Leonardo
Volume 30, No. 4 (1997)
Issue Contents
August/September 1994
Leonardo is a print journal, edited by Leonardo/the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and published by the MIT Press. Subscriptions and individual issues can be ordered from the MIT Press.
TO ORDER
Editorial
Curtis E.A. Karnow: In Collaboration with Machines
The Leonardo Gallery
Paul Hertz, curator; Roshini Kempadoo, Rejane Spitz, Richard Maxwell, Torrey Nommesen, Annette Barbier, Esther Parada
Artist's Article
Mistaken Identities: An Interactive CD-ROM Genealogy
By Christine Tamblyn
The author describes the technical and rhetorical strategies she
employed in her recent CD-ROM, Mistaken Identities. This project is
organized around the lives and work of 10 famous women: Josephine Baker,
Simone de Beauvoir, Catherine the Great, Colette, Marie Curie, Marlene
Dietrich, Isadora Duncan, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Mead and Gertrude Stein.
Although the author selected these female role models because of their
emblematic status, the CD-ROM examines them as complex figures whose
identities are not essential or fixed, but contingent and mutable.
Representing her subjects in this way, the author subverts their
commodification as cultural icons.
Artists' Statements
Sue Rees: Coordinates for an Alignment of a Jigsaw
Guy Levrier: A Painter's Thesis: Quantum Physics as an Inspiration for Art
Jiri Matousek and Jiri Valoch: Sculptural Creations Based on Astronomical Phenomena
Special Section:
Art and Biology
Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton Science for Art Abstracts
Aaron Klug: Principles of the Architecture and Morphogenesis of Biological Assemblies
Peter Lawrence: Genetics of Animal Design
Jean-Pierre Sauvage: Interlocking Rings and Knots at the Molecular Level
Donald A. Tomalia: Dendrimers and Dendron Controlled Macromolecular Structure
Historical Perspective
Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity and
Participation for a Telematic Future
By Simone Osthoff
This essay discusses the artistic legacies of Brazilian artists Lygia
Clark (1920-1988) and Helio Oiticica (1937-1980), focusing on the
interactive vocabularies developed from their participatory creations of
the 1960s and 1970s and pointing to the practical and conceptual
relevance of these vocabularies for artists working with digital
communications technology. The article also explores the critical and
original way Clark and Oiticica, working at the margins of capitalism,
reframed modernist aesthetic issues by translating them directly into
life and the body. The author concludes with an examination of the
artists' interactive non-electronic works, which share common conceptual
ground with the works of Australian artist Stelarc, the New York-based
X-Art Foundation and British artist Roy Ascott.
Theoretical Perspective
Propositional Music: On Emergent Properties in Morphogenesis and the
Evolution of Music
Part I: Essays, Propositions and Commentaries
By David Rosenboom
This two-part article describes the author's point of view about
creative music-making, termed propositional music. According to this
view, composing involves proposing models for whole musical realities,
emphasizing the dynamic emergence of forms through evolution and
transformation. In Part I, the author discusses related areas of music,
science and philosophy that influence this view, including
morphogenesis; the emergence of global properties; the nature of forms;
the natural emergence of networked interactivity; implications of the
infosphere for art making; and potential sources of new mythology for
our culture. Part 2 is in Leonardo Music Journal Volume 7
(1997).
Special Section:
Creativity and Cognition Conference Papers
Edward Burton: Artificial Innocence: Interactions between the Study of Children's Drawing and Artificial Intelligence
Nigel Cross: Creativity in Design: Analyzing and Modeling the Creative Leap
William Godwin, Paivi Makirinne-Crofts and Sohrab Saadat: Objects in Transition: A Spatial Paradigm for Creative Design
John A. Waterworth: Creativity and Sensation: The Case for Synaesthetic Media
Reviews
Istvan Hargittai, Stephen Wilson, Cliff Pickover, Cynthia Pannucci
About the Covers
Front Cover: Sonya Rapoport, Objects on My Dresser: Displacing Elements on the Periodic Table, 41 x 56 inches, 1979. Objects on My Dresser was an ongoing artwork created from 1978 through 1983. By using the random set of objects that had collected on her dresser, the artist evaluated their psychological implications through a computer analysis using qualitative input. One of the many aesthetic expressions resulting from the analysis was a Periodic Table in which the symbol of each element was replaced by the image of an object containing the same initial letters. For example, the object "plate" replaces the element platinum, atomic number 78.
Back Cover: Sonya Rapoport, Objects on My Dresser: Object Cards for Computer Plots, series of 58 cards, 3 1/4 x 7 3/8 inches, 1979. The artist used these cards to make labels for the computer plots for the artwork Objects on My Dresser (shown on front cover). After the artist used the cards to run the computer program and create the labels of the objects, she pasted the images of the objects themselves on the cards, as seen on the back cover. The focus was the relationship between two sets of words: the words assigned to the objects and the words assigned to their associated objects.
