</u
> or from<br>
Booksense.com, your local Independent bookstore's online order
service, by<br>
going to<u> http://www.booksense.com</u> and searching under
"Find a Book"<br>
<br>
The complete table of contents, articles not included in the book, and
links<br>
to new works in the field are available on the book's website at<br>
<u>http://www.judymalloy.net/newmedia.<br>
<br>
<br>
</u>BIOGRAPHY<br>
<br>
Electronic narrative pioneer Judy Malloy
(<u>http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy</u>)<br>
has been writing hypernarratives since 1986, when she began writing
*Uncle<br>
Roger* (a narrative of sex and politics in Silicon Valley) on Arts
Com<br>
Electronic Network on the WELL. She is currently the editor of
*NYFA<br>
Current*, a publication of the New York Foundation for the Arts.<br>
<br>
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FEATURES
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<br>
STOCK MARKET SKIRT AND NEW DIRECTIONS<br>
<br>
by Nancy Paterson<br>
Nancy.Paterson@senecac.on.ca<br>
<br>
<br>
In the early 1990s, I began working with laserdisc technology and<br>
custom-designed microcontrollers to develop interactive projects such
as<br>
*Bicycle TV*, *The Machine in the Garden* and *The Meadow*. In the mid
90s,<br>
my interest turned to Internet-based installations, as the technology
had<br>
evolved significantly and become more commonplace since I had first
gone<br>
online in 1982.<br>
<br>
*Stock Market Skirt*, [1] a project that I began to work on in 1995,
was<br>
actually conceived long before the technology was available to
realize it.<br>
The concept of controlling the length of a woman's dress by
referencing<br>
stock market quotes in real time could only be put into practice
as the<br>
Internet evolved to supply data that I could access. Originally,
*Stock<br>
Market Skirt* was comprised of a BASIC program using Toronto stock
exchange<br>
historical data, which had been donated to the project. With the<br>
transformation of the Internet from an academic resource to more
mainstream<br>
entertainment and commercial applications, it was my expectation
that it<br>
would only be a matter of time before online trading became
accessible<br>
online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.<br>
<br>
In 1995, when I began working on *Stock Market Skirt*, the only
financial</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">resources
available online were expensive proprietary subscription
services<br>
such as Reuters, Star Data and Bloomberg. By 1998, when *Stock Market
Skirt*<br>
went public, I had my choice of sites providing stock quotes, from
markets<br>
across the globe.<br>
<br>
Stefaan Van Ryssen, writing about the work in *Leonardo Digital
Reviews*,<br>
points out that "this work, of course refers to the theories of
Desmond<br>
Morris and Helmut Gaus, that women's clothing follows economic
activity. In<br>
times of crisis and deflation, hemlines are lowered and colors
disappear,<br>
in times of growth and at the height of a business cycle, skirts
(and<br>
pants) are getting shorter and clothes more colorful. At the
same time, the<br>
work comments on the presence of women as object and consumer in
the 'real'<br>
world, while men are absent, hidden by technology and steering
the economy<br>
rather than undergoing it" [2].<br>
<br>
*Stock Market Skirt* works on many levels, as a cyberfeminist
fashion<br>
statement and as the embodiment of the emerging intelligence of
the<br>
Internet. Instantly, several message are imprinted on the
viewer's<br>
subconscious. This project has the potential to be interactive with
the<br>
global flow of information by responding to a dynamic feed of
data. We are<br>
not merely voyeurs, watching the hemline quiver, rise and fall.
A viewer<br>
might influence the media work by making a call to their broker,
to buy (or<br>
sell) shares in whatever company the skirt is currently tracking or
this<br>
might be accomplished through online trading. If the stock or
composite<br>
being tracked is bought/sold as a result of automatic trade execution,
then<br>
*Stock Market Skirt* becomes interactive with the flow of data
within the<br>
Internet itself, rather than being interactive through the
Internet<br>
as a pipeline or conduit.<br>
<br>
The completion of *Stock Market Skirt* allowed me to pursue
another<br>
interest, with the development of a fully navigable, multi-storied
3-D<br>
environment titled *The Library* [3]. Whereas *Stock Market Skirt*
required<br>
relatively low bandwidth, *The Library* was at the opposite end of
the<br>
bandwidth spectrum. A common theme, however, was the re-purposing of
online<br>
data; in *The Library*, for example, a updated satellite image
of the<br>
Earth's surface from space (taken from NASA's website), updated every
five<br>
minutes, is retrieved and used as the texture map for a rotating
sphere<br>
(world globe), which is the centerpiece in my 3-D environment.
Such<br>
applications hint at the promise of the Internet for true
interactivity and<br>
the symmetrical exchange of data.<br>
<br>
Further expanding my artistic practice, I have recently produced a
short<br>
video entitled *Coppelia* for BRAVO [4]! This dance/robotics
project,<br>
produced when I was artist in residence at the School for
Communication<br>
Arts, Seneca@York (Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology,
Toronto),<br>
utilizes ORAD virtual set technology. This was an opportunity
for me to<br>
experiment with choreography and collaboration on the
development of an<br>
audio soundtrack. I am currently developing a performance
project that will<br>
further explore the potential of Seneca@York's Vicon
motion-capture<br>
technology in conjunction with the ORAD.<br>
<br>
Another project currently under development is *MULTI: Multiple
User Laser<br>
Table Interface*, which will continue to develop the 3-D library
environment<br>
as content for a collaborative multi-user tool. Partners for this<br>
development are Dr. Wolfgang Stuerzlinger (Computer Science,
York<br>
University) and Dr. Jennifer Jenson (Education, York
University).<br>
<br>
<br>
REFERENCES<br>
<br>
1. Nancy Paterson, *Stock Market Skirt*<br>
<u>http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Stock/stock.html<br>
<br>
</u>2. Stefaan Van Ryssen, "Review of Mediaworks by Nancy
Paterson,<br>
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, Canada, 2001," Leonardo Digital
Reviews,<br>
<u
>http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/reviews/jan2003/MEDIA_r<span
></span>yssen.ht<br>
</u>ml, January 2003.<br>
<br>
3. Nancy Paterson, *The Library*,<u> http://www.thelibrary2.com.</u>
The rotunda of<br>
the Canadian Library of Parliament was the inspiration for this
3-D<br>
environment.<br>
<br>
4.Nancy Paterson, *Coppelia*,<br>
<u>http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Coppelia/coppelia.html</u></font
></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><u><br>
<br>
</u>BIOGRAPHY<br>
<br>
Nancy Paterson (<u>http://www.vacuumwoman.com</u>) is a Toronto-based
electronic<br>
media artist working primarily in the field of interactive
installations.<br>
She is coordinator of the artist in residence program at the Centre
for<br>
Creative Communications and Visiting Artist at the School of
Communication<br>
Arts, Seneca@York. She is an instructor at the Ontario College of Art
and<br>
Design and facilities coordinator at Charles Street Video in
Toronto.<br>
<br>
______________________<br>
<br>
<br>
FLESHMOTOR<br>
<br>
Dawn Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio<br>
troika@panix.com<br>
<br>
<br>
/(SLASH)<br>
<br>
When considering how to describe my work here, I am immediately drawn
to use<br>
a term that my collaborator Mark Coniglio invented several years ago -
< i<br>
>Slash (/) Artist< /i >. The term grew from a time when all
of the artists<br>
that we met seemed to describe themselves as a "dancer slash
performance<br>
artist," "poet slash technologist slash actor" or some
other similar string<br>
of metiers separated by the all-integrating slash. What these people
were<br>
trying to say was that they were attempting to hybridize multiple
forms into<br>
some-other-thing that they could not, as yet, put words to. This is
the way<br>
I have felt as I have attempted to bring my primary metier of dance
together<br>
with media and technology for over ten years.<br>
<br>
Through this process, my choreography has changed in response to my
close<br>
contact with computers and computer-controlled devices. As a
choreographer<br>
and dancer, my relationship to the world begins with the work *In
Plane*<br>
(1994). This piece was seminal in the development of our thinking
about the<br>
relationship of the body to technology as an aesthetic idea, as well
as the<br>
technological innovation required to realize it.<br>
<br>
We have used many varieties of homemade and commercially available
sensing<br>
systems in our performances, but the most sophisticated is MidiDancer.
Mark<br>
first had the idea for this device while we were both students at
California<br>
Institute of the Arts. He had been inspired by *Hungers* (1989)
a<br>
collaboration between his mentor Mort Subotnick and video artist
Ed<br>
Emshwiller. In that piece, singer Joan LaBarbara controlled MIDI<br>
synthesizers using a small baton that responded to the way she moved
it<br>
through the air. Mark was immediately inspired to attach this device
to the<br>
leg of a dancer, but was discouraged by the wires needed to get
the<br>
information to the computer. So he envisioned, and shortly
thereafter<br>
implemented, a wireless device that would allow a dancer to make
music with<br>
the movement of her body.<br>
<br>
The first MidiDancer system was built for a collaborative project at
CalArts<br>
in which Mark and I took part. The original device was quite
primitive,<br>
being made from radio-controlled car transmitters. Attached to
each<br>
transmitter were two sensors in the form of metal levers that we taped
(at<br>
the cost of much body hair) to our arms and legs. Each sensor measured
the<br>
flexion of a joint and sent that information, via the radio
transmitter, to<br>
a computer, where it could be used to control music synthesizers.<br>
<br>
The piece we made was for four performers, each of whom was
wearing two<br>
sensors, one on the elbow and one on the knee (four individual
MidiDancer<br>
systems in all). The idea was to give each dancer two sounds to
control,<br>
one on each sensor, that would stay the same during the course
of the<br>
piece. Our hope in keeping this fixed relationship was to create
a kind of<br>
sonic identity for each dancer, which the audience could
recognize.<br>
<br>
After creating material separately, we came together to work with
the<br>
dancers and quickly realized that this one-to-one relationship,
one gesture<br>
producing one (and only one) sound, did not make for a rich
composition,<br>
either as dance or as music. We came to call this technique
the<br>
"bleep-bloop" method, as this is all that the first
attempt ended up<br>
being - a series of bleeps and bloops in conjunction with the
robotic<br>
choreography required to trigger the system. We were
disappointed that the<br>
piece lacked the kind of complexity and subtlety that we had
envisioned and<br>
knew right away that we were going to have to try
again.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
What we did not know at the time was that, in that moment,
MidiDancer had<br>
changed the way we thought about composing. In retrospect it
should have<br>
been obvious that we had begun to compose for a new and
unfamiliar<br>
instrument and that, of course, the artworks that we made with it
would be<br>
directly influenced by its nature. For one thing, it was clear
that we<br>
could not work in isolation when creating our materials, but
instead<br>
needed to work collaboratively on both sound and movement. We
did not know<br>
the instrument well enough to imagine the outcome, and we needed to
really<br>
see and hear it happen. Also, we found that the physical
gestures required<br>
to play the instrument were not inherently interesting or
meaningful as<br>
choreography. To understand what I mean, imagine for a moment
that you are<br>
watching a great violinist play. You may choose to watch her fingers
move<br>
along the neck of the instrument, but I don't think that you would
expect<br>
those same finger movements to give you any dramatic information
about the<br>
piece. We were faced with a challenge: the dancer needed to
simultaneously<br>
make both meaning and music with the same movements. This is a
problem that<br>
became even more complicated as we added other media into the
mix.<br>
<br>
++(PLUS PLUS)<br>
<br>
In the summer of 1990, Mark and I first collaborated with Kit Galloway
and<br>
Sherrie Rabinowitz at The Electronic Cafe, their performance
space/lab in<br>
Los Angeles. In this pre-Internet world, Kit and Sherrie pioneered the
use<br>
of various kinds of telecommunications links to create live
artworks<br>
between distantly located sites. At this time one of the most common
ways<br>
for them to get video between cities was a slow-scan,
hand-held,<br>
black-and-white video phone. Mark's and my experience with that device
would<br>
begin our next series of insights regarding the combination of
dance and<br>
media.<br>
<br>
*Tactile Diaries*, our first collaboration with Kit and Sherrie,
had<br>
performers at The Electronic Cafe and the New York University
television<br>
studios in Manhattan performing together using slow-scan video phones
and<br>
telephone-grade audio connections. One section of the piece was
a solo that<br>
I performed using the MidiDancer. In this section, Mark
programmed the<br>
software to trigger the videophone when I made a particular
shape with my<br>
body. It would capture an image of my performance in Los Angeles
and then<br>
send that image to New York. At the other end, the still image
would arrive<br>
on a television monitor, slowly scanning in from top to bottom
over a<br>
period of five to ten seconds. I carefully chose all of the
movements that<br>
would trigger the video phone because these would be the
only<br>
representation of the dance that the New York audience would
see. I became<br>
very interested in selecting body shapes that, when seen in sequence
in New<br>
York, would create a different narrative experience from the one
that the<br>
live audience would have in Los Angeles. It seemed essential to
find a way<br>
to have the choppy, low-bandwidth video express something different
than<br>
what the full-bandwidth (live) dancer could provide. What was
important<br>
about this approach was that it emphasized what was distinctive
about the<br>
technology and provided a different way of seeing the dance.<br>
<br>
The use of video in this piece introduced me to a new theatrical
element<br>
(i.e., beyond sound) that could be manipulated with the MIDI
data coming<br>
from the MidiDancer. MIDI was no longer just an acronym for
Musical<br>
Instrument Digital Interface or simply a word in the name of our
device,<br>
but now represented to me a pathway that would allow my gestures
to control<br>
basically any media device.<br>
<br>
My understanding of how extensive these pathways could become
expanded<br>
further when I saw Steina Vasulka during a lecture/demonstration
at the<br>
Electronic Cafe some months after *Tactile Diaries*. I was
watching Steina<br>
use her MIDI violin to "play" a computer-controlled
laser disc that<br>
contained video images of water, fire, bubbling mud and other
natural<br>
environments. The MIDI information was used to randomly access
specific<br>
frames on the disc, to play forward or backward at varying
speeds or to</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">freeze on a frame
with no distortion of the image. The flexibility of the<br>
laser disc, as demonstrated by Steina, was extraordinary, and
Mark and I<br>
were instantly taken by its possibilities.<br>
<br>
Soon after this demonstration, these influences came together as
we<br>
developed the initial plan for what would become *In Plane*. Our idea
was to<br>
make a videotape of me dancing, transfer it to laser disc and then
have me<br>
control the playback of that image using the MidiDancer. We
wanted to<br>
create a duet between me and a "virtual" me stored on the
laser disc. This<br>
duet was appealing because it emphasized something that was of
growing<br>
importance to us: the duality between the fleshy body and
another body,<br>
which we didn't have a name for at the time, but which we later came
to call<br>
the electronic body. The corpus and its electronic doppelganger
became<br>
characters that would find their way into several of our future
works.<br>
<br>
*(ASTERISK)<br>
<br>
As I mentioned earlier, *In Plane* was a seminal work for us. It was
not<br>
only our most technologically complicated piece, but it also became
the<br>
cauldron in which we synthesized the theoretical paths that we had
been on<br>
for the past four years.<br>
<br>
The piece was to be a competition between the corpus and its
electronic<br>
doppelganger; a body that bleeds, sweats, gets tired and feels pain
versus a<br>
body made of light, which is not bound by time, space or
gravity. I became<br>
the fleshy presence, while my video image, stored on the laser
disc, was my<br>
electronic counterpart. Which was the more powerful and
beautiful presence?<br>
The flesh and blood woman exerting herself to an exquisite extreme
with the<br>
potential of physical failure at any moment? Or was it the
ethereal video<br>
body who flies so gracefully through space, can freeze in mid-air and
never<br>
tires? This was to be the essential question posed by the
piece.<br>
<br>
On a technical level, we wanted my gestures to control the musical
score,<br>
the playback of images from a laser disc, the movement of a
robotic video<br>
projector and the theatrical lighting for the piece. We realized
that this<br>
was ambitious, but we wanted to see how far we could go. We
wanted to find<br>
out how much one performer could play.<br>
<br>
We began our work by collaborating on choreographic and musical
materials<br>
that echoed the traits of the two bodies. The music,
representing the<br>
electronic, was comprised solely of sampled sounds of machines,
while the<br>
choreography, clearly representing the corporeal side of the
equation, was<br>
constructed from a fundamentally human movement vocabulary
consisting of<br>
running, jumping, falling and rolling. These movements were
consistent with<br>
my stylistic leanings. I am not too concerned with taking a
gesture through<br>
all of the compositional gymnastics required to expose its
many<br>
possibilities for interpretation. Instead, I want to guide the
audience<br>
through the energy of the movement itself. I want to see the
relationship<br>
of the performers on stage. Of course, *In Plane* is a solo if
you only<br>
count the number of fleshy bodies on stage. But it is actually
an ensemble<br>
piece because I consider video, sound, robotic set pieces -
whatever -<br>
simply to be additional performers. The beauty of using the
MidiDancer<br>
system was that the notion of a duet with the video was much more
than a<br>
conceptual idea, but was in fact the result of a tangible
physical<br>
relationship: body-sensor-video.<br>
<br>
Furthermore, like dancing with a live performer, this was not a
one-way<br>
street. During the process of creating and rehearsing *In Plane*, I
became<br>
acutely aware of how information would flow back in the other
direction. I<br>
would see the video move in response to my gestural control and
my dancing<br>
would be influenced by my "playing." Mark prefers the
term "reactive" over<br>
"interactive" because he claims that it is more true
to the actual flow of<br>
information, his point being that the computer does not have the<br>
intelligence of a human being and cannot interact in the truest
sense of<br>
that word. As a performer who feels the feedback loop that I
describe<br>
above, I feel certain that I am interacting with something, even
if the</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">modulation of
image and sound originates solely with my own gestures.<br>
<br>
In setting out to create these kinds of performative
relationships, one<br>
thing was readily apparent: the radio-control car transmitter
and dual<br>
sensor design was not going to allow us to make the piece we had
in mind.<br>
Mark created a new MidiDancer with a significantly smaller
transmitter box<br>
and eight thin, flexible plastic sensors that could be placed at
almost any<br>
joint on the body. When I first danced in this new costume, the
difference<br>
in my movement was immediately obvious. It was less restricted and
more<br>
fluid because the new design allowed it. We realized how much
the sensory<br>
device imposes its own limitations on the choreography; every
instrument<br>
needs to played in a particular way to get it to sound, and the
MidiDancer<br>
was no different.<br>
<br>
Traditional instruments respond to gestural input in a consistent
way and<br>
the audience can generally come to understand that relationship,
even if<br>
the instrument is unfamiliar to them. Based on this traditional
model, we<br>
felt a certain pull to establish a clear relationship between my
movement<br>
and the media I was controlling. But we both remembered how
stifling this<br>
fixed relationship was in the first MidiDancer performance we
had given at<br>
CalArts. Further, this time, I wanted the choreography to serve my
aesthetic<br>
intention first and the requirements of the sensory device
second,<br>
something that was already easier to accomplish with the more
sensitive<br>
MidiDancer. So, we chose to allow the possibility of a joint
changing its<br>
function during the course of the performance. For example, in
the first<br>
section of the piece the angle of my elbow directly controlled
the volume<br>
of a rhythmic musical phrase. In the next section that same elbow
movement<br>
would trigger the playback of a video sequence. We chose to sacrifice
the<br>
audience's clear understanding of the instrument in order keep our<br>
expressive options open.<br>
<br>
In the end, there were a myriad number of lessons learned as we
made *In<br>
Plane*. Each day felt a bit like my first dance class,
overwhelming because<br>
I was not yet familiar enough with the instrument to keep track
of all of<br>
its parts. But perhaps the most important experience for us both came
late<br>
in the creation process, when the elements had begun to
coalesce. There was<br>
one rehearsal in particular in which I felt that the laser disc
images were<br>
not just some external object to which I was weakly linked via some
sensory<br>
interface. Instead, they started to feel like a hand, or a torso
or some<br>
other part of my body. The media was not separate from me any
longer, it<br>
was an extension of me. This was curious in one sense, since my
video<br>
counterpart, with whom I was supposedly having a fierce
competition, was<br>
actually under my control all the time. Perhaps this is the
hidden message<br>
of *In Plane*.<br>
<br>
= (EQUALS)<br>
<br>
As a dancer, I inherently understand the realm of the body. I had
no idea<br>
that technology would enter into that understanding until I
chose to<br>
entwine myself with the machine. I was altered and so was my body, as
it<br>
expanded to include sound, light and image. The slashes in my art
are<br>
inserted between my flesh, the media that moves with it and the
machine<br>
that locks the two together; this puts me at the intersection of flesh
and<br>
silicon, blood and television, body and computer that our
culture is in the<br>
midst of splicing together.<br>
<br>
<br>
*Troika Ranch* (<u>http://www.troikaranch.org</u>), a digital dance
theater by Dawn<br>
Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio, has performed throughout the United
States in<br>
venues including The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City; the Walker
Art<br>
Center, Minneapolis; the Luckman Fine Arts Center, Los Angeles and the
Lied<br>
Center for Performing Arts, Lincoln, Nebraska.<br>
<br>
______________________<br>
<br>
<br>
*FACE SETTINGS*: AN INTERNATIONAL CO-COOKING AND COMMUNICATION PROJECT
BY<br>
EVA WOHLEGEMUTH AND KATHY RAE HUFFMAN<br>
<br>
Kathy Rae Huffman, kathy.rae.huffman@cornerhouse.org<br>
<br>
<br>
*Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication Project*
[1]<br>
is a female-focused communication project and website that reveals
the</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">growing Net
community of women. It is a cross-platform forum to develop and<br>
explore the interests and needs of women online. The project,
initiated by<br>
Eva Wohlgemuth and myself, was a series of "dinner performance
events" that<br>
took place between spring 1996 and autumn 1998. The objective was to
join<br>
real groups of women in network strategies to expand female
connectivity and<br>
to engage women in discussions of importance on local, regional,
national<br>
and international levels. Through FACES, a female-only mailing list
for<br>
discussing art, communication and online policy, an online community
has<br>
developed and expanded beyond the process of preparing meals and
eating<br>
together. *Face Settings* raised various questions, which were
presented at<br>
Face2Face, a meeting of FACES in Graz, Austria, from 8 - 11 July,
1998.<br>
<br>
Throughout our Face2Face events and virtual online communication,
women<br>
focused on communication practices and how they differ in various
cultural<br>
settings. Aware of how women are kept out of the technically
challenging<br>
network, we set an example of what could be done to change that
practice and<br>
constantly mused about how the fact that women speak and
communicate<br>
differently than men affects our female involvement in online
culture.<br>
<br>
The cooking performances took place between summer 1996 and summer
1998 and<br>
evolved directly from our experiences on the (then) recently
concluded<br>
Internet travel project, *Siberian Deal* [2], which took place in
1995. From<br>
Russia, we sent weekly "reports" to Vienna, which were
uploaded to the<br>
project website. The goal of *Siberian Deal* was exchange: we were
traders<br>
dealing objects and information to strangers in "the worst place
in the<br>
world." Our mission was to understand value and learn how our
opinions were<br>
informed by Cold War media and propaganda. In Russia, we established
a<br>
network of friends we would meet again and again. Our observations of
women,<br>
their buying and selling techniques, and their status in society were
common<br>
topics of conversation during our travels, influencing our future
work<br>
together.<br>
<br>
Working towards a new project concept, Eva and I realized that our<br>
personalities, skills and backgrounds complemented (and sometimes<br>
compensated for) one another. I loved gathering people into social<br>
situations for information exchange and brainstorming ideas. Eva
was<br>
fascinated by the challenge of translating the process of
communication<br>
into a visual form that invited participation. She was keen to
establish<br>
strong conceptual guidelines for a new Internet project. I was
immersed in<br>
Internet research on a variety of topics, including
"cyberintimacy." As we<br>
talked, we decided to continue our real and virtual working system,
and<br>
travel to places we found compelling (for various reasons). We also
made a<br>
conscious decision to focus our energy and dedicate our project to<br>
connecting women. We made these choices naturally and without any
debate. In<br>
Europe, the lack of structure, encouragement or reward for women
working in<br>
the new communication technologies was obvious to us.<br>
<br>
As a conceptual artist, Eva had been working on the location
sculpture<br>
*Systems* since 1989. I had been an active media art curator, producer
and<br>
networker (by the old definition) since the early 1980s. In 1994, I
was<br>
living on my own in Austria, and Eva had become a good enough friend
to<br>
engage in "girl talk" and relationship problem-sharing.
During these<br>
occasional meetings, Eva and I became aware of the differences in
our<br>
cultural conditioning, especially how I had been encouraged to
develop<br>
verbal and social skills in school while Eva had been encouraged to
develop<br>
her excellent logistic planning and technical skills. As an American,
I<br>
experienced how "citizenship" and "extracurricular
participation" were<br>
highly regarded during formative school years. Eva, on the other hand,
had<br>
suffered a very strict and academic education, without many
social<br>
functions, in a dogmatic system that did not tolerate deviation from
the<br>
traditional pedagogic plan.<br>
<br>
The basic cultural differences that informed us - which we were aware
of -</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">fascinated us. We
also noticed that the way we communicated with each other<br>
and with women, and the ways in which we communicated with men, were
very<br>
different. We began an intensive investigation that included
Internet<br>
research, and the compilation of information on this phenomenon.<br>
<br>
The writings of Dr. Deborah Tannen provided great insight, as did
many<br>
scholarly studied and linguistic observations about how women and men
relate<br>
in the online environment. We found corroborative theoretical opinions
and<br>
that was enough for us to set out to combine our newly acquired
Internet<br>
skills, interest in social communication and cultural difference and
art<br>
practice. Our new work would evolve with women in five different
countries,<br>
located on the borders of Europe.<br>
<br>
The events we planned would combine women, cooking and
communication, but<br>
we admitted to ourselves that we needed to define what it was we
wanted to<br>
achieve as clearly as possible. At this point, we realized it
would take<br>
time to develop relationships, and that it could take several
years to<br>
build the network we were envisioning. In an effort to proceed
logically, we<br>
outlined the following list of considerations for *Face Settings*:<br>
<br>
1. Communication: It is often difficult to engage strangers in
discussions<br>
about communication, especially when there are language problems,
different<br>
social customs and lack of understanding about the widespread practice
of<br>
Internet connectivity. Neither of us was the type who readily
engaged<br>
strangers in conversation, even in local places we go to. We would
benefit<br>
from a defined group in each location.<br>
<br>
2. Online representation: the website would be a key element of the
project,<br>
linking the real local events between the regional groups. It would
need<br>
good stories, provocative photos of the participants, tasty recipes
and<br>
theoretical food for thought. We wanted to profile the women we met
and give<br>
an idea of what their working situation was like. We also decided that
the<br>
website should maintain links to female sites and a suggested reading
list,<br>
references, our biographies and personal links.<br>
<br>
3. Live performing installation events: With a group of 10 to 12
women, we<br>
would be able to talk while we cooked and served meals. We wanted to
give<br>
pleasure to others in these events by serving them and taking care of
all<br>
the details. This would be a treat, a vacation from the normal work
that<br>
women know well. This could also be hard work for us. With the
understanding<br>
that we would encounter various customs, we also knew that dinners
"at home"<br>
are usually family events, and as strangers cooking the meal, we would
be a<br>
rare exception.<br>
<br>
4. Artifacts: as a net art project, there would be little need for
physical<br>
evidence, but we still wanted to provide some objects that resulted
from the<br>
collaboration with the groups of women we would work with. Clearly,
most<br>
artists do not have the time to give to other artists' projects
without some<br>
real clear understanding of the exchange. We wanted to provide our
project<br>
partners with specific rewards.<br>
<br>
5. Publications: A cookbook catalog that included recipes gathered
during<br>
our travels was an idea we wanted to pursue. In the beginning, a photo
album<br>
of each dinner and a collection of memorabilia from each of the
events<br>
would be created. We would make this book available at each dinner,
adding<br>
progressive chapters, like courses, as we continued with the
project.<br>
<br>
6. Goals: *Face Settings* dinner events were to be enjoyable
events,<br>
celebrations with low stress and lots of personal care (for ourselves
and<br>
the women we met). Pleasure connected to food and the sharing of
information<br>
would be a topic to introduce in our dinners. We hoped to establish
real<br>
communication that would grow in the digital environment, eventually
linking<br>
the regional groups in a collaborative cooking performance event.<br>
<br>
<br>
REFERENCES<br>
<br>
1. *Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication<br>
Project* is now archived at<u>
http://www.t0.or.at/~amazon/FACE/index.htm.<br>
<br>
</u>2. *Siberian Deal* -<u>
http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian/vrteil.htm.<br>
<br>
<br>
</u>BIOGRAPHY</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
Kathy Rae Huffman (<u>http://www.t0.or.at/~amazon/FACE/index.htm</u>)
is Director<br>
of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse, Manchester, U.K.'s leading center
for<br>
contemporary art, media and cinema. She is a networker and specialist
for<br>
Web-based initiatives, a collector of new media works and a curator
who<br>
pioneered support of artists work centered in media theory and
practice.<br>
<br>
Eva Wohlgemuth (<u>http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian</u>), based in
Vienna, Austria,<br>
realized several land art and concept projects before she profiled as
a<br>
media and Web artist. She is now producing in the field of reactive
visual<br>
systems installation (sculpture, drawing, painting) and media. She
has<br>
exhibited internationally, including at Documenta X (Web Section).<br>
<br>
<br>
< Note from the book editor ><br>
<br>
The section above is the beginning of this article. The complete
chapter,<br>
available in the book *Women, Art and Technology*, covers the
project's<br>
beginnings, a gathering of a group of women in Vienna; a St.
Petersburg<br>
dinner event concurrent with the presentation of *Siberian Deal* at
the St.<br>
Petersburg Biennial; "Digital Care," the next phase of the
project; the<br>
introduction of the first version of the *Face Settings* website at
the<br>
Secret Conference held at Backspace, in London; and the project's
inclusion<br>
in the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival. It concludes with thoughts about
the<br>
project.<br>
<br>
Participants in various stages of the project included Beverly Hood
and<br>
Lindsey Perth, Glasgow; Irina Aktuganova and Alla Mitrofanova, St.<br>
Petersburg, Russia; Maria Pallier, Spain; Zana Poliakov and Vesna<br>
Manojlovic, Belgrade; Margarete Jahrmann, Doris Weichselbaumer,
Sabine<br>
Seymour and Elisabeth Binder, Austria; Cornelia Sollfrank (OBN),
Hamburg;<br>
Katy Deepwell (n.paradoxa), London; Evelyn Teutsch, Leipzig, Germany;
Birgit<br>
Huber, Germany; Betty Spackman, Toronto; Anja Westerfroelke, Linz,
Austria;<br>
Julia Meltzer, New York; lizvlx, Vienna; and Veronika Dreier and
Reni<br>
Hofmueller, Graz, Austria.<br>
<br>
______________________<br>
<br>
<br>
VIDEO ARTE POVERA: LO-FI RULES!<br>
<br>
by Valerie Soe<br>
vsoe@sfsu.edu<br>
<br>
<br>
When I was a young college student, I wanted to go to the UCLA film
school.<br>
I admired Alfred Hitchcock's narrative stylings, Stanley Kubrick's
peculiar<br>
characterizations and Martin Scorsese's fluid and expressive
camerawork. But<br>
as fate would have it, the film school at UCLA was severely impacted
and I<br>
instead completed my undergraduate degree in the art department.<br>
<br>
What I discovered was that video art's aesthetics appealed to me much
more<br>
than Hollywood's narrative filmmaking conventions. I found that by
working<br>
in experimental forms, I could easily access topics such as
identity<br>
politics, race and ethnicity, and pop culture. This was much more
effective<br>
using experimental video's direct and expressive poetics than
through<br>
narrative film's elephantine character and plot machinations. I
also found<br>
that experimental forms allowed me to utilize all manner of
unusual source<br>
materials, including found footage. This recycling aesthetic,
making silk<br>
purses from technology's sow's ears, continues to appear in both
my<br>
single-channel videos and multiple-channel installations.<br>
<br>
In my work, I have used video, text, pop-culture artifacts,
autobiography<br>
and interactive elements, employing technology both high
(computer<br>
terminals, electronic message boards, video monitors) and low
(zoetropes,<br>
viewer-generated graffiti, artists' books) to look at issues of
culture and<br>
identity in the information age. I am interested in an organic
use of<br>
technology as a vehicle for the requirements of the creative
concept. In<br>
other words, I let the artwork's content dictate the choice of
media,<br>
rather than simply using technology for its own sake.<br>
<br>
By working in experimental forms, I continue to readily explore
political<br>
and social concerns such as racial discrimination and
bigotry<br>
(*Diversity*), intimate interpersonal relationships (*Mixed
Blood*), body<br>
image, power and control (*Binge*) and the representation of
Asians in pop<br>
culture (*Picturing Oriental Girls a (re) Educational Videotape*;
*Beyond<br>
Asiaphilia*)<br>
<br>
*MIXED BLOOD* (1992-94)</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
*Mixed Blood*, as an interactive video installation, utilized
unexpected<br>
juxtapositions of found footage, flashing text, talking heads and
scientific<br>
footage displayed in a brightly colored graphic installation
that<br>
challenged potential viewers to stop, look and listen. Using two
discrete<br>
channels of video, *Mixed Blood* combined interviews with over 30
concerned<br>
individuals, relevant quotes and statistics, and clips from
scientific<br>
films and classic miscegenation dramas such as *The World of Suzie
Wong* and<br>
*Sayonara* to examine interracial relationships in the Asian
American<br>
community.<br>
<br>
In addition to the information disgorged via video monitors, *Mixed
Blood*<br>
also encouraged viewer interaction. A computer terminal and
electronic<br>
message board output allowed viewers to respond to questions
regarding<br>
cross-cultural relationships such as, "What do you think when you
see an<br>
interracial couple on the street?" and "What are three
characteristics of<br>
Asian American men?" The query changed daily, and each day's
responses were<br>
strung together and displayed on the electronic message board mounted
on the<br>
installation.<br>
<br>
For those who preferred more direct expression, the piece had a
"talking<br>
wall," a blank white panel on which viewers could write their
opinions<br>
without technological mediation. This element was extremely
popular, with<br>
comments on a range of topics from politics to sexuality. There were
also<br>
small stickers printed with phrases including "Identity/Affinity"
and "Who<br>
Do You Love?," which viewers were free to take and distribute as
they<br>
wished.<br>
<br>
*Mixed Blood* attempted to present often controversial topics of<br>
miscegenation, bigotry, and sexual stereotypes without being didactic
and<br>
overbearing. By using both high and low technology, I hoped to ease
the<br>
viewer's interaction with the piece and facilitate participation,<br>
contemplation and debate, and allow the viewer to fill in the blanks
and<br>
actively contribute to the form and content of the piece.<br>
<br>
*BINGE* (1996)<br>
<br>
This mixed-media installation was based on Amy Moon's short story
of<br>
consumption, addiction and purgatory. *Binge* looked at body-image<br>
distortion, power and control from the perspective of a compulsive
eater.<br>
The main character is an unnamed woman who dreams idly of escape from
her<br>
middle-American life and her indolent husband. Her stifling
suburban<br>
existence eventually leads her to desperate acts, as she first attacks
her<br>
own body and then strikes outward, with deadly consequences. By
telling the<br>
story in first person through the voice of the unidentified narrator,
the<br>
piece invites the viewer's rapport with the unbalanced, yet
sympathetic,<br>
main character. Her extreme impulses remind us of the frustration and
agony<br>
of day-to-day existence and the desperate actions sometimes necessary
to<br>
flee the killing banality of everyday life.<br>
<br>
The installation consisted of various altered objects integrated with
text,<br>
which reveal different elements of the narrative, outlining
character<br>
traits, plot developments or other aspects of the storyline.
Manipulated<br>
objects included bullet casings, an accordion book, a shooting-range
target,<br>
a zoetrope made from a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) bucket and
assorted<br>
audio and video loops. Once seen, read or heard, these fragments
converged<br>
into a composite text that explicated both plot and character in a<br>
non-linear, interactive format.<br>
<br>
By using consumer-grade Radio Shack electronics, I emphasized
readily<br>
accessible technology, including battery-powered plastic monitors,
a<br>
hand-held Watchman television and a child's portable turntable. I
similarly<br>
employed other everyday objects such as fast-food packaging, mirrors
and<br>
picture frames. This underscored the quotidian setting of the piece,
based<br>
on the diary of a mad housewife, and contrasted these items with
more<br>
sinister objects such as a shooting-range target and spent bullet
casings.<br>
*Binge* contrasted the banality of its source materials with the
desperation<br>
and violence of the main character's actions.<br>
<br>
*DIVERSITY* (1990)<br>
<br>
*Diversity* was a three-channel video installation featuring footage
of Chan</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">Cheong-Toon, a man
regularly seen at a traffic island at the corner of<br>
Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco's North Beach, singing
furiously in<br>
Chinese to whomever cared to listen. Through interviews with Chan as
well as<br>
with his many observers, the piece addressed the projection of
individual<br>
desire onto a single subject, as each interviewee offered his or
her<br>
interpretation of Chan's intentions. In addition, by focusing on
this<br>
unusual personality, the piece exploded the myth of the model
minority,<br>
contradicting the fallacy that Asians are quiet, well-behaved and
aligned<br>
with social conventions.<br>
<br>
The installation consisted of three separate channels of video
played<br>
simultaneously on individual monitors arranged in a triangular<br>
configuration, with screens facing inward. The viewer, positioned at
the<br>
center of the piece, chose to view one or two monitors at once,
although<br>
sound from all three was audible at all times. In this way the
viewer<br>
sequenced and selected the configuration of the piece, choosing the
order in<br>
which the images and narrative unfold. This threefold arrangement
reflected<br>
the many aspects of the focus of the piece, the singing Chan - as he
sees<br>
himself, as others see him, and as he objectively appears - suggesting
the<br>
variety of perception and personality found in a single
individual.<br>
<br>
On the gallery wall were the names of various Asian Americans who
have<br>
distinguished themselves in one way or another. Although several,
including<br>
author Wakako Yamauchi and singer Pat Suzuki, are notable for
outstanding<br>
achievements, others, such as convicted felons Joe Fong and Wendy
Yoshimura,<br>
are known for more notorious actions. This strategy pointed out
the<br>
complexity of Asian American culture, emphasizing again the diversity
of a<br>
community too often stereotyped as one-dimensional.<br>
<br>
In *Diversity*, the simplicity of the technology allowed the
complexity of<br>
the subject matter to emerge. The stripped-down installation
design<br>
consisted of three large monitors on black pedestals and a line of
names on<br>
the gallery wall. Although the simultaneity of the three channels of
video<br>
and the triangular configuration of the monitors were significant,
the<br>
installation gave prominence to content rather technology.<br>
<br>
*WALKING THE MOUNTAIN* (1994)<br>
<br>
This installation was an ofrenda (altar) dedicated to my aunt Lula,
who died<br>
from a nosebleed at age four in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1920s. The
piece,<br>
consisting of sand, cacti, magenta taffeta, video and text, recounted
the<br>
fate of my grandparents' cherished second daughter, born into a
climate too<br>
arid and dry for her genotype. The cacti hanging on the wall and
surrounding<br>
the video monitor were a metaphor for human tenacity, contrasting with
the<br>
inability of Lula to adapt successfully to her new homeland. On
the<br>
right-hand wall the legend "STAY HYDRATED" reiterated the
first rule of<br>
human survival, one which Lula was unable to maintain because of
her<br>
environment, age and circumstances.<br>
<br>
In this installation, I juxtaposed unusual materials - cacti, taffeta,
sand<br>
and a video monitor - to draw attention to the unusual subject matter.
I<br>
hoped to suggest the alien quality of my aunt's new environment, which
was a<br>
desert full of strange life forms including prickly plants, sand
and<br>
Europeans. The piece was a metaphor for the difficulties new
immigrants<br>
often face in adapting to their new homeland, especially in the U.S.,
where<br>
assimilation is valued over preservation of individual cultural
traits.<br>
<br>
I also wanted to contrast the natural elements - sand and plant life -
with<br>
man-made elements - the video monitor and satin fabric - to make Lula
seem<br>
like a fish out of water in her new environment. The video loop
also<br>
emphasizes this point, recounting my aunt's tragic story through
images of<br>
goldfish, faux blood and a length of scarlet taffeta rippling in the
wind.<br>
Using a simple combination of video and non-tech elements, the
piece<br>
presents its story plainly and effectively.<br>
<br>
*LA VIDA POVERA DE SAN PANCHO* (1998)<br>
<br>
This interactive installation was made up of melted and made-over
Playskool<br>
plastic doll houses that had been altered to reflect the ghost
stories,</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">histories and
legends of San Francisco. The tag line for the installation<br>
read, "Why do you choose to live in San Francisco, a beautiful,
fickle and<br>
ever-entrancing city? What is the price of entry into this
temperate<br>
wonderland? Where does reality end and imagination begin" [1]?
Utilizing<br>
tiny TV monitors, sound chips, image, text and toys, *La Vida Povera*
took<br>
viewers down Melancholy Alley, through Sound and Fury Avenue and
up<br>
Sexolicious Lane, some of the imaginary streets realized in the piece.
The<br>
installation was an emotional map, a psychic tour of the memories,
hopes and<br>
dreams of a city that is constantly in transition.<br>
<br>
Each plastic house engaged the viewer in its own way, with points
of entry<br>
including video and TV images, push-buttons, switches, levers
and other<br>
means to play with the structure and meaning of the buildings.
The tiny<br>
structures became a dreamscape of the imagined and the
perceived, the world<br>
of hopes and fears drawing the viewer to San Francisco.<br>
<br>
I used toy houses with tiny video monitors to get away from the<br>
museum-aesthetic definition of "video installation" that
often includes<br>
huge, beautiful and expensive video projections by established
artists such<br>
as Steina Vasulka and Bill Viola. Instead I wanted to get back
to the<br>
cheap-is-beautiful, consumer-electronics look of early video
installations<br>
where the ugliness of the monitor was integral to the aesthetic
of the<br>
piece. This strategy exemplified the do-it-yourself creed,
"l'arte povera,"<br>
the idea that you make what you can out of whatever you can
scavenge.<br>
<br>
How does this relate to little plastic houses with home electronics in
them?<br>
It went back to the idea that it is possible to live in a
horribly<br>
expensive city like San Francisco without being a yuppie or a
multimedia<br>
professional. *La Vida Povera* celebrated the marginal underbelly
of<br>
artists, writers and workers who give San Francisco its spice and
texture,<br>
as well as the plumbers and painters and UPS drivers who give the city
its<br>
soul and blood.<br>
<br>
UNLEARNING THE LANGUAGE<br>
<br>
By working in low-fi, experimental media, I have been able to create
work<br>
that brings to light untold or neglected stories from outside of
the<br>
mainstream. Using available and affordable technology frees me from
many<br>
budgetary constraints and allows me to more readily create work and
engage<br>
viewers in exchanges about culture, politics and representation.
In this<br>
way, I am attempting to reframe and re-articulate an
Asian-American<br>
perspective, by countering conventional stereotypes of Asians in
American<br>
mass media and offering an alternate vision of the community and
culture.<br>
<br>
As Malaysian-American experimental videomaker Cheng-Sim Lim states,
"These<br>
days I'm trying to unlearn the language of Hollywood. I am doing
it because<br>
I know it's not my language. I am trying to remake my image in myself"
[2].<br>
Lim understands the vitality and newness of experimentation, which
more<br>
accurately expresses experiences outside of conventional film and<br>
television. Experimental forms are a reflection of the multitude
of voices<br>
suddenly speaking, each with its own cadence and lexicon, in the
new,<br>
brilliant cacophony of modern times.<br>
<br>
<br>
REFERENCES<br>
<br>
1. Valerie Soe, catalog notes. URL Exhibit, Southern Exposure Gallery,
San<br>
Francisco, CA, 1998.<br>
<br>
2. Cheng-Sim Lin, "Rojack", Moving the Image, Independent
Asian Pacific<br>
American Media Arts, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1991.<br>
<br>
<br>
BIOGRAPHY<br>
<br>
Valerie Soe is a writer and experimental videomaker living and working
in<br>
San Francisco, whose productions include *Mixed Blood*, *Picturing
Oriental<br>
Girls - A (Re) Educational Videotape*, (winner of Best Bay Area
Short,<br>
Golden Gate Awards, San Francisco International Film Festival) and
*All<br>
Orientals Look the Same*, (winner of Best Foreign Video, Festival<br>
Internazionale Cinema Giovani; First Place, Experimental
Category, Visions<br>
of U.S. Festival).<br>
<br>
______________________<br>
<br>
<br>
LABORATORY FOR EPHEMERAL INVESTIGATIONS - INTERACTIVE ROBOTIC
SCULPTURES<br>
<br>
Jennifer Hall and Blyth Hazen<br>
jenhall@massart.edu; bhazen@monserrat.edu<br>
<br>
<br>
In our work, we explore the nexus of biology, technology and
aesthetics</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">through
interactive robotic sculpture and digital processes. Our
Laboratory<br>
for Ephemeral Investigations (2000) is a unique traveling research
center<br>
and learning environment. Like scientists, we use technology for
creative<br>
problem-solving, but our research goals are neither rational nor
practical.<br>
Instead, our ephemeral investigations are aesthetic, social and
poetic. We<br>
engage gallery-goers in a quest to understand our relationship with
our<br>
environment and to bridge the polarities of nature and technology, art
and<br>
science, life and death, thinking and feeling, body and mind.<br>
<br>
The exhibition includes interactive sculptural installations,
animated<br>
drawings generated from genetic algorithms and live video of
microscopic<br>
organisms. For instance, *Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit* (1999)
[1]<br>
introduces a sequence of suspended needles triggered by viewers'
presence.<br>
*Instrument for Mediated Terrain* (2001) [2] is a series of
miniature moss<br>
gardens that are stroked, poked and prodded by robotic tools in
response to<br>
visitors' movements. We are interested in complex relational
cycles of<br>
growth and death, where human-made technology meets nature. Here, the
garden<br>
is a meditation on the relationship of the viewer to the artwork,
technology<br>
to nature and the temporal state of all forms of life.<br>
<br>
Electronic devices weave a connection between the aluminum-clad
gardens and<br>
caretake the living moss. Mechanical arms hovering over the
landscapes<br>
activate only when people come close to observe, the interaction
between<br>
technology and the moss gardens directly depending on these visitors.
One<br>
can imagine that after years of this interaction, the mounds of moss,
peat<br>
and sand would be subtly rearranged - each landscape altered through
the<br>
impact of observation.<br>
<br>
The gardens are purposefully created to be low to the ground so that
the<br>
viewer can have the experience of flying over - presiding over - a<br>
mountainous landscape. There is an overt and observable relationship
between<br>
the presence of an audience and the action of the devices. From a
distance,<br>
the mechanisms are still. It is only when the viewer is closely
observing<br>
an individual garden that the motion of the corresponding arm is
triggered.<br>
When they step away or move on, the motion is stopped. The gardens are
alive<br>
and continue to grow throughout the duration of the exhibition,
slowly<br>
shaped by human activation of technology.<br>
<br>
Other devices include *Carousel for Invertebrate Broadcasting* (2002),
an<br>
interactive rotating petri dish of flatworms; *Television for
Biological<br>
Trajectories* (2002), a series of small-scale vignettes of real and
virtual<br>
worms; *Chambers for the Observation of a Decline from a
Prosperous<br>
Condition* (2002), for comparing real and simulated lifeforms; and
*Room for<br>
the Projection of the Law of Intuitive Association* (2002), a
large-scale,<br>
interactive animation referencing DNA and the double helix - changing
in<br>
tempo, opacity and duration based on user input.<br>
<br>
This laboratory, or its individual parts, has been presented at
The<br>
Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; The
Thorne-Sagendorph<br>
Gallery at Keene State College, Keene, NH; the Schlosberg Gallery
at<br>
Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; and the Lamont Gallery at
Phillips<br>
Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH.<br>
<br>
NOTES<br>
<br>
1. *Laboratory for Ephemeral Investigations* is detailed in Jennifer
Hall<br>
and Blyth Hazen, "Do While Studio," in *Women, Art and
Technology*, Judy<br>
Malloy, ed. (MIT Press, 2003) pp. 290-297.<br>
<br>
2. *Instrument for Mediated Terrain* (2001) aluminum, moss,
electronics,<br>
software, and mechanical devices. More information and photographs of
the<br>
installation are available at<br>
<u>http://www.dowhile.org/physical/projects/exeter/index.html.<br>
<br>
<br>
</u>AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES<br>
<br>
Jennifer Hall
(<u>http://www.dowhile.org/physical/people/hallj.html</u>), a<br>
sculptor, has been a pioneer in interactive media and art-science<br>
collaboration for over 25 years and is presently engaged in the
refocusing<br>
of biological material as an artform.<br>
<br>
Blyth Hazen
(<u>http://www.dowhile.org/physical/people/hazenb.html</u>)
navigates<br>
the space between painting, computer animation and
robotics.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
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<span
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| <span
></span
> <span
></span>
|<br>
<span
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| LEONARDO
REVIEWS |<br>
<span
></span>
|
2003.12 <span
></span> |<br>
<span
></span>
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<br>
_____________________________________________________________________<span
></span>____<br>
<br>
<br>
This month, Leonardo Reviews is pleased to welcome a new member of
the<br>
panel, Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green, with a contribution reviewing
*Vision and<br>
Art: The Biology of Seeing*, by Margaret Livingstone.
Bickley-Green's<br>
expertise is a valuable addition to the established authority of
Leonardo<br>
Reviews, as further exemplified this month by Robert Pepperell and
Amy<br>
Ione's contributions. While Pepperell returns to familiar topics in
reviews<br>
of *Primitivism and Art* and a lecture by Semir Zeki, he also opens a
new<br>
discussion in his review of *Cymatics*. Ione reviews a new book on
Degas in<br>
a lengthy article, while one of our most established contributors,
Roy<br>
Behrens, offers us a selection from his own review publication,
*Ballast<br>
Quarterly Review*. Not to be missed is Rob Harle's review of
interspecies<br>
interaction, as it is discussed in Toni Frohoff and Brenda Peterson's
new<br>
book on dolphins and humans. Over the past few months, Harle has
become one<br>
of our very active reviewers whose range and insight is proving one of
our<br>
most valued assets. As usual, all of this month's reviews, including
a<br>
report on this year's conference of the Society for Literature and
Science,<br>
can be seen at our new (user-friendly) URL,
www.leonardoreviews.org.<br>
<br>
We hope that you find them both engaging and valuable.<br>
<br>
Michael Punt<br>
Editor-in-Chief<br>
Leonardo Reviews<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
In this month's Leonardo Digital Reviews, at<br>
<u>http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/ldr.html:<br>
<br>
<br>
</u>Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black
Mountain,<br>
by Virginia Gardner Troy<br>
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin<br>
<br>
Ambiguity in Art and in the Brain, public lecture by Semir Zeki<br>
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell<br>
<br>
Between Species: Celebrating The Dolphin-Human Bond, Toni Frohoff and
Brenda<br>
Peterson, eds.<br>
Reviewed by Rob Harle<br>
<br>
A Brush with Life, a film by Glen Salzman and Martin Duckworth<br>
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin<br>
<br>
Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, edited by
Steven<br>
Heller and Véronique Vienne<br>
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin<br>
<br>
Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration, by Hans Jenny<br>
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell<br>
<br>
Degas Through His Own Eyes, by Michael F. Marmor<br>
Reviewed by Amy Ione<br>
<br>
Merz to Émigré and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the
Twentieth<br>
Century, by Steven Heller<br>
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens<br>
<br>
Primitivism and Twentieth-century Art: A Documentary History, Jack
Flam and<br>
Miriam Deutch, eds.<br>
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell<br>
<br>
Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal, By Joe Nickell<br>
Reviewed by Michael Punt<br>
<br>
The 17th Annual Conference of the Society for Literature and
Science,<br>
Austin, Texas, 23-26 October, 2003<br>
Reviewed by Michael Punt<br>
<br>
Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by M. Livingstone<br>
Reviewed by Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
VISION AND ART: THE BIOLOGY OF SEEING<br>
<br>
by Margaret Livingstone, Harry N. Abrams, NY, 2002. ISBN:
0-8109-0406-3.<br>
<br>
Reviewed by Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green, assistant professor of art
education,<br>
Director Distance Education, School of Art, East Carolina
University.<br>
Greenville, NC 27858, U.S.A.<br>
bickleygreenc@mail.ecu.edu<br>
<br>
<br>
*Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing*, by Margaret Livingstone,
a<br>
neurobiologist at Harvard University, does not lead the reader to
the<br>
meaning of the marks of artists, but rather to consider the
commonalties of<br>
the visual evidence in painting and neurological processing. Why does
one<br>
set of images from a group of artists, such as the impressionists,
look<br>
similar? Or when we look at the configurations of the marks in
different<br>
drawing compositions, we can see that they all look like lines. They
are<br>
lines on a field. Even when the lines have width, we do not see a
shape.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
When we look at the neurobiological genesis of the forms, we can learn
some<br>
of the neurobiological connections and locations that are active when
we are<br>
drawing or painting. Livingstone clearly discusses how the human
visual<br>
system is subdivided into two parts: the "Where" and the
"What" systems. The<br>
"where" system is responsible for our perception of motion,
space, position,<br>
depth and figure/ground (edge) separation. It cannot detect color.
This is a<br>
fast, identifying system that rapidly locates the presence of
potentially<br>
useful, sometimes threatening information. The What system is
responsible<br>
for form and color. It is much slower and codes for additional
identifying<br>
information.<br>
<br>
Livingstone groups or connects cognitive, visual systems to the<br>
representation of the images from those systems in visual art images.
The<br>
Where system is the primary network that gives the experience of
linear<br>
perspective. Cells in our visual cortex, according to
Livingstone's<br>
description, represent orientation at each point in the visual field.
During<br>
visual processing, neurons become selective for features such as
contours,<br>
corners and curvature. She also suggests that this is the system that
is<br>
primarily employed in cubism. The What system gives the experience of
color<br>
areas. The impressionist images are the result of the artist attending
to<br>
the What system (Livingstone, 2002).<br>
<br>
In summary, we might say that the styles of art are formed by the
artists'<br>
selective attention to the visual experience of a particular
visual<br>
processing area. This neurobiological understanding results in a
paradigm<br>
shift in our understanding of the history of styles in art.
Livingstone<br>
groups and connects the evidence of visual art images to the processes
of<br>
human vision and cognition, thereby suggesting that during certain
periods<br>
of art history, artists who worked in a particular style were all
attending<br>
to a set of similar neurological processes.<br>
<br>
This grouping, or paradigm, is not completely new. It is the
neurobiological<br>
connection and evidence that makes Livingstone's work so important.
Since<br>
the early Renaissance, art theorists and artists have examined the
relation<br>
of visual images and evidence to the visual system. Among the most<br>
celebrated are Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe. In the twentieth century,
the<br>
Russian painters Kandinsky (1912) and Malevich (1915) recognized
that<br>
elements of art, such as line and color, were the result of mental
activity.<br>
It is interesting to realize that in his description of the
development of<br>
personal style in art, Wslfflin (1932) also grouped art images into
two<br>
categories: the painterly and the linear. These are analogous to<br>
Livingstone's What and Where system. Wslfflin based his work on a
systematic<br>
observation of the visual elements represented in the visual
images.<br>
<br>
Much of the literature related to the non-objective art movement
pointed to<br>
the process of image-making as the result of mental processes. Hans
Hoffman<br>
and Josef Albers consciously studied the experience of perception and
how it<br>
could be manipulated through painted images. What Livingstone
contributes to<br>
this discussion is the physical location of some of these
psychological<br>
experiences related to image-making and an awareness of additional<br>
processes.<br>
<br>
Relatively current art literature has also explored the creation of
linear<br>
marks as primary methods of communication of psychological
processes<br>
(Ruberti, 1991). Without the rigorous neuropsychological proof
provided by<br>
Margaret Livingstone, Ruberti groups and categorizes the images of<br>
post-informal art (Jackson Pollock, Remo Bianco, Franco Bemporad,
Pierre<br>
Clerc, George No'l), the images of child art collected by Rhoda
Kellogg<br>
(1955, 1969), and various decorative images from cultures around the
world.<br>
Ruberti labels this collection of images as "protosymbolic"
pictures,<br>
writing that the sources of the images are located in parts of our
brain.<br>
Protosymbolic implies that the marks do not stand for anything. In
fact,<br>
these primary marks do symbolize visual experiences that Livingstone
has<br>
begun to define and her research gives definitive locations of the
sources.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">This is useful to
art educators and other art professionals because it<br>
illuminates aspects of visual communication and suggests new
directions for<br>
the development of visual communication pedagogy and criticism.<br>
<br>
In the epilogue to her book, Livingstone discusses the possibility
that some<br>
styles of learning might be associated with artistic talent.
Additional work<br>
in neurobiology with the focus of examining the teaching/learning<br>
transaction in visual art may reveal some aspects that will have
direct<br>
application in the art class. For example, one might speculate that
since<br>
drawing in three-dimensions directly engages the Where system and
drawing<br>
from memory engages more of the What system, the student will add
different<br>
knowledge (and not inconsequentially, different neural connections) to
his<br>
or her memory when drawing from observation. The task of drawing
from<br>
observation would provide critical information for later drawings to
be done<br>
from memory.<br>
<br>
Perhaps new art curricula would be developed to give all students
more<br>
observational drawing as a means of collecting imagery. One might
also<br>
speculate that non-objective image-making or drawing will utilize in
other<br>
parts of the neural pathway. Educators might also consider the idea
that<br>
increased use or attention to a particular set of neural
operations<br>
increases the ability and efficiency to use that set of operations.
More<br>
drawing in art may lead to more ability and efficiency in all
similar<br>
drawing tasks that might be used in math, science and engineering. As
noted<br>
earlier, drawing from life observation using the Where system will
provide<br>
the store of images that are used in other drawing and visualizing
tasks.<br>
<br>
The last decade of the twentieth century has sometimes been referred
to as<br>
"the decade of the brain." *Vision and Art* is one of the
fruits of this<br>
research, her work and ideas enhancing and extending our appreciation
of<br>
visual art. The implications of the work she has done can extend
beyond the<br>
walls of laboratories and museums into our classrooms to assist us
to<br>
develop more effective educational experiences for all students. One
might<br>
propose that in the next 50 years, art educators will know what
cognitive<br>
processes lead us to judge why a composition "works;" why
one painting is<br>
great and another mundane; and, the subject of this review, why
art<br>
educators might profit from looking at new research in neurobiology.
*Vision<br>
and Art* develops more precise definitions of cognitive processes
utilized<br>
during art-making. Livingstone's work will cause art educators and
general<br>
educators to develop new propositions and theorems about art,
art-making and<br>
the teaching/learning transaction. The work may also provide new tools
in<br>
art analysis and criticism.<br>
<br>
<br>
REFERENCES<br>
<br>
Railing, P., From Science to Systems of Art: On Russian Abstract Art
and<br>
Language 1910/1920 and Other Essays, Artists Bookworks, East Sussex,
England<br>
(1989).<br>
<br>
Rhodes, C., Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, Thames and
Hudson,<br>
London (2000).<br>
<br>
Ruberti, U., Il post-informale in Europa, Rome: Leonardo-DeLuca
Editori<br>
(1991).<br>
<br>
Wölfflin, H., Principles of Art History: The Problem of the
Development of<br>
Style in Later Art History, London, Transl. M. D. Hottinger
(Originally<br>
published as Kunst Geschictliche Grundbegriffe, 1915) (1932).<br>
<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
DEGAS THROUGH HIS OWN EYES<br>
<br>
by Michael F. Marmor, Somogy Editions D'Art, Paris, 2002, 103 pp.,
illus.<br>
Trade, $35.00. ISBN: 2-85056-573-3.<br>
<br>
Reviewed by Amy Ione, The Diatrope Institute, PO Box 12748, Berkeley,
CA<br>
94712-3748 U.S.A.<br>
ione@diatrope.com<br>
<br>
<br>
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) once said that that he was
convinced<br>
that differences in vision are of no importance to the artist. Rather,
in<br>
his view, inner vision determined the nature of an artist's work. This
seems<br>
like an ironic statement when we consider the visual difficulties
that<br>
plagued him throughout his life. Engaging with Degas' actual
visual<br>
situation, as Michael Marmor does in *Degas Through His Own Eyes*,
allows us<br>
to think through Degas' case and to better place him in terms of his
time.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">As an
impressionist, it is easy to characterize the blurring and
loosening<br>
of Degas' style in terms of cultural trends. Marmor convincingly
argues that<br>
to do so is to lose sight of the degree to which the individual and
the<br>
cultural are complementary. In this case, considering the degree to
which<br>
Degas' deteriorating ability to see the world around him influenced
his<br>
conception of his work reminds us that the artist's eyes complement
his<br>
inner vision. Moreover, when we closely study Degas' situation, it
becomes<br>
clear that both the emergence of impressionism and his subnormal
acuity<br>
could account for the loosening of his style as his work matured.<br>
<br>
Generally it is agreed that Degas had a condition called retinopathy.
He<br>
first noticed poor vision in his right eye at the age of 36, when he
found<br>
he could not aim a rifle during the Franco-Prussian War. We know that
he<br>
realized this in the early 1870s, from letters he wrote while in
New<br>
Orleans, where he wrote about weakness in his eye and an inability to
read<br>
and write. Since there are no known measurements of Degas' acuity,
Marmor<br>
uses four sources to make estimates: historical records of
correspondence,<br>
personal remembrances, the shading of lines in Degas' art and
Degas'<br>
handwriting. He also summarizes the key details of Degas' life in
terms of<br>
his paintings and works on paper. As he explains, the precision we
encounter<br>
in Degas' early work is extraordinary, as is the roughness of many of
his<br>
later pieces, which are often done in larger formats. The quotations
from<br>
his letters and friends were the most compelling evidence of the
anomalous<br>
condition.<br>
<br>
Fully recognizing the degree to which a visual artist depends on
visual<br>
analyses when constructing a work, Marmor aids us in connecting
stylistic<br>
trends of impressionism with Degas' physical capabilities. His book is
also<br>
a welcome addition to the literature connecting visual science with
visual<br>
art. It is not just that Marmor demonstrates intersections between art
and<br>
science, he also shows a knack for finding ways to bring the reader
into the<br>
discussion experientially makes *Degas Through His Own Eyes* more than
a<br>
descriptive analysis. For example, I was impressed by the selections
he<br>
chose to first show us visual acuity in general and then to apply
the<br>
computer-simulated examples to Degas' experience. Reproduced examples
of<br>
variations effectively transformed the words into a conceptual grasp
of each<br>
point introduced. Indeed, on closing the book I felt the visuals had
allowed<br>
me to embody how his eyes deteriorated as he aged. The visuals
also<br>
convincingly made the point that Degas himself did not recognize the
degree<br>
to which his deteriorating eyesight changed his work.<br>
<br>
What I liked most about the book was Marmor's highly original
approach. He<br>
effectively brings an ophthalmologist's eye to art, without losing
sight of<br>
the degree to which an artist's creative process includes more than
just the<br>
eyes. We are reminded that cultural context, changing styles and
visual<br>
acuity all influence an artist's oeuvre. Marmor's ability to aid the
reader<br>
in "seeing" how one might clinically assess Degas' visual
disabilities in<br>
clinical terms is a distinctive contribution to the literature in this
area.<br>
<br>
The most useful chapter, "Seeing Art with Blurred Vision,"
simulates how<br>
Degas would have seen his own work as his eyes deteriorated over
time.<br>
Looking at his late work, Marmor also gives a lucid account of how
some of<br>
the features that appear bizarre to the viewer might have appeared<br>
appropriately conceived to the artist. Here, too, the reproductions
allow<br>
Marmor to clinically explain his analysis to the non-specialist.
The<br>
illustrations of blur during the technical summary and when examining
Degas<br>
work are a powerful component in the book. His laying out how this
artist's<br>
visual experience of the world. Pages in which we are shown how a
single<br>
image would look at 20/20, 20/60, 20/100 and 20/200 offer information
that<br>
is hard to conceptualize without an image. Equally compelling are<br>
comparisons of early and late pieces in which Degas uses similar
motifs.</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">For example,
Marmor compares lines and textures found in highly refined<br>
early images of dancers (*The Dancing Lesson*, 1871-1874; *The Dance
Foyer<br>
at the Opera on the Rue Le Peletier*, 1872) with looser and more
expressive<br>
later works (*The Blue Dancers*, 1890 and *Russian Dancers*,
1899).<br>
<br>
Still, on finishing the book I felt I understood Degas' condition more
than<br>
the pathos that no doubt accompanied the need to adjust to the
pronounced<br>
physical changes. Nor does this survey does not encourage us to ask to
what<br>
degree the artist might have been utilizing his failing vision
toward<br>
artistic ends. In addition, even though the visual loss was
optical in<br>
nature, the book did not seem to encourage us to reflect on whether a
sense<br>
of mist and aura might have also been something Degas wanted to
capture in<br>
the paintings.<br>
<br>
One valuable component Marmor does include is a summary of artists who
had<br>
known visual disorders. As the author explains, failing capabilities
are not<br>
unique to Degas. Other artists who are often mentioned when this topic
is<br>
introduced include Rembrandt, Titian, Monet and Cézanne. Monet, for
example,<br>
had cataracts that significantly interfered with his work from
1920-1923. It<br>
is said that his visual acuity had fallen to 20/200 at one point. Yet
after<br>
surgery, when his eyesight improved markedly, he reworked many of
the<br>
canvases from earlier years. I was sorry that Marmor did not balance
these<br>
examples with a paragraph or two on El Greco, whose elongated studies
are no<br>
longer said to derive from astigmatism.<br>
<br>
Exceptional as this book is, it is unfortunate that the author did
not<br>
include a chapter on Degas' sculpture. We not only know that his
eyesight<br>
deteriorated as he matured, we also know that he turned increasingly
to<br>
sculpture in his latter years. Since it is well documented that
tactile<br>
sensitivity increases with the loss of visual acuity, the book would
have<br>
benefited from some discussion of this aspect of Degas' working
process.<br>
Touch is briefly mentioned in a Halevy account of Degas, but
overall<br>
receives little exposure throughout the text. Also, in terms of
process, it<br>
seems Degas' working relationship with photography should have
been<br>
included. His enthusiasm with the medium influenced his motifs, as
the<br>
recent exhibition "The Artist and the Camera: Degas to
Picasso"<br>
demonstrated. Reading through the book, I wondered if his
photographic<br>
documents might offer some insight into how Degas coped with his
failing<br>
vision. Finally, I wish the book had included an index.<br>
<br>
In summary, *Degas Through His Own Eyes* is a book that underscores
that<br>
theories about art often underplay the degree to which a visual artist
sees<br>
the work through his or her own eyes. A thin book, filled with
first-rate<br>
reproductions, this essay successfully conveys what Degas may have
seen as<br>
he worked. To Marmor's credit, reproductions are scaled so that we are
able<br>
to get a sense of size/scale relationships. Non-specialists will find
the<br>
book accessible. Like Degas scholars, they will find much to ruminate
on in<br>
each chapter.<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
AMBIGUITY IN ART AND IN THE BRAIN<br>
<br>
Public lecture by Semir Zeki, Centre for the History of Science,
Technology<br>
and Medicine, Manchester University, Manchester, U.K.<br>
30th October, 2003<br>
<br>
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell<br>
pepperell@ntlword.com<br>
<br>
<br>
Commercial Ambiguity: "Use Dr. _____ Sachets de Toilette, and
mothers and<br>
daughters will look like sisters." Gentlewoman -(cited in
*Punch*, October<br>
1907)<br>
<br>
With new art historical work being published on ambiguous
"potential images"<br>
[1], and the hybrid discipline of neuroaesthetics becoming more
widely<br>
recognized as a specific strand in the larger debates about art
and<br>
consciousness [2], I was intrigued to learn what one of the
leading<br>
proponents of neuroaesthetics, Semir Zeki, had to say about the
neurological<br>
basis of ambiguity. The exploitation of ambiguity has been a
deliberate<br>
artistic strategy, not only amongst modern and contemporary
practitioners<br>
but throughout the pre-modern world and across many different
cultures.<br>
Sometimes ambiguities have been presented as a kind of amusement
or</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">curiosity (as in
certain optical devices, or the quote above) and sometimes<br>
as a way of profoundly affecting the viewer, resisting stasis and<br>
multiplying perceptual and conceptual possibilities (as in analytic
cubist<br>
paintings or Vermeer's enigmatic domestic interiors).<br>
<br>
Zeki's contribution is to attempt an account of artistic ambiguity
from a<br>
neurological standpoint, drawing on his own extensive research into
color<br>
constancy and the nature of visual perception. He is keen from the
outset to<br>
situate his analysis within the context of consciousness studies, and
in<br>
particular to stress his theory of "microconsciousness." In
contrast to<br>
those who regard conscious experience as singular and unified, Zeki
proposes<br>
a model in which the various functionally specialized areas of the
brain<br>
(such as those responsible for color perception or motion perception)
in<br>
themselves constitute regions of conscious activity needing no
higher<br>
interpretation. The impression we have of an immediate holistic
conscious<br>
experience is in fact illusory given that, as Zeki has shown
experimentally,<br>
we see color a fraction of a second before we see motion, even though
a<br>
moving red bus seems to form a perceptual unity. Over longer time
frames<br>
(greater than one millisecond), such temporally distributed events
form a<br>
"macroconscious" state, which might be further modulated by
those higher<br>
conscious states conditioned by culture and language, ultimately
generating<br>
the kind of conscious awareness we associate with our everyday
general<br>
activity.<br>
<br>
Even though these higher conscious processes are prone to error,
by<br>
misconstruing the reality of what is present in the world, the
functionally<br>
specialized areas cannot in themselves be fooled into seeing what is
not<br>
there. The perception of color, for example, can never be ambiguous
because<br>
color is nothing but a product of functionally specialized brain
regions. As<br>
Newton had already pointed out, there is no color "out there"
in the world<br>
for us to see, only variations in the frequency of electromagnetic
radiation<br>
that we experience in a chromatic register.<br>
<br>
Although many perceptual processes result in visual experiences that
we<br>
cannot consciously influence (such as color), there are other kinds
of<br>
visual phenomena that are subject to cognitive contingencies -
ambiguous<br>
images being prime examples. In the familiar Necker cube or
Schroeder<br>
staircase (examples from Zeki's lecture can be found at<br>
<u>http://turner.stanford.edu/art/zeki_images/</u>) we are able to
some extent to<br>
determine the apparent orientation of the object, which lies in one of
two<br>
directions. (I would also suggest it is possible to see other kinds
of<br>
orientations, but for the purposes of this review I will accept
the<br>
convention that there are two). In such cases, Zeki argues, the
functionally<br>
specialized visual areas (those responsible for recognizing lines
and<br>
angles) draw upon other brain processes, notably those concerned with
memory<br>
and experience, to produce a cognitive interpretation containing
spatial<br>
information that is actually absent in the image. It is this
cognitive<br>
interpretation that is prone to vacillate between the ambiguous
readings,<br>
but which is also subject to some degree of conscious control insofar
as we<br>
can force ourselves to see one orientation or the other.<br>
<br>
For Zeki, this way of understanding ambiguity differs markedly from
its<br>
dictionary definition as "doubtful" or "uncertain."
On the contrary, each of<br>
the possible interpretations is, for the viewer, an utter certainty,
albeit<br>
a certainty that can change from one moment to the next. The
microconscious<br>
brain region associated with any particular perceptual state gains a
kind of<br>
sovereignty over the moment of experience; if only for a given time
it<br>
dominates or occupies the cognitive high ground. This then is what
Zeki<br>
terms the "neurological definition of ambiguity", the
evolutionary rationale<br>
which, he claims, is the inherent survival advantage in flexibility
of<br>
interpretation.<br>
<br>
Applying these principles directly to the analysis of art, one finds
cases<br>
from across art history (and Zeki concentrates almost exclusively on
the</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">traditional
European canon) in which artists leave open or unresolved<br>
certain parts of the work in order that the viewer (or indeed,
listener) can<br>
more freely interpret. Although demanding greater cognitive resources,
this<br>
rewards with greater semantic richness. The "unfinished"
marble carvings of<br>
Michelangelo and the Belvedere Torso are exemplary cases.<br>
<br>
Despite the fact that the thesis is not particularly
ground-shifting,<br>
certainly to many aestheticians or psychologists of art, it does have
the<br>
advantage of being supported by some robust physical data. It also
raises<br>
some fascinating philosophical questions about the nature of reality
as<br>
constituted by the brain. I raised some of these questions in a
later<br>
discussion with Professor Zeki, and in particular I asked him about
the<br>
assertion he made during the course of the lecture to the effect
that<br>
"ambiguity is a property of the brain and not of the external
world." This,<br>
I felt, not only presupposes an essential rupture between brain and
world,<br>
but also might suggest a relegation of the role of the art object
itself in<br>
the production of the ambiguous effect. He replied by stressing
the<br>
evolutionary imperatives that must have formed our perceptual
apparatus,<br>
especially the fact that the brain is so selective in what it chooses
to<br>
recognize as it searches for what he calls "constancies,"
i.e. patterns,<br>
regularities and invariant forms. In doing so it discards, or simply
fails<br>
to register mountains of other data that is not essential to the
conduct of<br>
the organism. Part of this inherent efficiency lies in our very
capacity for<br>
interpretation, which allows us to evaluate possible states of the
world<br>
that may not easily be determined - at least before it's too late.
So, for<br>
example, a wary smile from a potential adversary might be a benign<br>
invitation or a concealed threat. So it seems that the brain reflects
the<br>
potential ambiguity of the world, but moreover allows us to negotiate
it<br>
with the benefit of our acquired experience.<br>
<br>
One further statement made in the lecture caught my attention, the
claim<br>
that the "brain can accommodate contradictions." He was
referring<br>
specifically to Johann Winkelmann's description of classical sculpture
as<br>
carrying an essentially contradictory meaning, at once violent,
aggressive,<br>
turbulent and at the same time sublime, composed and static. This<br>
contradictory ambiguity, as Zeki claims, can be held by us as an
aesthetic<br>
whole, and is manifest in works like the Belvedere Torso. But this
raised in<br>
my mind the equally intriguing possibility that, in contradiction
to<br>
Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction, Zeki's neurological
evidence<br>
might offer grounds for the naturalization of a dialectic approach,
one in<br>
which contradictory states are accommodated simultaneously without
the<br>
necessity for resolving them one way or the other. He responded by<br>
distinguishing between two modes of neurological time, the very short
(less<br>
that one millisecond) in which possibilities are "collapsed"
into one<br>
orientation or another, and longer time frames (over one millisecond)
in<br>
which various and contradictory orientations might be accommodated as
the<br>
possibilities "flip-flop" from one to another.<br>
<br>
There is little doubt that Zeki's work in this field could contribute
to our<br>
scientific understanding of the nature of art and, indeed, of
perception and<br>
consciousness. He is clear that art, science and philosophy are<br>
epistemologically convergent, but seems to have difficulty persuading
his<br>
colleagues in the scientific community of the value of taking
artist's<br>
investigations into perceptual behavior seriously. Equally, from
the<br>
artistic standpoint one is entitled to be critical of approaches that
seek<br>
to reduce complex sensory and cultural phenomena to neurological
processes,<br>
although such processes are inordinately complex in themselves. But
there is<br>
certainly an intrinsic value in sharing ideas and stretching
methodological<br>
boundaries, even if that means both science and art have to examine
their<br>
own working assumptions. One perceptive audience member in the
lecture<br>
asked, in response to Zeki's claim that art and science
were</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">indistinguishable,
"Does that mean science is ambiguous?" It was heartening<br>
that his reply was a cautious affirmation.<br>
<br>
<br>
NOTES<br>
<br>
1. D. Gamboni, *Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in<br>
Modern Art*. London: Reaktion Books (2002) (reviewed online in
Leonardo<br>
Reviews, July 2003).<br>
<br>
2. S. Zeki, *Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain*.
Oxford:<br>
Oxford University Press (1999). Reviewed online in Leonardo Reviews,
May<br>
2003.<br>
<br>
______________________________________________________________________<br
>
<br>
<span
></span>
______________________________<br>
<span
></span>
| <span
></span
> <span
></span> |<br>
<span
></span>
| LEONARDO
ABSTRACTS |<br>
<span
></span>
|
SERVICE
|<br>
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></span>
|______________________________|<br>
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></span>__<br>
<br>
<br>
LABS is a listing of Masters and Ph.D. theses in the
art/science/technology<br>
field, for the benefit of scholars and practitioners. LEA also
maintains a<br>
discussion list open only to faculty in the field. Students interested
in<br>
contributing and faculty wishing to join this list should contact<br>
leo@mitpress.mit.edu.<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
AUTHOR<br>
Fatima J. Lasay<br>
fats@up.edu.ph<br>
<br>
LANGUAGES FAMILIAR TO THE AUTHOR<br>
Filipino, English, Spanish<br>
<br>
THESIS TITLE<br>
"Phase Space Portraits of the Nuestra Señora delos Dolores of
Baclayon<br>
Church, Bohol"<br>
<br>
ABSTRACT<br>
This thesis investigates a contemporary idol-making that uses the<br>
mathematical concept of recurrence plots to express the magical
identity<br>
that exists between sacred entities and perceptible form. This
thesis<br>
presents ways by which the use of the mathematical concept of
recurrence<br>
plots have assisted in determining the coloring of patterns and the
design<br>
of planar symmetry for three-phase space portraits of the Dolorosa,
a<br>
nineteenth-century Spanish colonial sculpture. By digitization, the
additive<br>
color signals of an image of the Dolorosa were processed to yield
patterns<br>
by which symmetries were motivated. This study provides a new method
for<br>
pattern formation that artists can utilize where aesthetics and
mathematics<br>
converge using analog and digital studio materials and processes.
Recurrence<br>
plots and the use of software that explore their importance as
visual<br>
qualitative analysis tools deserve further investigation by artists
who seek<br>
new modes of creating new symbols.<br>
<br>
KEYWORDS<br>
recurrence plots, religious sculpture, dynamical systems, glass
engraving,<br>
giliding, Philippine religious art<br>
<br>
YEAR PUBLISHED/EXAMINED<br>
2002<br>
<br>
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF THESIS<br>
English<br>
<br>
COPYRIGHT OWNERSHIP<br>
Fatima Lasay<br>
<br>
THESIS SUPERVISOR<br>
Santiago Albano Pilar, University of the Philippines, College of Fine
Arts,<br>
Graduate Program Division<br>
<br>
UNIVERSITY/PROGRAM AFFLIATIONS<br>
University of the Philippines<br>
<br>
THESIS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST FROM<br>
Main Library, Gonzales Hall, University of the Philippines, Diliman,
Quezon<br>
City 1101, Philippines<br>
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| ISAST
NEWS |<br>
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IN MEMORIAM: FORMER *LEONARDO* EDITOR AND UNESCO *COURIER* EDITOR IN
CHIEF,<br>
SANDY KOFFLER<br>
<br>
<br>
On 11 November, 2003, Sandy Koffler passed away in Paris at the age of
86.<br>
Koffler was the founder and editor in chief until 1977 of the
UNESCO<br>
*Courier* magazine, published in 35 languages until 2001. Sandy
Koffler met<br>
*Leonardo* founder Frank Malina in 1947 at the inception of UNESCO,
where<br>
Malina was helping set up the UNESCO science program and Koffler
established<br>
*Courier*; Their deep and uninterrupted friendship lasted over 30
years of<br>
hectic discussions, shared enthusiasms and mutual encouragement.
Malina left<br>
UNESCO to devote his time as an artist and pioneer in kinetic art and
later<br>
the establishment of the *Leonardo* journal.<br>
<br>
The sudden death of Malina in 1981 threw the immediate future of the
journal</font></div>
<div><font face="Courier" size="+1" color="#000000">into some doubt;
it was then that Koffler offered his editing experience to<br>
assure the continuation of *Leonardo* and served as editor in chief
during<br>
1981/1982, until the *Leonardo* editorial offices were moved to
San<br>
Francisco State University, where they are still headquartered.
Koffler and<br>
Malina were part of a generation that helped rebuild world
institutions<br>
after World War II; Koffler dedicated his life to promoting
international<br>
understanding and making known the world heritage and developments
in<br>
education, science and culture. Koffler is survived by his wife
Pauline<br>
Koffler, who also served for many years as a corresponding editor
of<br>
*Leonardo*. The Leonardo network mourns the departure of a friend,
colleague<br>
and kindred spirit who contributed though his work to the creation of
a<br>
saner world based on international collaboration and dialogue.<br>
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<br>
IN MEMORIAM: HONORARY *LEONARDO* EDITOR AND HOLOGRAPHY PIONEER,
STEPHEN<br>
BENTON<br>
<br>
Stephen A. Benton, inventor of the rainbow hologram and a pioneer in
medical<br>
imaging and fine arts holography, died of brain cancer at
Massachusetts<br>
General Hospital on Sunday, 9 November, 2003. He was 61. Benton was
director<br>
of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) and an honorary
editor<br>
of *Leonardo*.<br>
<br>
Benton delighted in both the scientific and aesthetic applications
of<br>
holography. He held 14 patents in optical physics, photography and<br>
holography, and his own works in holography have been displayed at
the<br>
Museum of Holography in New York. He described holography as a
true<br>
"intersection of art, science and technology." While he
considered viewing a<br>
good hologram to be a "magical experience," the rigor and
depth of his<br>
research yielded far more than visual wizardry. Holograms have been
used to<br>
create three-dimensional composites of CT and MRI scans that have been
very<br>
useful in medical diagnosis.<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
<br>
<br>
NEW SIMPLE URLS FOR LEONARDO WEBSITES<br>
<br>
The Leonardo websites now feature easy-to-remember URLs. The
Leonardo<br>
top-level site can always be found at www.leonardo.info. Now, our<br>
publications housed by the MIT server also have simple web addresses.
You<br>
can find *Leonardo Music Journal* at lmj.mit.edu, *Leonardo
Electronic<br>
Almanac* at lea.mit.edu, Leonardo Book Series at lbs.mit.edu, and
Leonardo<br>
Reviews at leonardoreviews.mit.edu.<br>
<br>
_____________________________<br>
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<br>
LEONARDO ANNOUNCES SPACEARTS: THE SPACE AND THE ARTS DATABASE<br>
<u>HTTP://WWW.SPACEARTS.INFO<br>
<br>
</u>Leonardo/OLATS and the Ours Foundation have joined forces to
create a<br>
database about space art, documenting the works of artists who, since
the<br>
mid-nineteenth Century, have taken outer space as a theme, subject or
object<br>
for their creations. When completed, this database will host over a
thousand<br>
entries. Artists are invited to submit their work for inclusion in
the<br>
database. Entry forms to submit your artworks are available online
at<br>
www.spacearts.info.<br>
<br>
The Spacearts database project is funded by the European Space Agency
and is<br>
co-sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics; Advisors to
the<br>
project include:<br>
·<x-tab> </x-tab>IAAA (International Association
of Astronomical Artists) - www.iaaa.org<br>
·<x-tab> </x-tab>MIR, an
international consortium of institutions with space art<br>
activities. MIR includes: Leonardo/OLATS, Arts Catalyst, V2, Projekt
Atol<br>
(Slovenia), and the Multimedia Complex of Actual Art (Russia).<br>
·<x-tab> </x-tab>Maison d'Ailleurs/Museum of Science Fiction,
Yverdon - www.ailleurs.ch<br>
<br>
For 35 years, *Leonardo* has documented the work of artists involved
in<br>
space exploration; It has co-sponsored six Space and the Arts
workshops and<br>
promoted the interaction of artists, scientists and engineers involved
in<br>
space. The SpaceartS database can be found at www.spacearts.info.
Further<br>
information can be found at: Leonardo/OLATS: Space Arts Workshops<br>
documentation at<u> http://www.olats.org/setF3.html</u> or
Leonardo/ISAST: Space<br>
Arts Working Group at<br>
<u>http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/space.html<br
>
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| <span
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|
CREDITS |<br>
| <span
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|___________________|<br>
<br>
<br>
Nisar Keshvani: LEA Editor-in-Chief<br>
Michael Punt: Leonardo Reviews Editor-in-Chief<br>
Patrick Lambelet: LEA Managing Editor<br>
Guest Editor: Judy Malloy<br>
Andre Ho: Web Concept and Design Consultant<br>
Roger Malina: Leonardo Executive Editor<br>
Stephen Wilson: Chair, Leonardo/ISAST Web Committee<br>
<br>
Editorial Advisory Board:<br>
Irina Aristarkhova, Roy Ascott, Michael Naimark, Craig Harris,
Julianne<br>
Pierce<br>
<br>
Gallery Advisory Board:<br>
Mark Amerika, Paul Brown, Choy Kok Kee, Steve Dietz, Fatima Lasay,
Kim<br>
Machan<br>
<br>
fAf-LEA corresponding editors:<br>
Ricardo Dal Farra, Elga Ferreira, Young Hae-Chang, Fatima Lasay,
Lee<br>
Weng Choy, Jose-Carlos Mariategui, Marcus Neusetter, Elaine Ng and
Marc Voge<br>
<br>
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|
LEA |<br>
| WORLD WIDE WEB |<br>
|
ACCESS |<br>
|___________________|<br>
<br>
<br>
For over a decade, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has thrived<br>
as an international peer-reviewed electronic journal and web<br>
archive, covering the interaction of the arts, sciences and<br>
technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and<br>
critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many<br>
contributors are younger scholars and artists, and there is a
slant<br>
towards shorter, less academic texts.<br>
<br>
Contents include Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt,<br>
Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses,<br>
curated Galleries of current new media artwork, and special<br>
issues on topics ranging from Artists and Scientists in times of<br>
War, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media.<br>
<br>
LEA is accessible using the following URL:<u> http://lea.mit.edu<br>
<br>
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_________________<br>
|
LEA |<br>
| PUBLISHING |<br>
| INFORMATION |<br>
|_________________|<br>
<br>
Editorial Address:<br>
Leonardo Electronic Almanac<br>
Studio 3a, 35 Place du Bourg-de-four<br>
1204 Geneva, Switzerland<br>
<br>
E-mail:<u> <lea@mitpress.mit.edu></u><br>
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<br>
Copyright (2003), Leonardo, the International Society for the<br>
Arts, Sciences and Technology<br>
<br>
All Rights Reserved.<br>
<br>
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by:<br>
<br>
The MIT Press Journals, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142<br>
U.S.A.<br>
<br>
Re-posting of the content of this journal is prohibited without<br>
permission of Leonardo/ISAST, except for the posting of news and<br>
events listings which have been independently received.<br>
Leonardo/ISAST and the MIT Press give institutions permission to<br>
offer access to LEA within the organization through such<br>
resources as restricted local gopher and mosaic services. Open<br>
access to other individuals and organizations is not permitted.<br>
<br>
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<br>
< Ordering Information ><br>
<br>
<u
>http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27<span
></span>&mode=p<br>
<br>
</u>Leonardo Electronic Almanac is free to Leonardo/ISAST members
and<br>
to subscribers to the journal Leonardo for the 2003 subscription<br>
year. The rate for Non-Leonardo individual subscribers is $35.00,<br>
and for Non-Leonardo institutional subscribers the rate is<br>
$77.00. All subscriptions are entered for the calendar year only.<br>
<br>
All orders must be prepaid by check (must be drawn against U.S.<br>
bank in U.S. funds), money order, MasterCard, VISA, or American<br>
Express. Where student subscription rates are available, a<br>
verification of matriculant status is required.<br>
<br>
Note: In order to place orders electronically, you must be using<br>
a browser that is SSL-compliant. If you are unable to open the<br>
ordering link listed above, then your browser does not support<br>
the security features necessary to use this interface. Please use<br>
the addresses below to submit your order. Address all orders and<br>
inquiries to:<br>
<br>
Circulation Department<br>
MIT Press Journals<br>
Five Cambridge Center<br>
Cambridge, MA 02142-1407 USA<br>
TEL: (617) 253-2889 (M-F, 9-5)<br>
FAX: (617) 577-1545 (24 hours)<br>
<br>
For questions contact:<br>
journals-orders@mit.edu (subscriptions)</font></div>
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________________<br>
| <span
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| ADVERTISING |<br>
|________________|<br>
<br>
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published monthly -- individuals<br>
and institutions interested in advertising in LEA, either in the<br>
distributed text version or on the World Wide Web site should
contact:<br>
<br>
Leonardo Advertising Department<br>
425 Market St., 2nd Floor,<br>
San Francisco, CA 94105, U.S.A.<br>
Tel: (415)-405-3335<br>
Fax: (415)-405-7758<br>
E-mail: isast@sfsu.edu<br>
More Info:<br>
<u
>http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEA<span
></span>ads<br>
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____________________<br>
| <span
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| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |<br>
|____________________|<br>
<br>
LEA acknowledges with thanks the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for
their<br>
support to Leonardo/ISAST and its projects.<br>
<br>
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< End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 11 (12) ><br>
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