Leonardo, Volume 56, Issue 2 | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University
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Contents

Editorial

Artists’ Articles

  • TransHuman Saunter: Multispecies Storytelling in Precarious Times
    Kavita Gonsalves, Agapetos Aia-Fa’aleava, Lan Thanh Ha, Naputsamohn Junpiban, Natasha Narain, Marcus Foth, Glenda Amayo Caldwell
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    Abstract
    TransHuman Saunter is a geolocative artwork that documents the entanglements of four women artists of color with the multispecies ecosystem of the Indian banyan tree in Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, Australia. The work positions itself during a time when the impacts of capitalism and colonialism are evident in the planetary crisis of climate change and species loss in addition to a pandemic that exacerbates ethno-racial and gender inequity. This artists’ article covers the rationale of the work and its methodology and describes the individual artworks. It serves as an act of pluralistic storytelling of unheard voices situated in place.

General Articles

  • Visualizing Spatial Gaze Data in the Perception of 3D Objects
    Eugene Han
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    Abstract
    In response to the rapid development of mobile eye tracking, this paper proposes methods for the visualization of gaze patterns in three dimensions. Methods are divided into two basic categories, beginning with translations from 2D graphic conventions to those that incorporate 3D mesh geometries. They are first discussed in principle and thereafter demonstrated on actual gaze data of sculptural reproductions. The tracing of eye movements of objects in the round required consideration of variables typically unaccounted for in conventional eye-tracking visualization, most importantly with regards to the moving position of the viewing eye. A major advantage of 3D visualizations is the capacity to present gaze information simultaneously on obverse, reverse, and oblique surfaces of perceptual attention. The included methods provided for effective communication of a subject’s perceptual distribution over potentially complex stimulus geometries.

  • Lovewear: Haptic Clothing that Allows Intimate Exploration for Movement-Impaired People
    Emanuela Corti, Ivan Parati, Christian Dils
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    Abstract
    People with disabilities often face physical, political, and societal barriers in expressing their sexuality. The lack of inclusivity in the sex toy market does not support an autonomous experience for impaired individuals who cannot operate toys without external assistance. Lovewear is a collaborative art-science project that combines user-centered design principles with soft robotics integrated into textiles. The aim is to offer an autonomous experience through haptic feedback, allowing self-exploration of intimate sensations and sexual pleasure to females with motor impairments. A pillow interface activates an underwear garment: While caressing and touching the pillow, the wearer triggers the underwear’s inflatable i actuators. This transdisciplinary project used a mixed-methods research design; the objective is to promote the embedment of technology into everyday garments, to improve the wearer’s quality of life.

Historical Perspectives

  • “Tint and Form”: The Geometric Philosophy Underlying Oliver Byrne’s Elements
    Clare Marie Moriarty
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    Abstract
    Oliver Byrne published his groundbreaking and visually remarkable edition of Euclid’s Elements in 1847. The book is extraordinary, featuring four-color diagrams, illustrations, grids, and decorative engraving. Its aesthetic similarity to various stylistic themes of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements has been noted, but little attention has been paid to the pedagogical and theoretical insights that shaped Byrne’s illustrative choices. In this article, the author explains some key philosophical ideas underlying Byrne’s geometric illustrations and contextualizes them amid Byrne’s wider mathematical preoccupations.

  • Tragedy of the Non-Visible: Aesthetic and Ontological Differences in Early Computer versus Conceptual Art
    Miranda Samuels
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    Abstract
    This article considers the complex relationship between early computer and Conceptual art in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States and Europe. It assesses a range of accounts that explain the simultaneous decline in art world support for computer art and growing institutional traction enjoyed by Conceptual art. The author argues that these accounts overlook a subtle but consequential difference in the aesthetic and ontological conditions of the two art forms. Comparative analysis of writings by computer and Conceptual artists and theorists ultimately shows that the relationship between the visible output and the non-visible code or algorithm in computer art is not akin to the relationship between materiality and immateriality in Conceptual art, as is oftentimes assumed. The paper suggests that historical accounts explaining the divergent trajectories of computer and Conceptual art address this difference to avoid oversimplifying computer art’s aesthetic and ontological conditions.

Special Section: Indeterminacy after AI

  • The Critical Counterpoints of Dataveillance Artists: Contesting the Authoritative Narratives of the Intelligence Community
    Jennifer Gradecki
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    Abstract
    Artists provide critical counterpoints to the assumptions held by private contractors, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies about dataveillance, i.e. the use of datasets to monitor, predict, and control behavior. Whereas analysts tend to see data as “raw” facts and the analytical process as narrowly empirical, dataveillance artists regard data as constructed artifacts and remain open to a multiplicity of epistemological approaches. This article discusses the work of ten post-Snowden dataveillance artists who enable critical reflection on the capacity of automated dataveillance to represent complex and indeterminate social phenomena while refuting a singular, authoritative story about dataveillance.

  • Making AI-Infused Products and Services More Legible
    Franziska Pilling, Paul Coulton
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    Abstract
    The increasing availability of large data sets has initiated a resurgence in artificial intelligence (AI) research. Today AI is integrated into a wide variety of so-called smart products to personalize user experiences. Smart technologies are typically designed for ease of use, with their complex underlying procedures (intentionally) obfuscated; explaining particular outcomes is hampered by their inherent ambiguity. This lack of legibility leads to misconceptions about how AI works. Through design research, the authors address the challenge of AI legibility by designing AI iconography as an accessible way to communicate and better understand the role AI and data increasingly play in our everyday interactions.

  • Artistic Defamiliarization in the Age of Algorithmic Prediction
    Derek Curry
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    Abstract
    Predictive algorithms are indeterminate when they are used on data that differs from their training set, which is always a possibility in real-world applications. Anthropomorphic metaphors can obfuscate the differences between human perception and the computational processes that comprise algorithmic decision-making. This article shows how artistic uses of predictive algorithms can reveal the algorithms’ indeterminate nature and raise questions about the efficacy and dangers of algorithmic decision-making. In particular, the author presents the technique of artistic defamiliarization as a way to question the foundations of positivist epistemologies that equate quantification and calculation with objective truth.

  • Experimental Environments and the Aesthetic Experience of Metabolic Processes
    Desiree Foerster, Iain Campbell
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    Abstract
    This article explores the aesthetic experience of metabolic processes in two projects: the newly designed Jade Eco Park in Taiwan, by architect Philippe Rahm, and the virtual reality environment Give and Take, developed by Desiree Foerster, Michaela Büsse, Sarah Hermanutz, and Andreas Rau. The authors argue that a heightened sensitivity to atmospheric and metabolic processes enabled by these projects brings to the foreground a different mode of aesthetic perception, toward how we experience and not only what we feel. They propose further that an aesthetics of metabolism allows us to become more sensitive to our own bodily involvement with the world and other sentient beings with whom humans share the world.

  • Making Sense of Indeterminate Representations of Land in Contemporary Markets
    Erica Deluchi
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    Abstract
    With the advancement of computing, representations of Land in contemporary markets are becoming increasingly indeterminate. Citing two examples from Australia, the author identifies the manipulation of system-specific measurements of space and time as the methodological process behind these changing representations while examining their close relationship to the settler colonial project. They argue that a new conceptual formulation is required to de-standardize how markets perceive Land to situate potential sites of value extraction and their calculi and advance movements to reclaim space and time amidst changing digital landscapes.

  • Measuring Is Making: The Radical Indeterminacy of Music
    Matthew Lovett
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    Abstract
    In Meeting the Universe Halfway, the feminist theorist Karen Barad explores the indeterminate nature of measurement. Drawing on empirical research into quantum entanglement, they develop an axiomatic approach to configuring the fundamental interconnections between processes of measurement and making. This article builds on this aspect of Barad’s work and uses it to consider how an indeterminate measuring-as-making process might manifest in music. By staging an encounter between the composer John Cage’s investigations of indeterminacy and two contemporary pieces of music—Space Golf by Hen Ogledd and Wildfires by SAULT—the author considers how a Baradian theory of measuring-as-making can be used to offer new perspectives on musical creativity.

Special Section: Music and Sound Art

  • Live Coding in Music Theater—A Comprehensive Technique? The Case of Dumrul and the Grim Reaper
    Selcuk Artut
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    Abstract
    The author analyzes the play Dumrul and the Grim Reaper as a case study to explore the possibilities of live coding in the context of music theater. The live coding method, which focuses on a single main application window, allows one to effectively execute several distributed tasks simultaneously, such as music composition, sound design, sound effects, and musical performance in real-time without losing track of the theatrical text’s flow. In terms of the compositional approach, live coding will be proposed as a holistic sound and music creation technique that centers on using textual systems to depict elaborate forms of artistic expression.

Leonardo Reviews

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ISSN: 
1071-4391
Title: 

Leonardo, Volume 56, Issue 2

April 2023