[Leonardo/ISAST Network] Leonardo and San Francisco Art Institute Announce Partnership

[Leonardo/ISAST]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Pamela Grant-Ryan for more information: pgr at leonardo.info

Leonardo and San Francisco Art Institute Announce Partnership

November 18, 2004 (San Francisco) - The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI),
one of the foremost art colleges in the nation, and the International
Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) announced
today a partnership that will bring the editorial offices of Leonardo, the
Society's publishing arm, onto the main campus of the Art Institute in May,
2005. The announcement was made by SFAI President Chris Bratton and
Leonardo/ISAST Board Chair Roger Malina.

"The presence of Leonardo on campus will expand opportunities for SFAI
students to further explore the intersections of new media, art, science,
criticism, and publishing," said Chris Bratton. "For over thirty years their
publication Leonardo has been the journal of record for cutting edge
artistic investigations of science and technology," Bratton continued.
"Bringing them into the SFAI community will be a tremendous advantage for
students and for our new interdisciplinary Centers for Art + Science, Media
Culture, Public Practice, and Word, Text, and Image." 

The partnership underscores a period of great investment in academic
programs at the Art Institute. The school introduced four new Centers for
Interdisciplinary Learning to its undergraduate curriculum this fall and
also opened a new facility for artistic investigation in high definition
technology, the Ars Nova XXI HD Research Laboratory. Other SFAI partnerships
created through the new Centers include NASA, the Exploratorium, Bay Area
Video Coalition, San Francisco Center for the Book, and Arion Press.

The journal Leonardo was established by space pioneer and kinetic artist
Frank Malina in 1967, around the same time his friend, physicist Frank
Oppenheimer, founded San Francisco's hands-on museum of science, art, and
human perception, the Exploratorium. Today Leonardo/ISAST is a professional
organization that promotes scholarship and documentation on the work of
artists involved with the sciences and new technologies and stimulates
collaboration between artists, scientists, and engineers. Its activities
include the awarding of prizes, organizing workshops, and three academic
journals published by MIT Press: Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, and
Leonardo Electronic Almanac. The Leonardo Book Series, with twenty titles to
date, is a key resource in the field. Leonardo/ISAST works in partnership
with a sister society, Leonardo /OLATS, in Paris, France. Leonardo/ISAST's
website is http://www.leonardo.info. 

"As Leonardo grows," said Roger Malina, Chair of the Leonardo Board, "one of
our primary goals is to reach out to the new generation of artists who are
developing - in so many different ways - the interdisciplinary forms
envisioned by Leonardo's founders, and also to promote scholarship by
historians and theoreticians of this growing area of art practice. This
partnership will allow us to continue working with all our university
partners while giving us direct access to a young and vibrant artistic
community." 

The partnership between Leonardo and SFAI includes internships for Art
Institute students, collaborations on lecture series and symposia, and other
joint endeavors to be announced in coming months. According to SFAI Center
for Art+Science co-coordinator Meredith Tromble, there will also be other,
less quantifiable benefits from the partnership.  "Our campus provides a
system for people - students, faculty, and the public - to meet, take part
in conversations, and exchange creative ideas on a daily basis. The Center
for Art + Science is very excited about bringing the Leonardo community into
this mix." 

SFAI is committed to arts education in a cross-disciplinary environment, not
only between art-making media, but also between the arts and other
disciplines. As described by New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman, the
college has served as "an academic oasis and think tank for artists toiling
at the intersection of moving images, sculpture, and Conceptualism." The
partnership with Leonardo will help provide an active framework from which
students can explore new ways of looking at, thinking about, and making art,
while learning about science, technology, writing, and history. 

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