[LEAuthors] Leonardo Electronic Almanac vol.11 no.12 December 2003
MIT Press
lea at mail-mitpress.mit.edu
Sat Dec 20 01:09:45 EST 2003
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Leonardo Electronic Almanac volume 11, number 12, December 2003
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ISSN #1071-4391
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EDITORIAL
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< Women, Art and Technology, by Judy Malloy >
FEATURES
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< Stock Market Skirt and New Directions, by Nancy Paterson >
< FleshMotor, by Dawn Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio >
< Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication
Project, by Kathy Rae Huffman >
< Video Arte Povera: Lo-Fi Rules!, by Valerie Soe >
< Laboratory for Ephemeral Investigations - Interactive Robotic
Sculptures, by Jennifer Hall and Blyth Hazen >
LEONARDO REVIEWS
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< Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, reviewed by Cynthia Ann
Bickley-Green >
< Degas Through His Own Eyes, reviewed by Amy Ione >
ISAST NEWS
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< In Memoriam: Sandy Koffler >
< In Memoriam: Stephen Benton >
< New, simpler URLs for Leonardo websites >
< Leonardo Announces Spacearts: The Space and the Arts Database >
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| EDITORIAL |
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WOMEN, ART AND TECHNOLOGY
Judy Malloy, jmalloy at mail.well.com
This issue of *Leonardo Electronic Almanac* provides an introduction to the
newly released book, *Women, Art, and Technology* (MIT Press, 2003, Leonardo
Book Series). Originating over 10 years ago, when I pointed to the need for
more articles by women in *Leonardo*, the book is a comprehensive compendium
that documents the core role of women artists in pioneering and continuing
to shape new media practice. It not only situates computer-mediated work as
a central contemporary art medium, but also includes shapers of new media in
the fields of video, environmental art, information art and the body.
Body, body/mind separation, body/mind amalgamation, body as interface,
female body - the pervasive keyword "body" threads through the narrative -
from Lynn Hershman's article, which documents a progression from her
alternative identity Roberta Breitmore (created in 1971 for a series of
performances), to the body of the "guide" Marion, which serves as in
interface in Hershman's videodisc *Deep Contact*; to Dawn Stoppiello's wired
body in performances by her digital dance theater *Troika Ranch*; to Zoe
Sophia's article, "Contested Futures," in which she writes, "For many women
artists working with digital media, the body's physicality is not
transcended or obsolesced by technology; rather it is a source of poetic
efforts to at once use and counteract the machine's own anti-body logics by
using it as a medium to explore organic or visceral forms." Linda Austin
states that "For me as a choreographer, the fascination with the
'mechanical' is part of my insistence on the ineluctable materiality of the
body - our interface with the physical world it inhabits."
Interactivity - an active relationship between the viewer and the work - is
also a compelling theme that informs much of the work, not only work that is
declaredly interactive, whether it is the user's relationship with "Margo,"
the oppressive mother whose dominating presence becomes unavoidable when
Sara Robert's 1989 interactive installation *Early Programming* is
activated, or the community relationship with Nina Sobell and Emily
Hartzell's *ParkBench* (1993), a network of interactive kiosks that enabled
people in diverse New York City neighborhoods to communicate collaboratively
via the Internet.
Computer graphics artist Diane Fenster, in her chapter "Diane Fenster: The
Alchemy of Vision" (written with Celia Rabinovitch), writes "...I am also a
'window maker' in that my art creates windows through which others look to
see an inner world, and to recognize themselves in that invented space."
Video/performance/installation artist Joan Jonas, speaking of the mirror
imagery in her work, writes "...I could mix the reflections of performers
and audience, thereby bringing all of them into the same time and space of
the performance."
OVERVIEWS
*Women, Art, and Technology*, edited by and with a preface and introduction
by myself, features overviews of the history and foundations of the field by
critic/curator Patric Prince, critic Margaret Morse, artist/educator Sheila
Pinkel, artist/networker Anna Couey and Kathy Brew, artist and former
director of the new media initiative, ThunderGulch. The foreword is written
by Patricia Bentson, managing editor of the *Leonardo Music Journal*.
In her chapter "Women and the Search for Visual Intelligence," Patric Prince
observes that "[w]omen have participated in the computer art and technology
movement from the first decade, learning to speak the language of the
machine as well as enjoying the implementation of ideas, techniques and
experiences derived from its inherent logical involvement." Prince points to
work, beginning in the 1960s, of Collete Bangert, Lillian Schwartz, Vera
Molnar and, in the ensuing decades, Eudice Feder, Copper Giloth, Ruth
Leavitt, Nadia Magnernet-Thalmann, Barbara Nessim, Sonia Landy Sheridan and
many others.
Margaret Morse, beginning with a discussion of pervasive, daily encounters
with interactivity and its relationship to the ways in which artists utilize
interactivity, looks at works such as the CD-ROM, *She Loves It, She Loves
It Not: Women and Technology* (1993), by Christine Tamblyn (with Marjorie
Franklin and Paul Tompkins) and Lynn Hershman's *Lorna* (1980-1984), the
first interactive laser artdisk. Speaking of Agnes Hegedus' *Handsight*,
Morse observes that "Handsight offers a metaphor for perception of a virtual
realm that is not matched to the physical world but rather is a view of the
'mind's eye' or of externalized imagination. At the same time, it exposes
the logic of this construction and does not participate in the illusion. In
this way, the piece both offers and deconstructs interactivity."
Sheila Pinkel documents artists who have focused on some aspect of the body
or environment in their work, including Lynda Benglis, Coco Fusco, Suzanne
Lacy, Robin Lasser, Christina Fernandez, Esther Parada and Barbara T. Smith.
"For over 500 years, women have actively participated in the art-making
practices of their time but have been excluded from history and the system
that acknowledges or communicates their ideas," she concludes. "In the last
30 years, however, women artists have managed to find opportunities to work
together to expand the possibilities of content and for exhibition. They
have seen their works enter the dialogue of their time. The challenge for
women is to continue this intensity of activity, to remain true to the
interior voice that gives veracity and energy to art making, to continue to
lobby for parity and to generate innovative solutions for exhibition and
change."
In "Restructuring Power: Telecommunications Works Produced by Women," Anna
Couey emphasizes the major influence network communications technologies
have had "in shaping individual and cultural perceptions across the planet."
Through interviews with early women network artists including Sherrie
Rabinowitz, Lorri Ann Two Bulls, myself, Karen O'Rourke and Lucia
Grossberger Morales, Couey highlights and preserves an important and
evolving history.
In "Through the Looking Glass," Kathy Brew, who for over 20 years has
followed the intersection of multimedia and contemporary art, reviews the
work of artists working in multimedia, including Laurie Anderson, Mary
Lucier, Maryanne Amacher, Beryl Korot and Toni Dove.
ARTISTS' ARTICLES
*Women, Art and Technology* includes classic *Leonardo* articles by Lynn
Hershman, Pauline Oliveros, Helen and Newton Harrison, Nancy Paterson, Sonya
Rapoport and Steina. These articles ground the development of the medium in
such works as Sonya Rapoport's *Biorhythm* (1981-1983), which incorporated
participants' assessments of their emotional conditions; Lynn Hershman's
*Deep Contact* (1985-1990, programmed by Sara Roberts), which situates
interactivity in the realm of intimacy; and Pauline Oliveros' use of
technology in live performance, which began in the late 1950s.
Interspersed with these *Leonardo* articles are artists' articles that
document the role of female creators in shaping new media art and that were
written expressly for this book. Cecile Le Prado's sound installation, *The
Triangle of Uncertainty* - documented in the article "Sound Installations
and Spatialization" - creates, in her words, a "fictive virtual space" on
the basis of sound recordings made at the southern tip of Ireland, the
western edge of France and the westernmost point of Spain. In essence, the
installation refers to the position of sound in space, constantly chopping
and changing between orientation and uncertainty.
Canadian artist Char Davies discloses the ideas and implementation of her
immersive virtual-reality environments, which, as has been all of her work
of the past 20 years, are grounded in "Nature" as metaphor. Jo Hanson
documents the progression of her work from the use of technology to eco-art.
"Finally," she notes, "I ask questions about the role of technology in a
world facing (or failing to face) ecological crisis, which has the potential
to be reflected in economic and political crises. I have tried to create
work that is practical and visionary, and I offer certain practical and
visionary propositions here."
In "Imagine a Space Filled with Data," German artists/researchers Monika
Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss set forth their collaboratively shaped
communications spaces. "The old metaphors have remained the same: 'Explorer'
or 'Navigator' - the language of the conqueror is apparent to everyone on
the Internet," they write. "As artists, we explore aesthetic strategies of
communication processes to influence and transform the development of the
market for the community of the future."
Other artist contributors include computer graphics artists Rebecca Allen
and Donna Cox; video artists Dara Birnbaum, Judith Barry, and Valerie Soe;
interactive artists Jen Hall and Blyth Hazen and Agnes Hegedus; Net artists
Allucquere Rosanne Stone and Kathy Rae Huffman; biotech artist Nell Tenhaaf;
and choreographer/dancer/musicians Linda Austin and Leslie Ross and Dawn
Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio.
CRITICAL ESSAYS
The book closes with a series of critical essays that compliment the
introductory overviews. Chapter authors are Jaishree Odin (writing about
Shelley Jackson's hyperfiction *Patchwork Girl*); Simone Osthoff, whose
chapter "Brazilian Counterparts: Old Histories and New Designs" documents
the work of Jocy de Oliveira, Marcia X, Lygia Pape and many others; Zoe
Sofia, writing about the work of Australian women, including *VNS Matrix*;
and Mexican critic Martha Burkle Bonecchi, who points out that technology is
not available to many Third World women.
In selecting the work for this book, I acted as an artist who believes in
giving voice to each artist's description of her work. Thus, this editorial
interface does not attempt to twist the multiple approaches in this volume
into one meaning. It merely suggests a few approaches and opens the door to
other approaches that range from Steina's lifelong involvement with video
and installation to Donna Cox's algorithmic art to Pamela Z's translation of
physical movement into sound to Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison's
environmental activist narratives.
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE
This issue of LEA includes two complete articles from the book:
"Fleshmotor," by Dawn Stoppiello and Mark Coniglio and "Video Art Povera:
Lo-Fi Rules!," by Valerie Soe. Also included is part of the article "Face
Settings: An International Co-Cooking and Communication Project," by Kathy
Rae Huffman, and short articles by artists whose work is documented in
longer articles in the book: Nancy Paterson, Jen Hall and Blyth Hazen.
These articles serve as an introduction to *Women, Art and Technology*, a
comprehensive book that includes 36 chapters and documents the work of over
100 artists.
*Women, Art and Technology* is available from MIT Press at
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=D1716CC8-E9CC-4EDA-991B
-40C7EEAE4A56&ttype=2&tid=9905, from Amazon at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262134241/leonardoonlin-20 or from
Booksense.com, your local Independent bookstore's online order service, by
going to http://www.booksense.com and searching under "Find a Book"
The complete table of contents, articles not included in the book, and links
to new works in the field are available on the book's website at
http://www.judymalloy.net/newmedia.
BIOGRAPHY
Electronic narrative pioneer Judy Malloy (http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy)
has been writing hypernarratives since 1986, when she began writing *Uncle
Roger* (a narrative of sex and politics in Silicon Valley) on Arts Com
Electronic Network on the WELL. She is currently the editor of *NYFA
Current*, a publication of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
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STOCK MARKET SKIRT AND NEW DIRECTIONS
by Nancy Paterson
Nancy.Paterson at senecac.on.ca
In the early 1990s, I began working with laserdisc technology and
custom-designed microcontrollers to develop interactive projects such as
*Bicycle TV*, *The Machine in the Garden* and *The Meadow*. In the mid 90s,
my interest turned to Internet-based installations, as the technology had
evolved significantly and become more commonplace since I had first gone
online in 1982.
*Stock Market Skirt*, [1] a project that I began to work on in 1995, was
actually conceived long before the technology was available to realize it.
The concept of controlling the length of a woman's dress by referencing
stock market quotes in real time could only be put into practice as the
Internet evolved to supply data that I could access. Originally, *Stock
Market Skirt* was comprised of a BASIC program using Toronto stock exchange
historical data, which had been donated to the project. With the
transformation of the Internet from an academic resource to more mainstream
entertainment and commercial applications, it was my expectation that it
would only be a matter of time before online trading became accessible
online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In 1995, when I began working on *Stock Market Skirt*, the only financial
resources available online were expensive proprietary subscription services
such as Reuters, Star Data and Bloomberg. By 1998, when *Stock Market Skirt*
went public, I had my choice of sites providing stock quotes, from markets
across the globe.
Stefaan Van Ryssen, writing about the work in *Leonardo Digital Reviews*,
points out that "this work, of course refers to the theories of Desmond
Morris and Helmut Gaus, that women's clothing follows economic activity. In
times of crisis and deflation, hemlines are lowered and colors disappear,
in times of growth and at the height of a business cycle, skirts (and
pants) are getting shorter and clothes more colorful. At the same time, the
work comments on the presence of women as object and consumer in the 'real'
world, while men are absent, hidden by technology and steering the economy
rather than undergoing it" [2].
*Stock Market Skirt* works on many levels, as a cyberfeminist fashion
statement and as the embodiment of the emerging intelligence of the
Internet. Instantly, several message are imprinted on the viewer's
subconscious. This project has the potential to be interactive with the
global flow of information by responding to a dynamic feed of data. We are
not merely voyeurs, watching the hemline quiver, rise and fall. A viewer
might influence the media work by making a call to their broker, to buy (or
sell) shares in whatever company the skirt is currently tracking or this
might be accomplished through online trading. If the stock or composite
being tracked is bought/sold as a result of automatic trade execution, then
*Stock Market Skirt* becomes interactive with the flow of data within the
Internet itself, rather than being interactive through the Internet
as a pipeline or conduit.
The completion of *Stock Market Skirt* allowed me to pursue another
interest, with the development of a fully navigable, multi-storied 3-D
environment titled *The Library* [3]. Whereas *Stock Market Skirt* required
relatively low bandwidth, *The Library* was at the opposite end of the
bandwidth spectrum. A common theme, however, was the re-purposing of online
data; in *The Library*, for example, a updated satellite image of the
Earth's surface from space (taken from NASA's website), updated every five
minutes, is retrieved and used as the texture map for a rotating sphere
(world globe), which is the centerpiece in my 3-D environment. Such
applications hint at the promise of the Internet for true interactivity and
the symmetrical exchange of data.
Further expanding my artistic practice, I have recently produced a short
video entitled *Coppelia* for BRAVO [4]! This dance/robotics project,
produced when I was artist in residence at the School for Communication
Arts, Seneca at York (Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology, Toronto),
utilizes ORAD virtual set technology. This was an opportunity for me to
experiment with choreography and collaboration on the development of an
audio soundtrack. I am currently developing a performance project that will
further explore the potential of Seneca at York's Vicon motion-capture
technology in conjunction with the ORAD.
Another project currently under development is *MULTI: Multiple User Laser
Table Interface*, which will continue to develop the 3-D library environment
as content for a collaborative multi-user tool. Partners for this
development are Dr. Wolfgang Stuerzlinger (Computer Science, York
University) and Dr. Jennifer Jenson (Education, York University).
REFERENCES
1. Nancy Paterson, *Stock Market Skirt*
http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Stock/stock.html
2. Stefaan Van Ryssen, "Review of Mediaworks by Nancy Paterson,
Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, Canada, 2001," Leonardo Digital Reviews,
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/reviews/jan2003/MEDIA_ryssen.ht
ml, January 2003.
3. Nancy Paterson, *The Library*, http://www.thelibrary2.com. The rotunda of
the Canadian Library of Parliament was the inspiration for this 3-D
environment.
4.Nancy Paterson, *Coppelia*,
http://www.vacuumwoman.com/MediaWorks/Coppelia/coppelia.html
BIOGRAPHY
Nancy Paterson (http://www.vacuumwoman.com) is a Toronto-based electronic
media artist working primarily in the field of interactive installations.
She is coordinator of the artist in residence program at the Centre for
Creative Communications and Visiting Artist at the School of Communication
Arts, Seneca at York. She is an instructor at the Ontario College of Art and
Design and facilities coordinator at Charles Street Video in Toronto.
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FLESHMOTOR
Dawn Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio
troika at panix.com
/(SLASH)
When considering how to describe my work here, I am immediately drawn to use
a term that my collaborator Mark Coniglio invented several years ago - < i
>Slash (/) Artist< /i >. The term grew from a time when all of the artists
that we met seemed to describe themselves as a "dancer slash performance
artist," "poet slash technologist slash actor" or some other similar string
of metiers separated by the all-integrating slash. What these people were
trying to say was that they were attempting to hybridize multiple forms into
some-other-thing that they could not, as yet, put words to. This is the way
I have felt as I have attempted to bring my primary metier of dance together
with media and technology for over ten years.
Through this process, my choreography has changed in response to my close
contact with computers and computer-controlled devices. As a choreographer
and dancer, my relationship to the world begins with the work *In Plane*
(1994). This piece was seminal in the development of our thinking about the
relationship of the body to technology as an aesthetic idea, as well as the
technological innovation required to realize it.
We have used many varieties of homemade and commercially available sensing
systems in our performances, but the most sophisticated is MidiDancer. Mark
first had the idea for this device while we were both students at California
Institute of the Arts. He had been inspired by *Hungers* (1989) a
collaboration between his mentor Mort Subotnick and video artist Ed
Emshwiller. In that piece, singer Joan LaBarbara controlled MIDI
synthesizers using a small baton that responded to the way she moved it
through the air. Mark was immediately inspired to attach this device to the
leg of a dancer, but was discouraged by the wires needed to get the
information to the computer. So he envisioned, and shortly thereafter
implemented, a wireless device that would allow a dancer to make music with
the movement of her body.
The first MidiDancer system was built for a collaborative project at CalArts
in which Mark and I took part. The original device was quite primitive,
being made from radio-controlled car transmitters. Attached to each
transmitter were two sensors in the form of metal levers that we taped (at
the cost of much body hair) to our arms and legs. Each sensor measured the
flexion of a joint and sent that information, via the radio transmitter, to
a computer, where it could be used to control music synthesizers.
The piece we made was for four performers, each of whom was wearing two
sensors, one on the elbow and one on the knee (four individual MidiDancer
systems in all). The idea was to give each dancer two sounds to control,
one on each sensor, that would stay the same during the course of the
piece. Our hope in keeping this fixed relationship was to create a kind of
sonic identity for each dancer, which the audience could recognize.
After creating material separately, we came together to work with the
dancers and quickly realized that this one-to-one relationship, one gesture
producing one (and only one) sound, did not make for a rich composition,
either as dance or as music. We came to call this technique the
"bleep-bloop" method, as this is all that the first attempt ended up
being - a series of bleeps and bloops in conjunction with the robotic
choreography required to trigger the system. We were disappointed that the
piece lacked the kind of complexity and subtlety that we had envisioned and
knew right away that we were going to have to try again.
What we did not know at the time was that, in that moment, MidiDancer had
changed the way we thought about composing. In retrospect it should have
been obvious that we had begun to compose for a new and unfamiliar
instrument and that, of course, the artworks that we made with it would be
directly influenced by its nature. For one thing, it was clear that we
could not work in isolation when creating our materials, but instead
needed to work collaboratively on both sound and movement. We did not know
the instrument well enough to imagine the outcome, and we needed to really
see and hear it happen. Also, we found that the physical gestures required
to play the instrument were not inherently interesting or meaningful as
choreography. To understand what I mean, imagine for a moment that you are
watching a great violinist play. You may choose to watch her fingers move
along the neck of the instrument, but I don't think that you would expect
those same finger movements to give you any dramatic information about the
piece. We were faced with a challenge: the dancer needed to simultaneously
make both meaning and music with the same movements. This is a problem that
became even more complicated as we added other media into the mix.
++(PLUS PLUS)
In the summer of 1990, Mark and I first collaborated with Kit Galloway and
Sherrie Rabinowitz at The Electronic Cafe, their performance space/lab in
Los Angeles. In this pre-Internet world, Kit and Sherrie pioneered the use
of various kinds of telecommunications links to create live artworks
between distantly located sites. At this time one of the most common ways
for them to get video between cities was a slow-scan, hand-held,
black-and-white video phone. Mark's and my experience with that device would
begin our next series of insights regarding the combination of dance and
media.
*Tactile Diaries*, our first collaboration with Kit and Sherrie, had
performers at The Electronic Cafe and the New York University television
studios in Manhattan performing together using slow-scan video phones and
telephone-grade audio connections. One section of the piece was a solo that
I performed using the MidiDancer. In this section, Mark programmed the
software to trigger the videophone when I made a particular shape with my
body. It would capture an image of my performance in Los Angeles and then
send that image to New York. At the other end, the still image would arrive
on a television monitor, slowly scanning in from top to bottom over a
period of five to ten seconds. I carefully chose all of the movements that
would trigger the video phone because these would be the only
representation of the dance that the New York audience would see. I became
very interested in selecting body shapes that, when seen in sequence in New
York, would create a different narrative experience from the one that the
live audience would have in Los Angeles. It seemed essential to find a way
to have the choppy, low-bandwidth video express something different than
what the full-bandwidth (live) dancer could provide. What was important
about this approach was that it emphasized what was distinctive about the
technology and provided a different way of seeing the dance.
The use of video in this piece introduced me to a new theatrical element
(i.e., beyond sound) that could be manipulated with the MIDI data coming
from the MidiDancer. MIDI was no longer just an acronym for Musical
Instrument Digital Interface or simply a word in the name of our device,
but now represented to me a pathway that would allow my gestures to control
basically any media device.
My understanding of how extensive these pathways could become expanded
further when I saw Steina Vasulka during a lecture/demonstration at the
Electronic Cafe some months after *Tactile Diaries*. I was watching Steina
use her MIDI violin to "play" a computer-controlled laser disc that
contained video images of water, fire, bubbling mud and other natural
environments. The MIDI information was used to randomly access specific
frames on the disc, to play forward or backward at varying speeds or to
freeze on a frame with no distortion of the image. The flexibility of the
laser disc, as demonstrated by Steina, was extraordinary, and Mark and I
were instantly taken by its possibilities.
Soon after this demonstration, these influences came together as we
developed the initial plan for what would become *In Plane*. Our idea was to
make a videotape of me dancing, transfer it to laser disc and then have me
control the playback of that image using the MidiDancer. We wanted to
create a duet between me and a "virtual" me stored on the laser disc. This
duet was appealing because it emphasized something that was of growing
importance to us: the duality between the fleshy body and another body,
which we didn't have a name for at the time, but which we later came to call
the electronic body. The corpus and its electronic doppelganger became
characters that would find their way into several of our future works.
*(ASTERISK)
As I mentioned earlier, *In Plane* was a seminal work for us. It was not
only our most technologically complicated piece, but it also became the
cauldron in which we synthesized the theoretical paths that we had been on
for the past four years.
The piece was to be a competition between the corpus and its electronic
doppelganger; a body that bleeds, sweats, gets tired and feels pain versus a
body made of light, which is not bound by time, space or gravity. I became
the fleshy presence, while my video image, stored on the laser disc, was my
electronic counterpart. Which was the more powerful and beautiful presence?
The flesh and blood woman exerting herself to an exquisite extreme with the
potential of physical failure at any moment? Or was it the ethereal video
body who flies so gracefully through space, can freeze in mid-air and never
tires? This was to be the essential question posed by the piece.
On a technical level, we wanted my gestures to control the musical score,
the playback of images from a laser disc, the movement of a robotic video
projector and the theatrical lighting for the piece. We realized that this
was ambitious, but we wanted to see how far we could go. We wanted to find
out how much one performer could play.
We began our work by collaborating on choreographic and musical materials
that echoed the traits of the two bodies. The music, representing the
electronic, was comprised solely of sampled sounds of machines, while the
choreography, clearly representing the corporeal side of the equation, was
constructed from a fundamentally human movement vocabulary consisting of
running, jumping, falling and rolling. These movements were consistent with
my stylistic leanings. I am not too concerned with taking a gesture through
all of the compositional gymnastics required to expose its many
possibilities for interpretation. Instead, I want to guide the audience
through the energy of the movement itself. I want to see the relationship
of the performers on stage. Of course, *In Plane* is a solo if you only
count the number of fleshy bodies on stage. But it is actually an ensemble
piece because I consider video, sound, robotic set pieces - whatever -
simply to be additional performers. The beauty of using the MidiDancer
system was that the notion of a duet with the video was much more than a
conceptual idea, but was in fact the result of a tangible physical
relationship: body-sensor-video.
Furthermore, like dancing with a live performer, this was not a one-way
street. During the process of creating and rehearsing *In Plane*, I became
acutely aware of how information would flow back in the other direction. I
would see the video move in response to my gestural control and my dancing
would be influenced by my "playing." Mark prefers the term "reactive" over
"interactive" because he claims that it is more true to the actual flow of
information, his point being that the computer does not have the
intelligence of a human being and cannot interact in the truest sense of
that word. As a performer who feels the feedback loop that I describe
above, I feel certain that I am interacting with something, even if the
modulation of image and sound originates solely with my own gestures.
In setting out to create these kinds of performative relationships, one
thing was readily apparent: the radio-control car transmitter and dual
sensor design was not going to allow us to make the piece we had in mind.
Mark created a new MidiDancer with a significantly smaller transmitter box
and eight thin, flexible plastic sensors that could be placed at almost any
joint on the body. When I first danced in this new costume, the difference
in my movement was immediately obvious. It was less restricted and more
fluid because the new design allowed it. We realized how much the sensory
device imposes its own limitations on the choreography; every instrument
needs to played in a particular way to get it to sound, and the MidiDancer
was no different.
Traditional instruments respond to gestural input in a consistent way and
the audience can generally come to understand that relationship, even if
the instrument is unfamiliar to them. Based on this traditional model, we
felt a certain pull to establish a clear relationship between my movement
and the media I was controlling. But we both remembered how stifling this
fixed relationship was in the first MidiDancer performance we had given at
CalArts. Further, this time, I wanted the choreography to serve my aesthetic
intention first and the requirements of the sensory device second,
something that was already easier to accomplish with the more sensitive
MidiDancer. So, we chose to allow the possibility of a joint changing its
function during the course of the performance. For example, in the first
section of the piece the angle of my elbow directly controlled the volume
of a rhythmic musical phrase. In the next section that same elbow movement
would trigger the playback of a video sequence. We chose to sacrifice the
audience's clear understanding of the instrument in order keep our
expressive options open.
In the end, there were a myriad number of lessons learned as we made *In
Plane*. Each day felt a bit like my first dance class, overwhelming because
I was not yet familiar enough with the instrument to keep track of all of
its parts. But perhaps the most important experience for us both came late
in the creation process, when the elements had begun to coalesce. There was
one rehearsal in particular in which I felt that the laser disc images were
not just some external object to which I was weakly linked via some sensory
interface. Instead, they started to feel like a hand, or a torso or some
other part of my body. The media was not separate from me any longer, it
was an extension of me. This was curious in one sense, since my video
counterpart, with whom I was supposedly having a fierce competition, was
actually under my control all the time. Perhaps this is the hidden message
of *In Plane*.
= (EQUALS)
As a dancer, I inherently understand the realm of the body. I had no idea
that technology would enter into that understanding until I chose to
entwine myself with the machine. I was altered and so was my body, as it
expanded to include sound, light and image. The slashes in my art are
inserted between my flesh, the media that moves with it and the machine
that locks the two together; this puts me at the intersection of flesh and
silicon, blood and television, body and computer that our culture is in the
midst of splicing together.
*Troika Ranch* (http://www.troikaranch.org), a digital dance theater by Dawn
Stoppiello with Mark Coniglio, has performed throughout the United States in
venues including The Duke on 42nd Street, New York City; the Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis; the Luckman Fine Arts Center, Los Angeles and the Lied
Center for Performing Arts, Lincoln, Nebraska.
______________________
*FACE SETTINGS*: AN INTERNATIONAL CO-COOKING AND COMMUNICATION PROJECT BY
EVA WOHLEGEMUTH AND KATHY RAE HUFFMAN
Kathy Rae Huffman, kathy.rae.huffman at cornerhouse.org
*Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication Project* [1]
is a female-focused communication project and website that reveals the
growing Net community of women. It is a cross-platform forum to develop and
explore the interests and needs of women online. The project, initiated by
Eva Wohlgemuth and myself, was a series of "dinner performance events" that
took place between spring 1996 and autumn 1998. The objective was to join
real groups of women in network strategies to expand female connectivity and
to engage women in discussions of importance on local, regional, national
and international levels. Through FACES, a female-only mailing list for
discussing art, communication and online policy, an online community has
developed and expanded beyond the process of preparing meals and eating
together. *Face Settings* raised various questions, which were presented at
Face2Face, a meeting of FACES in Graz, Austria, from 8 - 11 July, 1998.
Throughout our Face2Face events and virtual online communication, women
focused on communication practices and how they differ in various cultural
settings. Aware of how women are kept out of the technically challenging
network, we set an example of what could be done to change that practice and
constantly mused about how the fact that women speak and communicate
differently than men affects our female involvement in online culture.
The cooking performances took place between summer 1996 and summer 1998 and
evolved directly from our experiences on the (then) recently concluded
Internet travel project, *Siberian Deal* [2], which took place in 1995. From
Russia, we sent weekly "reports" to Vienna, which were uploaded to the
project website. The goal of *Siberian Deal* was exchange: we were traders
dealing objects and information to strangers in "the worst place in the
world." Our mission was to understand value and learn how our opinions were
informed by Cold War media and propaganda. In Russia, we established a
network of friends we would meet again and again. Our observations of women,
their buying and selling techniques, and their status in society were common
topics of conversation during our travels, influencing our future work
together.
Working towards a new project concept, Eva and I realized that our
personalities, skills and backgrounds complemented (and sometimes
compensated for) one another. I loved gathering people into social
situations for information exchange and brainstorming ideas. Eva was
fascinated by the challenge of translating the process of communication
into a visual form that invited participation. She was keen to establish
strong conceptual guidelines for a new Internet project. I was immersed in
Internet research on a variety of topics, including "cyberintimacy." As we
talked, we decided to continue our real and virtual working system, and
travel to places we found compelling (for various reasons). We also made a
conscious decision to focus our energy and dedicate our project to
connecting women. We made these choices naturally and without any debate. In
Europe, the lack of structure, encouragement or reward for women working in
the new communication technologies was obvious to us.
As a conceptual artist, Eva had been working on the location sculpture
*Systems* since 1989. I had been an active media art curator, producer and
networker (by the old definition) since the early 1980s. In 1994, I was
living on my own in Austria, and Eva had become a good enough friend to
engage in "girl talk" and relationship problem-sharing. During these
occasional meetings, Eva and I became aware of the differences in our
cultural conditioning, especially how I had been encouraged to develop
verbal and social skills in school while Eva had been encouraged to develop
her excellent logistic planning and technical skills. As an American, I
experienced how "citizenship" and "extracurricular participation" were
highly regarded during formative school years. Eva, on the other hand, had
suffered a very strict and academic education, without many social
functions, in a dogmatic system that did not tolerate deviation from the
traditional pedagogic plan.
The basic cultural differences that informed us - which we were aware of -
fascinated us. We also noticed that the way we communicated with each other
and with women, and the ways in which we communicated with men, were very
different. We began an intensive investigation that included Internet
research, and the compilation of information on this phenomenon.
The writings of Dr. Deborah Tannen provided great insight, as did many
scholarly studied and linguistic observations about how women and men relate
in the online environment. We found corroborative theoretical opinions and
that was enough for us to set out to combine our newly acquired Internet
skills, interest in social communication and cultural difference and art
practice. Our new work would evolve with women in five different countries,
located on the borders of Europe.
The events we planned would combine women, cooking and communication, but
we admitted to ourselves that we needed to define what it was we wanted to
achieve as clearly as possible. At this point, we realized it would take
time to develop relationships, and that it could take several years to
build the network we were envisioning. In an effort to proceed logically, we
outlined the following list of considerations for *Face Settings*:
1. Communication: It is often difficult to engage strangers in discussions
about communication, especially when there are language problems, different
social customs and lack of understanding about the widespread practice of
Internet connectivity. Neither of us was the type who readily engaged
strangers in conversation, even in local places we go to. We would benefit
from a defined group in each location.
2. Online representation: the website would be a key element of the project,
linking the real local events between the regional groups. It would need
good stories, provocative photos of the participants, tasty recipes and
theoretical food for thought. We wanted to profile the women we met and give
an idea of what their working situation was like. We also decided that the
website should maintain links to female sites and a suggested reading list,
references, our biographies and personal links.
3. Live performing installation events: With a group of 10 to 12 women, we
would be able to talk while we cooked and served meals. We wanted to give
pleasure to others in these events by serving them and taking care of all
the details. This would be a treat, a vacation from the normal work that
women know well. This could also be hard work for us. With the understanding
that we would encounter various customs, we also knew that dinners "at home"
are usually family events, and as strangers cooking the meal, we would be a
rare exception.
4. Artifacts: as a net art project, there would be little need for physical
evidence, but we still wanted to provide some objects that resulted from the
collaboration with the groups of women we would work with. Clearly, most
artists do not have the time to give to other artists' projects without some
real clear understanding of the exchange. We wanted to provide our project
partners with specific rewards.
5. Publications: A cookbook catalog that included recipes gathered during
our travels was an idea we wanted to pursue. In the beginning, a photo album
of each dinner and a collection of memorabilia from each of the events
would be created. We would make this book available at each dinner, adding
progressive chapters, like courses, as we continued with the project.
6. Goals: *Face Settings* dinner events were to be enjoyable events,
celebrations with low stress and lots of personal care (for ourselves and
the women we met). Pleasure connected to food and the sharing of information
would be a topic to introduce in our dinners. We hoped to establish real
communication that would grow in the digital environment, eventually linking
the regional groups in a collaborative cooking performance event.
REFERENCES
1. *Face Settings: An International Co-cooking and Communication
Project* is now archived at http://www.t0.or.at/~amazon/FACE/index.htm.
2. *Siberian Deal* - http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian/vrteil.htm.
BIOGRAPHY
Kathy Rae Huffman (http://www.t0.or.at/~amazon/FACE/index.htm) is Director
of Visual Arts at Cornerhouse, Manchester, U.K.'s leading center for
contemporary art, media and cinema. She is a networker and specialist for
Web-based initiatives, a collector of new media works and a curator who
pioneered support of artists work centered in media theory and practice.
Eva Wohlgemuth (http://www.t0.or.at/~siberian), based in Vienna, Austria,
realized several land art and concept projects before she profiled as a
media and Web artist. She is now producing in the field of reactive visual
systems installation (sculpture, drawing, painting) and media. She has
exhibited internationally, including at Documenta X (Web Section).
< Note from the book editor >
The section above is the beginning of this article. The complete chapter,
available in the book *Women, Art and Technology*, covers the project's
beginnings, a gathering of a group of women in Vienna; a St. Petersburg
dinner event concurrent with the presentation of *Siberian Deal* at the St.
Petersburg Biennial; "Digital Care," the next phase of the project; the
introduction of the first version of the *Face Settings* website at the
Secret Conference held at Backspace, in London; and the project's inclusion
in the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival. It concludes with thoughts about the
project.
Participants in various stages of the project included Beverly Hood and
Lindsey Perth, Glasgow; Irina Aktuganova and Alla Mitrofanova, St.
Petersburg, Russia; Maria Pallier, Spain; Zana Poliakov and Vesna
Manojlovic, Belgrade; Margarete Jahrmann, Doris Weichselbaumer, Sabine
Seymour and Elisabeth Binder, Austria; Cornelia Sollfrank (OBN), Hamburg;
Katy Deepwell (n.paradoxa), London; Evelyn Teutsch, Leipzig, Germany; Birgit
Huber, Germany; Betty Spackman, Toronto; Anja Westerfroelke, Linz, Austria;
Julia Meltzer, New York; lizvlx, Vienna; and Veronika Dreier and Reni
Hofmueller, Graz, Austria.
______________________
VIDEO ARTE POVERA: LO-FI RULES!
by Valerie Soe
vsoe at sfsu.edu
When I was a young college student, I wanted to go to the UCLA film school.
I admired Alfred Hitchcock's narrative stylings, Stanley Kubrick's peculiar
characterizations and Martin Scorsese's fluid and expressive camerawork. But
as fate would have it, the film school at UCLA was severely impacted and I
instead completed my undergraduate degree in the art department.
What I discovered was that video art's aesthetics appealed to me much more
than Hollywood's narrative filmmaking conventions. I found that by working
in experimental forms, I could easily access topics such as identity
politics, race and ethnicity, and pop culture. This was much more effective
using experimental video's direct and expressive poetics than through
narrative film's elephantine character and plot machinations. I also found
that experimental forms allowed me to utilize all manner of unusual source
materials, including found footage. This recycling aesthetic, making silk
purses from technology's sow's ears, continues to appear in both my
single-channel videos and multiple-channel installations.
In my work, I have used video, text, pop-culture artifacts, autobiography
and interactive elements, employing technology both high (computer
terminals, electronic message boards, video monitors) and low (zoetropes,
viewer-generated graffiti, artists' books) to look at issues of culture and
identity in the information age. I am interested in an organic use of
technology as a vehicle for the requirements of the creative concept. In
other words, I let the artwork's content dictate the choice of media,
rather than simply using technology for its own sake.
By working in experimental forms, I continue to readily explore political
and social concerns such as racial discrimination and bigotry
(*Diversity*), intimate interpersonal relationships (*Mixed Blood*), body
image, power and control (*Binge*) and the representation of Asians in pop
culture (*Picturing Oriental Girls a (re) Educational Videotape*; *Beyond
Asiaphilia*)
*MIXED BLOOD* (1992-94)
*Mixed Blood*, as an interactive video installation, utilized unexpected
juxtapositions of found footage, flashing text, talking heads and scientific
footage displayed in a brightly colored graphic installation that
challenged potential viewers to stop, look and listen. Using two discrete
channels of video, *Mixed Blood* combined interviews with over 30 concerned
individuals, relevant quotes and statistics, and clips from scientific
films and classic miscegenation dramas such as *The World of Suzie Wong* and
*Sayonara* to examine interracial relationships in the Asian American
community.
In addition to the information disgorged via video monitors, *Mixed Blood*
also encouraged viewer interaction. A computer terminal and electronic
message board output allowed viewers to respond to questions regarding
cross-cultural relationships such as, "What do you think when you see an
interracial couple on the street?" and "What are three characteristics of
Asian American men?" The query changed daily, and each day's responses were
strung together and displayed on the electronic message board mounted on the
installation.
For those who preferred more direct expression, the piece had a "talking
wall," a blank white panel on which viewers could write their opinions
without technological mediation. This element was extremely popular, with
comments on a range of topics from politics to sexuality. There were also
small stickers printed with phrases including "Identity/Affinity" and "Who
Do You Love?," which viewers were free to take and distribute as they
wished.
*Mixed Blood* attempted to present often controversial topics of
miscegenation, bigotry, and sexual stereotypes without being didactic and
overbearing. By using both high and low technology, I hoped to ease the
viewer's interaction with the piece and facilitate participation,
contemplation and debate, and allow the viewer to fill in the blanks and
actively contribute to the form and content of the piece.
*BINGE* (1996)
This mixed-media installation was based on Amy Moon's short story of
consumption, addiction and purgatory. *Binge* looked at body-image
distortion, power and control from the perspective of a compulsive eater.
The main character is an unnamed woman who dreams idly of escape from her
middle-American life and her indolent husband. Her stifling suburban
existence eventually leads her to desperate acts, as she first attacks her
own body and then strikes outward, with deadly consequences. By telling the
story in first person through the voice of the unidentified narrator, the
piece invites the viewer's rapport with the unbalanced, yet sympathetic,
main character. Her extreme impulses remind us of the frustration and agony
of day-to-day existence and the desperate actions sometimes necessary to
flee the killing banality of everyday life.
The installation consisted of various altered objects integrated with text,
which reveal different elements of the narrative, outlining character
traits, plot developments or other aspects of the storyline. Manipulated
objects included bullet casings, an accordion book, a shooting-range target,
a zoetrope made from a KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) bucket and assorted
audio and video loops. Once seen, read or heard, these fragments converged
into a composite text that explicated both plot and character in a
non-linear, interactive format.
By using consumer-grade Radio Shack electronics, I emphasized readily
accessible technology, including battery-powered plastic monitors, a
hand-held Watchman television and a child's portable turntable. I similarly
employed other everyday objects such as fast-food packaging, mirrors and
picture frames. This underscored the quotidian setting of the piece, based
on the diary of a mad housewife, and contrasted these items with more
sinister objects such as a shooting-range target and spent bullet casings.
*Binge* contrasted the banality of its source materials with the desperation
and violence of the main character's actions.
*DIVERSITY* (1990)
*Diversity* was a three-channel video installation featuring footage of Chan
Cheong-Toon, a man regularly seen at a traffic island at the corner of
Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco's North Beach, singing furiously in
Chinese to whomever cared to listen. Through interviews with Chan as well as
with his many observers, the piece addressed the projection of individual
desire onto a single subject, as each interviewee offered his or her
interpretation of Chan's intentions. In addition, by focusing on this
unusual personality, the piece exploded the myth of the model minority,
contradicting the fallacy that Asians are quiet, well-behaved and aligned
with social conventions.
The installation consisted of three separate channels of video played
simultaneously on individual monitors arranged in a triangular
configuration, with screens facing inward. The viewer, positioned at the
center of the piece, chose to view one or two monitors at once, although
sound from all three was audible at all times. In this way the viewer
sequenced and selected the configuration of the piece, choosing the order in
which the images and narrative unfold. This threefold arrangement reflected
the many aspects of the focus of the piece, the singing Chan - as he sees
himself, as others see him, and as he objectively appears - suggesting the
variety of perception and personality found in a single individual.
On the gallery wall were the names of various Asian Americans who have
distinguished themselves in one way or another. Although several, including
author Wakako Yamauchi and singer Pat Suzuki, are notable for outstanding
achievements, others, such as convicted felons Joe Fong and Wendy Yoshimura,
are known for more notorious actions. This strategy pointed out the
complexity of Asian American culture, emphasizing again the diversity of a
community too often stereotyped as one-dimensional.
In *Diversity*, the simplicity of the technology allowed the complexity of
the subject matter to emerge. The stripped-down installation design
consisted of three large monitors on black pedestals and a line of names on
the gallery wall. Although the simultaneity of the three channels of video
and the triangular configuration of the monitors were significant, the
installation gave prominence to content rather technology.
*WALKING THE MOUNTAIN* (1994)
This installation was an ofrenda (altar) dedicated to my aunt Lula, who died
from a nosebleed at age four in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1920s. The piece,
consisting of sand, cacti, magenta taffeta, video and text, recounted the
fate of my grandparents' cherished second daughter, born into a climate too
arid and dry for her genotype. The cacti hanging on the wall and surrounding
the video monitor were a metaphor for human tenacity, contrasting with the
inability of Lula to adapt successfully to her new homeland. On the
right-hand wall the legend "STAY HYDRATED" reiterated the first rule of
human survival, one which Lula was unable to maintain because of her
environment, age and circumstances.
In this installation, I juxtaposed unusual materials - cacti, taffeta, sand
and a video monitor - to draw attention to the unusual subject matter. I
hoped to suggest the alien quality of my aunt's new environment, which was a
desert full of strange life forms including prickly plants, sand and
Europeans. The piece was a metaphor for the difficulties new immigrants
often face in adapting to their new homeland, especially in the U.S., where
assimilation is valued over preservation of individual cultural traits.
I also wanted to contrast the natural elements - sand and plant life - with
man-made elements - the video monitor and satin fabric - to make Lula seem
like a fish out of water in her new environment. The video loop also
emphasizes this point, recounting my aunt's tragic story through images of
goldfish, faux blood and a length of scarlet taffeta rippling in the wind.
Using a simple combination of video and non-tech elements, the piece
presents its story plainly and effectively.
*LA VIDA POVERA DE SAN PANCHO* (1998)
This interactive installation was made up of melted and made-over Playskool
plastic doll houses that had been altered to reflect the ghost stories,
histories and legends of San Francisco. The tag line for the installation
read, "Why do you choose to live in San Francisco, a beautiful, fickle and
ever-entrancing city? What is the price of entry into this temperate
wonderland? Where does reality end and imagination begin" [1]? Utilizing
tiny TV monitors, sound chips, image, text and toys, *La Vida Povera* took
viewers down Melancholy Alley, through Sound and Fury Avenue and up
Sexolicious Lane, some of the imaginary streets realized in the piece. The
installation was an emotional map, a psychic tour of the memories, hopes and
dreams of a city that is constantly in transition.
Each plastic house engaged the viewer in its own way, with points of entry
including video and TV images, push-buttons, switches, levers and other
means to play with the structure and meaning of the buildings. The tiny
structures became a dreamscape of the imagined and the perceived, the world
of hopes and fears drawing the viewer to San Francisco.
I used toy houses with tiny video monitors to get away from the
museum-aesthetic definition of "video installation" that often includes
huge, beautiful and expensive video projections by established artists such
as Steina Vasulka and Bill Viola. Instead I wanted to get back to the
cheap-is-beautiful, consumer-electronics look of early video installations
where the ugliness of the monitor was integral to the aesthetic of the
piece. This strategy exemplified the do-it-yourself creed, "l'arte povera,"
the idea that you make what you can out of whatever you can scavenge.
How does this relate to little plastic houses with home electronics in them?
It went back to the idea that it is possible to live in a horribly
expensive city like San Francisco without being a yuppie or a multimedia
professional. *La Vida Povera* celebrated the marginal underbelly of
artists, writers and workers who give San Francisco its spice and texture,
as well as the plumbers and painters and UPS drivers who give the city its
soul and blood.
UNLEARNING THE LANGUAGE
By working in low-fi, experimental media, I have been able to create work
that brings to light untold or neglected stories from outside of the
mainstream. Using available and affordable technology frees me from many
budgetary constraints and allows me to more readily create work and engage
viewers in exchanges about culture, politics and representation. In this
way, I am attempting to reframe and re-articulate an Asian-American
perspective, by countering conventional stereotypes of Asians in American
mass media and offering an alternate vision of the community and culture.
As Malaysian-American experimental videomaker Cheng-Sim Lim states, "These
days I'm trying to unlearn the language of Hollywood. I am doing it because
I know it's not my language. I am trying to remake my image in myself" [2].
Lim understands the vitality and newness of experimentation, which more
accurately expresses experiences outside of conventional film and
television. Experimental forms are a reflection of the multitude of voices
suddenly speaking, each with its own cadence and lexicon, in the new,
brilliant cacophony of modern times.
REFERENCES
1. Valerie Soe, catalog notes. URL Exhibit, Southern Exposure Gallery, San
Francisco, CA, 1998.
2. Cheng-Sim Lin, "Rojack", Moving the Image, Independent Asian Pacific
American Media Arts, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 1991.
BIOGRAPHY
Valerie Soe is a writer and experimental videomaker living and working in
San Francisco, whose productions include *Mixed Blood*, *Picturing Oriental
Girls - A (Re) Educational Videotape*, (winner of Best Bay Area Short,
Golden Gate Awards, San Francisco International Film Festival) and *All
Orientals Look the Same*, (winner of Best Foreign Video, Festival
Internazionale Cinema Giovani; First Place, Experimental Category, Visions
of U.S. Festival).
______________________
LABORATORY FOR EPHEMERAL INVESTIGATIONS - INTERACTIVE ROBOTIC SCULPTURES
Jennifer Hall and Blyth Hazen
jenhall at massart.edu; bhazen at monserrat.edu
In our work, we explore the nexus of biology, technology and aesthetics
through interactive robotic sculpture and digital processes. Our Laboratory
for Ephemeral Investigations (2000) is a unique traveling research center
and learning environment. Like scientists, we use technology for creative
problem-solving, but our research goals are neither rational nor practical.
Instead, our ephemeral investigations are aesthetic, social and poetic. We
engage gallery-goers in a quest to understand our relationship with our
environment and to bridge the polarities of nature and technology, art and
science, life and death, thinking and feeling, body and mind.
The exhibition includes interactive sculptural installations, animated
drawings generated from genetic algorithms and live video of microscopic
organisms. For instance, *Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit* (1999) [1]
introduces a sequence of suspended needles triggered by viewers' presence.
*Instrument for Mediated Terrain* (2001) [2] is a series of miniature moss
gardens that are stroked, poked and prodded by robotic tools in response to
visitors' movements. We are interested in complex relational cycles of
growth and death, where human-made technology meets nature. Here, the garden
is a meditation on the relationship of the viewer to the artwork, technology
to nature and the temporal state of all forms of life.
Electronic devices weave a connection between the aluminum-clad gardens and
caretake the living moss. Mechanical arms hovering over the landscapes
activate only when people come close to observe, the interaction between
technology and the moss gardens directly depending on these visitors. One
can imagine that after years of this interaction, the mounds of moss, peat
and sand would be subtly rearranged - each landscape altered through the
impact of observation.
The gardens are purposefully created to be low to the ground so that the
viewer can have the experience of flying over - presiding over - a
mountainous landscape. There is an overt and observable relationship between
the presence of an audience and the action of the devices. From a distance,
the mechanisms are still. It is only when the viewer is closely observing
an individual garden that the motion of the corresponding arm is triggered.
When they step away or move on, the motion is stopped. The gardens are alive
and continue to grow throughout the duration of the exhibition, slowly
shaped by human activation of technology.
Other devices include *Carousel for Invertebrate Broadcasting* (2002), an
interactive rotating petri dish of flatworms; *Television for Biological
Trajectories* (2002), a series of small-scale vignettes of real and virtual
worms; *Chambers for the Observation of a Decline from a Prosperous
Condition* (2002), for comparing real and simulated lifeforms; and *Room for
the Projection of the Law of Intuitive Association* (2002), a large-scale,
interactive animation referencing DNA and the double helix - changing in
tempo, opacity and duration based on user input.
This laboratory, or its individual parts, has been presented at The
Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; The Thorne-Sagendorph
Gallery at Keene State College, Keene, NH; the Schlosberg Gallery at
Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA; and the Lamont Gallery at Phillips
Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH.
NOTES
1. *Laboratory for Ephemeral Investigations* is detailed in Jennifer Hall
and Blyth Hazen, "Do While Studio," in *Women, Art and Technology*, Judy
Malloy, ed. (MIT Press, 2003) pp. 290-297.
2. *Instrument for Mediated Terrain* (2001) aluminum, moss, electronics,
software, and mechanical devices. More information and photographs of the
installation are available at
http://www.dowhile.org/physical/projects/exeter/index.html.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Jennifer Hall (http://www.dowhile.org/physical/people/hallj.html), a
sculptor, has been a pioneer in interactive media and art-science
collaboration for over 25 years and is presently engaged in the refocusing
of biological material as an artform.
Blyth Hazen (http://www.dowhile.org/physical/people/hazenb.html) navigates
the space between painting, computer animation and robotics.
_________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________
| |
| LEONARDO REVIEWS |
| 2003.12 |
|_________________________________|
_________________________________________________________________________
This month, Leonardo Reviews is pleased to welcome a new member of the
panel, Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green, with a contribution reviewing *Vision and
Art: The Biology of Seeing*, by Margaret Livingstone. Bickley-Green's
expertise is a valuable addition to the established authority of Leonardo
Reviews, as further exemplified this month by Robert Pepperell and Amy
Ione's contributions. While Pepperell returns to familiar topics in reviews
of *Primitivism and Art* and a lecture by Semir Zeki, he also opens a new
discussion in his review of *Cymatics*. Ione reviews a new book on Degas in
a lengthy article, while one of our most established contributors, Roy
Behrens, offers us a selection from his own review publication, *Ballast
Quarterly Review*. Not to be missed is Rob Harle's review of interspecies
interaction, as it is discussed in Toni Frohoff and Brenda Peterson's new
book on dolphins and humans. Over the past few months, Harle has become one
of our very active reviewers whose range and insight is proving one of our
most valued assets. As usual, all of this month's reviews, including a
report on this year's conference of the Society for Literature and Science,
can be seen at our new (user-friendly) URL, www.leonardoreviews.org.
We hope that you find them both engaging and valuable.
Michael Punt
Editor-in-Chief
Leonardo Reviews
_____________________________
In this month's Leonardo Digital Reviews, at
http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/ldr.html:
Anni Albers and Ancient American Textiles: From Bauhaus to Black Mountain,
by Virginia Gardner Troy
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin
Ambiguity in Art and in the Brain, public lecture by Semir Zeki
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
Between Species: Celebrating The Dolphin-Human Bond, Toni Frohoff and Brenda
Peterson, eds.
Reviewed by Rob Harle
A Brush with Life, a film by Glen Salzman and Martin Duckworth
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin
Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility, edited by Steven
Heller and Véronique Vienne
Reviewed by Aaris Sherin
Cymatics: A Study of Wave Phenomena and Vibration, by Hans Jenny
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
Degas Through His Own Eyes, by Michael F. Marmor
Reviewed by Amy Ione
Merz to Émigré and Beyond: Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth
Century, by Steven Heller
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Primitivism and Twentieth-century Art: A Documentary History, Jack Flam and
Miriam Deutch, eds.
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal, By Joe Nickell
Reviewed by Michael Punt
The 17th Annual Conference of the Society for Literature and Science,
Austin, Texas, 23-26 October, 2003
Reviewed by Michael Punt
Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by M. Livingstone
Reviewed by Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green
_____________________________
VISION AND ART: THE BIOLOGY OF SEEING
by Margaret Livingstone, Harry N. Abrams, NY, 2002. ISBN: 0-8109-0406-3.
Reviewed by Cynthia Ann Bickley-Green, assistant professor of art education,
Director Distance Education, School of Art, East Carolina University.
Greenville, NC 27858, U.S.A.
bickleygreenc at mail.ecu.edu
*Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing*, by Margaret Livingstone, a
neurobiologist at Harvard University, does not lead the reader to the
meaning of the marks of artists, but rather to consider the commonalties of
the visual evidence in painting and neurological processing. Why does one
set of images from a group of artists, such as the impressionists, look
similar? Or when we look at the configurations of the marks in different
drawing compositions, we can see that they all look like lines. They are
lines on a field. Even when the lines have width, we do not see a shape.
When we look at the neurobiological genesis of the forms, we can learn some
of the neurobiological connections and locations that are active when we are
drawing or painting. Livingstone clearly discusses how the human visual
system is subdivided into two parts: the "Where" and the "What" systems. The
"where" system is responsible for our perception of motion, space, position,
depth and figure/ground (edge) separation. It cannot detect color. This is a
fast, identifying system that rapidly locates the presence of potentially
useful, sometimes threatening information. The What system is responsible
for form and color. It is much slower and codes for additional identifying
information.
Livingstone groups or connects cognitive, visual systems to the
representation of the images from those systems in visual art images. The
Where system is the primary network that gives the experience of linear
perspective. Cells in our visual cortex, according to Livingstone's
description, represent orientation at each point in the visual field. During
visual processing, neurons become selective for features such as contours,
corners and curvature. She also suggests that this is the system that is
primarily employed in cubism. The What system gives the experience of color
areas. The impressionist images are the result of the artist attending to
the What system (Livingstone, 2002).
In summary, we might say that the styles of art are formed by the artists'
selective attention to the visual experience of a particular visual
processing area. This neurobiological understanding results in a paradigm
shift in our understanding of the history of styles in art. Livingstone
groups and connects the evidence of visual art images to the processes of
human vision and cognition, thereby suggesting that during certain periods
of art history, artists who worked in a particular style were all attending
to a set of similar neurological processes.
This grouping, or paradigm, is not completely new. It is the neurobiological
connection and evidence that makes Livingstone's work so important. Since
the early Renaissance, art theorists and artists have examined the relation
of visual images and evidence to the visual system. Among the most
celebrated are Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe. In the twentieth century, the
Russian painters Kandinsky (1912) and Malevich (1915) recognized that
elements of art, such as line and color, were the result of mental activity.
It is interesting to realize that in his description of the development of
personal style in art, Wslfflin (1932) also grouped art images into two
categories: the painterly and the linear. These are analogous to
Livingstone's What and Where system. Wslfflin based his work on a systematic
observation of the visual elements represented in the visual images.
Much of the literature related to the non-objective art movement pointed to
the process of image-making as the result of mental processes. Hans Hoffman
and Josef Albers consciously studied the experience of perception and how it
could be manipulated through painted images. What Livingstone contributes to
this discussion is the physical location of some of these psychological
experiences related to image-making and an awareness of additional
processes.
Relatively current art literature has also explored the creation of linear
marks as primary methods of communication of psychological processes
(Ruberti, 1991). Without the rigorous neuropsychological proof provided by
Margaret Livingstone, Ruberti groups and categorizes the images of
post-informal art (Jackson Pollock, Remo Bianco, Franco Bemporad, Pierre
Clerc, George No'l), the images of child art collected by Rhoda Kellogg
(1955, 1969), and various decorative images from cultures around the world.
Ruberti labels this collection of images as "protosymbolic" pictures,
writing that the sources of the images are located in parts of our brain.
Protosymbolic implies that the marks do not stand for anything. In fact,
these primary marks do symbolize visual experiences that Livingstone has
begun to define and her research gives definitive locations of the sources.
This is useful to art educators and other art professionals because it
illuminates aspects of visual communication and suggests new directions for
the development of visual communication pedagogy and criticism.
In the epilogue to her book, Livingstone discusses the possibility that some
styles of learning might be associated with artistic talent. Additional work
in neurobiology with the focus of examining the teaching/learning
transaction in visual art may reveal some aspects that will have direct
application in the art class. For example, one might speculate that since
drawing in three-dimensions directly engages the Where system and drawing
from memory engages more of the What system, the student will add different
knowledge (and not inconsequentially, different neural connections) to his
or her memory when drawing from observation. The task of drawing from
observation would provide critical information for later drawings to be done
from memory.
Perhaps new art curricula would be developed to give all students more
observational drawing as a means of collecting imagery. One might also
speculate that non-objective image-making or drawing will utilize in other
parts of the neural pathway. Educators might also consider the idea that
increased use or attention to a particular set of neural operations
increases the ability and efficiency to use that set of operations. More
drawing in art may lead to more ability and efficiency in all similar
drawing tasks that might be used in math, science and engineering. As noted
earlier, drawing from life observation using the Where system will provide
the store of images that are used in other drawing and visualizing tasks.
The last decade of the twentieth century has sometimes been referred to as
"the decade of the brain." *Vision and Art* is one of the fruits of this
research, her work and ideas enhancing and extending our appreciation of
visual art. The implications of the work she has done can extend beyond the
walls of laboratories and museums into our classrooms to assist us to
develop more effective educational experiences for all students. One might
propose that in the next 50 years, art educators will know what cognitive
processes lead us to judge why a composition "works;" why one painting is
great and another mundane; and, the subject of this review, why art
educators might profit from looking at new research in neurobiology. *Vision
and Art* develops more precise definitions of cognitive processes utilized
during art-making. Livingstone's work will cause art educators and general
educators to develop new propositions and theorems about art, art-making and
the teaching/learning transaction. The work may also provide new tools in
art analysis and criticism.
REFERENCES
Railing, P., From Science to Systems of Art: On Russian Abstract Art and
Language 1910/1920 and Other Essays, Artists Bookworks, East Sussex, England
(1989).
Rhodes, C., Outsider Art: Spontaneous Alternatives, Thames and Hudson,
London (2000).
Ruberti, U., Il post-informale in Europa, Rome: Leonardo-DeLuca Editori
(1991).
Wölfflin, H., Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of
Style in Later Art History, London, Transl. M. D. Hottinger (Originally
published as Kunst Geschictliche Grundbegriffe, 1915) (1932).
_____________________________
DEGAS THROUGH HIS OWN EYES
by Michael F. Marmor, Somogy Editions D'Art, Paris, 2002, 103 pp., illus.
Trade, $35.00. ISBN: 2-85056-573-3.
Reviewed by Amy Ione, The Diatrope Institute, PO Box 12748, Berkeley, CA
94712-3748 U.S.A.
ione at diatrope.com
Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834-1917) once said that that he was convinced
that differences in vision are of no importance to the artist. Rather, in
his view, inner vision determined the nature of an artist's work. This seems
like an ironic statement when we consider the visual difficulties that
plagued him throughout his life. Engaging with Degas' actual visual
situation, as Michael Marmor does in *Degas Through His Own Eyes*, allows us
to think through Degas' case and to better place him in terms of his time.
As an impressionist, it is easy to characterize the blurring and loosening
of Degas' style in terms of cultural trends. Marmor convincingly argues that
to do so is to lose sight of the degree to which the individual and the
cultural are complementary. In this case, considering the degree to which
Degas' deteriorating ability to see the world around him influenced his
conception of his work reminds us that the artist's eyes complement his
inner vision. Moreover, when we closely study Degas' situation, it becomes
clear that both the emergence of impressionism and his subnormal acuity
could account for the loosening of his style as his work matured.
Generally it is agreed that Degas had a condition called retinopathy. He
first noticed poor vision in his right eye at the age of 36, when he found
he could not aim a rifle during the Franco-Prussian War. We know that he
realized this in the early 1870s, from letters he wrote while in New
Orleans, where he wrote about weakness in his eye and an inability to read
and write. Since there are no known measurements of Degas' acuity, Marmor
uses four sources to make estimates: historical records of correspondence,
personal remembrances, the shading of lines in Degas' art and Degas'
handwriting. He also summarizes the key details of Degas' life in terms of
his paintings and works on paper. As he explains, the precision we encounter
in Degas' early work is extraordinary, as is the roughness of many of his
later pieces, which are often done in larger formats. The quotations from
his letters and friends were the most compelling evidence of the anomalous
condition.
Fully recognizing the degree to which a visual artist depends on visual
analyses when constructing a work, Marmor aids us in connecting stylistic
trends of impressionism with Degas' physical capabilities. His book is also
a welcome addition to the literature connecting visual science with visual
art. It is not just that Marmor demonstrates intersections between art and
science, he also shows a knack for finding ways to bring the reader into the
discussion experientially makes *Degas Through His Own Eyes* more than a
descriptive analysis. For example, I was impressed by the selections he
chose to first show us visual acuity in general and then to apply the
computer-simulated examples to Degas' experience. Reproduced examples of
variations effectively transformed the words into a conceptual grasp of each
point introduced. Indeed, on closing the book I felt the visuals had allowed
me to embody how his eyes deteriorated as he aged. The visuals also
convincingly made the point that Degas himself did not recognize the degree
to which his deteriorating eyesight changed his work.
What I liked most about the book was Marmor's highly original approach. He
effectively brings an ophthalmologist's eye to art, without losing sight of
the degree to which an artist's creative process includes more than just the
eyes. We are reminded that cultural context, changing styles and visual
acuity all influence an artist's oeuvre. Marmor's ability to aid the reader
in "seeing" how one might clinically assess Degas' visual disabilities in
clinical terms is a distinctive contribution to the literature in this area.
The most useful chapter, "Seeing Art with Blurred Vision," simulates how
Degas would have seen his own work as his eyes deteriorated over time.
Looking at his late work, Marmor also gives a lucid account of how some of
the features that appear bizarre to the viewer might have appeared
appropriately conceived to the artist. Here, too, the reproductions allow
Marmor to clinically explain his analysis to the non-specialist. The
illustrations of blur during the technical summary and when examining Degas
work are a powerful component in the book. His laying out how this artist's
visual experience of the world. Pages in which we are shown how a single
image would look at 20/20, 20/60, 20/100 and 20/200 offer information that
is hard to conceptualize without an image. Equally compelling are
comparisons of early and late pieces in which Degas uses similar motifs.
For example, Marmor compares lines and textures found in highly refined
early images of dancers (*The Dancing Lesson*, 1871-1874; *The Dance Foyer
at the Opera on the Rue Le Peletier*, 1872) with looser and more expressive
later works (*The Blue Dancers*, 1890 and *Russian Dancers*, 1899).
Still, on finishing the book I felt I understood Degas' condition more than
the pathos that no doubt accompanied the need to adjust to the pronounced
physical changes. Nor does this survey does not encourage us to ask to what
degree the artist might have been utilizing his failing vision toward
artistic ends. In addition, even though the visual loss was optical in
nature, the book did not seem to encourage us to reflect on whether a sense
of mist and aura might have also been something Degas wanted to capture in
the paintings.
One valuable component Marmor does include is a summary of artists who had
known visual disorders. As the author explains, failing capabilities are not
unique to Degas. Other artists who are often mentioned when this topic is
introduced include Rembrandt, Titian, Monet and Cézanne. Monet, for example,
had cataracts that significantly interfered with his work from 1920-1923. It
is said that his visual acuity had fallen to 20/200 at one point. Yet after
surgery, when his eyesight improved markedly, he reworked many of the
canvases from earlier years. I was sorry that Marmor did not balance these
examples with a paragraph or two on El Greco, whose elongated studies are no
longer said to derive from astigmatism.
Exceptional as this book is, it is unfortunate that the author did not
include a chapter on Degas' sculpture. We not only know that his eyesight
deteriorated as he matured, we also know that he turned increasingly to
sculpture in his latter years. Since it is well documented that tactile
sensitivity increases with the loss of visual acuity, the book would have
benefited from some discussion of this aspect of Degas' working process.
Touch is briefly mentioned in a Halevy account of Degas, but overall
receives little exposure throughout the text. Also, in terms of process, it
seems Degas' working relationship with photography should have been
included. His enthusiasm with the medium influenced his motifs, as the
recent exhibition "The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso"
demonstrated. Reading through the book, I wondered if his photographic
documents might offer some insight into how Degas coped with his failing
vision. Finally, I wish the book had included an index.
In summary, *Degas Through His Own Eyes* is a book that underscores that
theories about art often underplay the degree to which a visual artist sees
the work through his or her own eyes. A thin book, filled with first-rate
reproductions, this essay successfully conveys what Degas may have seen as
he worked. To Marmor's credit, reproductions are scaled so that we are able
to get a sense of size/scale relationships. Non-specialists will find the
book accessible. Like Degas scholars, they will find much to ruminate on in
each chapter.
_____________________________
AMBIGUITY IN ART AND IN THE BRAIN
Public lecture by Semir Zeki, Centre for the History of Science, Technology
and Medicine, Manchester University, Manchester, U.K.
30th October, 2003
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
pepperell at ntlword.com
Commercial Ambiguity: "Use Dr. _____ Sachets de Toilette, and mothers and
daughters will look like sisters." Gentlewoman -(cited in *Punch*, October
1907)
With new art historical work being published on ambiguous "potential images"
[1], and the hybrid discipline of neuroaesthetics becoming more widely
recognized as a specific strand in the larger debates about art and
consciousness [2], I was intrigued to learn what one of the leading
proponents of neuroaesthetics, Semir Zeki, had to say about the neurological
basis of ambiguity. The exploitation of ambiguity has been a deliberate
artistic strategy, not only amongst modern and contemporary practitioners
but throughout the pre-modern world and across many different cultures.
Sometimes ambiguities have been presented as a kind of amusement or
curiosity (as in certain optical devices, or the quote above) and sometimes
as a way of profoundly affecting the viewer, resisting stasis and
multiplying perceptual and conceptual possibilities (as in analytic cubist
paintings or Vermeer's enigmatic domestic interiors).
Zeki's contribution is to attempt an account of artistic ambiguity from a
neurological standpoint, drawing on his own extensive research into color
constancy and the nature of visual perception. He is keen from the outset to
situate his analysis within the context of consciousness studies, and in
particular to stress his theory of "microconsciousness." In contrast to
those who regard conscious experience as singular and unified, Zeki proposes
a model in which the various functionally specialized areas of the brain
(such as those responsible for color perception or motion perception) in
themselves constitute regions of conscious activity needing no higher
interpretation. The impression we have of an immediate holistic conscious
experience is in fact illusory given that, as Zeki has shown experimentally,
we see color a fraction of a second before we see motion, even though a
moving red bus seems to form a perceptual unity. Over longer time frames
(greater than one millisecond), such temporally distributed events form a
"macroconscious" state, which might be further modulated by those higher
conscious states conditioned by culture and language, ultimately generating
the kind of conscious awareness we associate with our everyday general
activity.
Even though these higher conscious processes are prone to error, by
misconstruing the reality of what is present in the world, the functionally
specialized areas cannot in themselves be fooled into seeing what is not
there. The perception of color, for example, can never be ambiguous because
color is nothing but a product of functionally specialized brain regions. As
Newton had already pointed out, there is no color "out there" in the world
for us to see, only variations in the frequency of electromagnetic radiation
that we experience in a chromatic register.
Although many perceptual processes result in visual experiences that we
cannot consciously influence (such as color), there are other kinds of
visual phenomena that are subject to cognitive contingencies - ambiguous
images being prime examples. In the familiar Necker cube or Schroeder
staircase (examples from Zeki's lecture can be found at
http://turner.stanford.edu/art/zeki_images/) we are able to some extent to
determine the apparent orientation of the object, which lies in one of two
directions. (I would also suggest it is possible to see other kinds of
orientations, but for the purposes of this review I will accept the
convention that there are two). In such cases, Zeki argues, the functionally
specialized visual areas (those responsible for recognizing lines and
angles) draw upon other brain processes, notably those concerned with memory
and experience, to produce a cognitive interpretation containing spatial
information that is actually absent in the image. It is this cognitive
interpretation that is prone to vacillate between the ambiguous readings,
but which is also subject to some degree of conscious control insofar as we
can force ourselves to see one orientation or the other.
For Zeki, this way of understanding ambiguity differs markedly from its
dictionary definition as "doubtful" or "uncertain." On the contrary, each of
the possible interpretations is, for the viewer, an utter certainty, albeit
a certainty that can change from one moment to the next. The microconscious
brain region associated with any particular perceptual state gains a kind of
sovereignty over the moment of experience; if only for a given time it
dominates or occupies the cognitive high ground. This then is what Zeki
terms the "neurological definition of ambiguity", the evolutionary rationale
which, he claims, is the inherent survival advantage in flexibility of
interpretation.
Applying these principles directly to the analysis of art, one finds cases
from across art history (and Zeki concentrates almost exclusively on the
traditional European canon) in which artists leave open or unresolved
certain parts of the work in order that the viewer (or indeed, listener) can
more freely interpret. Although demanding greater cognitive resources, this
rewards with greater semantic richness. The "unfinished" marble carvings of
Michelangelo and the Belvedere Torso are exemplary cases.
Despite the fact that the thesis is not particularly ground-shifting,
certainly to many aestheticians or psychologists of art, it does have the
advantage of being supported by some robust physical data. It also raises
some fascinating philosophical questions about the nature of reality as
constituted by the brain. I raised some of these questions in a later
discussion with Professor Zeki, and in particular I asked him about the
assertion he made during the course of the lecture to the effect that
"ambiguity is a property of the brain and not of the external world." This,
I felt, not only presupposes an essential rupture between brain and world,
but also might suggest a relegation of the role of the art object itself in
the production of the ambiguous effect. He replied by stressing the
evolutionary imperatives that must have formed our perceptual apparatus,
especially the fact that the brain is so selective in what it chooses to
recognize as it searches for what he calls "constancies," i.e. patterns,
regularities and invariant forms. In doing so it discards, or simply fails
to register mountains of other data that is not essential to the conduct of
the organism. Part of this inherent efficiency lies in our very capacity for
interpretation, which allows us to evaluate possible states of the world
that may not easily be determined - at least before it's too late. So, for
example, a wary smile from a potential adversary might be a benign
invitation or a concealed threat. So it seems that the brain reflects the
potential ambiguity of the world, but moreover allows us to negotiate it
with the benefit of our acquired experience.
One further statement made in the lecture caught my attention, the claim
that the "brain can accommodate contradictions." He was referring
specifically to Johann Winkelmann's description of classical sculpture as
carrying an essentially contradictory meaning, at once violent, aggressive,
turbulent and at the same time sublime, composed and static. This
contradictory ambiguity, as Zeki claims, can be held by us as an aesthetic
whole, and is manifest in works like the Belvedere Torso. But this raised in
my mind the equally intriguing possibility that, in contradiction to
Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction, Zeki's neurological evidence
might offer grounds for the naturalization of a dialectic approach, one in
which contradictory states are accommodated simultaneously without the
necessity for resolving them one way or the other. He responded by
distinguishing between two modes of neurological time, the very short (less
that one millisecond) in which possibilities are "collapsed" into one
orientation or another, and longer time frames (over one millisecond) in
which various and contradictory orientations might be accommodated as the
possibilities "flip-flop" from one to another.
There is little doubt that Zeki's work in this field could contribute to our
scientific understanding of the nature of art and, indeed, of perception and
consciousness. He is clear that art, science and philosophy are
epistemologically convergent, but seems to have difficulty persuading his
colleagues in the scientific community of the value of taking artist's
investigations into perceptual behavior seriously. Equally, from the
artistic standpoint one is entitled to be critical of approaches that seek
to reduce complex sensory and cultural phenomena to neurological processes,
although such processes are inordinately complex in themselves. But there is
certainly an intrinsic value in sharing ideas and stretching methodological
boundaries, even if that means both science and art have to examine their
own working assumptions. One perceptive audience member in the lecture
asked, in response to Zeki's claim that art and science were
indistinguishable, "Does that mean science is ambiguous?" It was heartening
that his reply was a cautious affirmation.
NOTES
1. D. Gamboni, *Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in
Modern Art*. London: Reaktion Books (2002) (reviewed online in Leonardo
Reviews, July 2003).
2. S. Zeki, *Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain*. Oxford:
Oxford University Press (1999). Reviewed online in Leonardo Reviews, May
2003.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________
| |
| LEONARDO ABSTRACTS |
| SERVICE |
|______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________
LABS is a listing of Masters and Ph.D. theses in the art/science/technology
field, for the benefit of scholars and practitioners. LEA also maintains a
discussion list open only to faculty in the field. Students interested in
contributing and faculty wishing to join this list should contact
leo at mitpress.mit.edu.
_____________________________
AUTHOR
Fatima J. Lasay
fats at up.edu.ph
LANGUAGES FAMILIAR TO THE AUTHOR
Filipino, English, Spanish
THESIS TITLE
"Phase Space Portraits of the Nuestra Señora delos Dolores of Baclayon
Church, Bohol"
ABSTRACT
This thesis investigates a contemporary idol-making that uses the
mathematical concept of recurrence plots to express the magical identity
that exists between sacred entities and perceptible form. This thesis
presents ways by which the use of the mathematical concept of recurrence
plots have assisted in determining the coloring of patterns and the design
of planar symmetry for three-phase space portraits of the Dolorosa, a
nineteenth-century Spanish colonial sculpture. By digitization, the additive
color signals of an image of the Dolorosa were processed to yield patterns
by which symmetries were motivated. This study provides a new method for
pattern formation that artists can utilize where aesthetics and mathematics
converge using analog and digital studio materials and processes. Recurrence
plots and the use of software that explore their importance as visual
qualitative analysis tools deserve further investigation by artists who seek
new modes of creating new symbols.
KEYWORDS
recurrence plots, religious sculpture, dynamical systems, glass engraving,
giliding, Philippine religious art
YEAR PUBLISHED/EXAMINED
2002
ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF THESIS
English
COPYRIGHT OWNERSHIP
Fatima Lasay
THESIS SUPERVISOR
Santiago Albano Pilar, University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts,
Graduate Program Division
UNIVERSITY/PROGRAM AFFLIATIONS
University of the Philippines
THESIS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST FROM
Main Library, Gonzales Hall, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon
City 1101, Philippines
_______________________________________________________________________
______________________________
| |
| ISAST NEWS |
|______________________________|
_______________________________________________________________________
IN MEMORIAM: FORMER *LEONARDO* EDITOR AND UNESCO *COURIER* EDITOR IN CHIEF,
SANDY KOFFLER
On 11 November, 2003, Sandy Koffler passed away in Paris at the age of 86.
Koffler was the founder and editor in chief until 1977 of the UNESCO
*Courier* magazine, published in 35 languages until 2001. Sandy Koffler met
*Leonardo* founder Frank Malina in 1947 at the inception of UNESCO, where
Malina was helping set up the UNESCO science program and Koffler established
*Courier*; Their deep and uninterrupted friendship lasted over 30 years of
hectic discussions, shared enthusiasms and mutual encouragement. Malina left
UNESCO to devote his time as an artist and pioneer in kinetic art and later
the establishment of the *Leonardo* journal.
The sudden death of Malina in 1981 threw the immediate future of the journal
into some doubt; it was then that Koffler offered his editing experience to
assure the continuation of *Leonardo* and served as editor in chief during
1981/1982, until the *Leonardo* editorial offices were moved to San
Francisco State University, where they are still headquartered. Koffler and
Malina were part of a generation that helped rebuild world institutions
after World War II; Koffler dedicated his life to promoting international
understanding and making known the world heritage and developments in
education, science and culture. Koffler is survived by his wife Pauline
Koffler, who also served for many years as a corresponding editor of
*Leonardo*. The Leonardo network mourns the departure of a friend, colleague
and kindred spirit who contributed though his work to the creation of a
saner world based on international collaboration and dialogue.
_____________________________
IN MEMORIAM: HONORARY *LEONARDO* EDITOR AND HOLOGRAPHY PIONEER, STEPHEN
BENTON
Stephen A. Benton, inventor of the rainbow hologram and a pioneer in medical
imaging and fine arts holography, died of brain cancer at Massachusetts
General Hospital on Sunday, 9 November, 2003. He was 61. Benton was director
of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) and an honorary editor
of *Leonardo*.
Benton delighted in both the scientific and aesthetic applications of
holography. He held 14 patents in optical physics, photography and
holography, and his own works in holography have been displayed at the
Museum of Holography in New York. He described holography as a true
"intersection of art, science and technology." While he considered viewing a
good hologram to be a "magical experience," the rigor and depth of his
research yielded far more than visual wizardry. Holograms have been used to
create three-dimensional composites of CT and MRI scans that have been very
useful in medical diagnosis.
_____________________________
NEW SIMPLE URLS FOR LEONARDO WEBSITES
The Leonardo websites now feature easy-to-remember URLs. The Leonardo
top-level site can always be found at www.leonardo.info. Now, our
publications housed by the MIT server also have simple web addresses. You
can find *Leonardo Music Journal* at lmj.mit.edu, *Leonardo Electronic
Almanac* at lea.mit.edu, Leonardo Book Series at lbs.mit.edu, and Leonardo
Reviews at leonardoreviews.mit.edu.
_____________________________
LEONARDO ANNOUNCES SPACEARTS: THE SPACE AND THE ARTS DATABASE
HTTP://WWW.SPACEARTS.INFO
Leonardo/OLATS and the Ours Foundation have joined forces to create a
database about space art, documenting the works of artists who, since the
mid-nineteenth Century, have taken outer space as a theme, subject or object
for their creations. When completed, this database will host over a thousand
entries. Artists are invited to submit their work for inclusion in the
database. Entry forms to submit your artworks are available online at
www.spacearts.info.
The Spacearts database project is funded by the European Space Agency and is
co-sponsored by the International Academy of Astronautics; Advisors to the
project include:
· IAAA (International Association of Astronomical Artists) - www.iaaa.org
· MIR, an international consortium of institutions with space art
activities. MIR includes: Leonardo/OLATS, Arts Catalyst, V2, Projekt Atol
(Slovenia), and the Multimedia Complex of Actual Art (Russia).
· Maison d'Ailleurs/Museum of Science Fiction, Yverdon - www.ailleurs.ch
For 35 years, *Leonardo* has documented the work of artists involved in
space exploration; It has co-sponsored six Space and the Arts workshops and
promoted the interaction of artists, scientists and engineers involved in
space. The SpaceartS database can be found at www.spacearts.info. Further
information can be found at: Leonardo/OLATS: Space Arts Workshops
documentation at http://www.olats.org/setF3.html or Leonardo/ISAST: Space
Arts Working Group at
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/space.html
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| CREDITS |
| |
|___________________|
Nisar Keshvani: LEA Editor-in-Chief
Michael Punt: Leonardo Reviews Editor-in-Chief
Patrick Lambelet: LEA Managing Editor
Guest Editor: Judy Malloy
Andre Ho: Web Concept and Design Consultant
Roger Malina: Leonardo Executive Editor
Stephen Wilson: Chair, Leonardo/ISAST Web Committee
Editorial Advisory Board:
Irina Aristarkhova, Roy Ascott, Michael Naimark, Craig Harris, Julianne
Pierce
Gallery Advisory Board:
Mark Amerika, Paul Brown, Choy Kok Kee, Steve Dietz, Fatima Lasay, Kim
Machan
fAf-LEA corresponding editors:
Ricardo Dal Farra, Elga Ferreira, Young Hae-Chang, Fatima Lasay, Lee
Weng Choy, Jose-Carlos Mariategui, Marcus Neusetter, Elaine Ng and Marc Voge
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| LEA |
| WORLD WIDE WEB |
| ACCESS |
|___________________|
For over a decade, Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has thrived
as an international peer-reviewed electronic journal and web
archive, covering the interaction of the arts, sciences and
technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and
critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many
contributors are younger scholars and artists, and there is a slant
towards shorter, less academic texts.
Contents include Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt,
Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses,
curated Galleries of current new media artwork, and special
issues on topics ranging from Artists and Scientists in times of
War, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media.
LEA is accessible using the following URL: http://lea.mit.edu
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_________________
| LEA |
| PUBLISHING |
| INFORMATION |
|_________________|
Editorial Address:
Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Studio 3a, 35 Place du Bourg-de-four
1204 Geneva, Switzerland
E-mail: <lea at mitpress.mit.edu>
_________________________________________________________________________
Copyright (2003), Leonardo, the International Society for the
Arts, Sciences and Technology
All Rights Reserved.
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by:
The MIT Press Journals, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
U.S.A.
Re-posting of the content of this journal is prohibited without
permission of Leonardo/ISAST, except for the posting of news and
events listings which have been independently received.
Leonardo/ISAST and the MIT Press give institutions permission to
offer access to LEA within the organization through such
resources as restricted local gopher and mosaic services. Open
access to other individuals and organizations is not permitted.
_________________________________________________________________________
< Ordering Information >
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27&mode=p
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is free to Leonardo/ISAST members and
to subscribers to the journal Leonardo for the 2003 subscription
year. The rate for Non-Leonardo individual subscribers is $35.00,
and for Non-Leonardo institutional subscribers the rate is
$77.00. All subscriptions are entered for the calendar year only.
All orders must be prepaid by check (must be drawn against U.S.
bank in U.S. funds), money order, MasterCard, VISA, or American
Express. Where student subscription rates are available, a
verification of matriculant status is required.
Note: In order to place orders electronically, you must be using
a browser that is SSL-compliant. If you are unable to open the
ordering link listed above, then your browser does not support
the security features necessary to use this interface. Please use
the addresses below to submit your order. Address all orders and
inquiries to:
Circulation Department
MIT Press Journals
Five Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142-1407 USA
TEL: (617) 253-2889 (M-F, 9-5)
FAX: (617) 577-1545 (24 hours)
For questions contact:
journals-orders at mit.edu (subscriptions)
_________________________________________________________________________
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| |
| ADVERTISING |
|________________|
Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published monthly -- individuals
and institutions interested in advertising in LEA, either in the
distributed text version or on the World Wide Web site should contact:
Leonardo Advertising Department
425 Market St., 2nd Floor,
San Francisco, CA 94105, U.S.A.
Tel: (415)-405-3335
Fax: (415)-405-7758
E-mail: isast at sfsu.edu
More Info:
http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads
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| |
| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
|____________________|
LEA acknowledges with thanks the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for their
support to Leonardo/ISAST and its projects.
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< End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 11 (12) >
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