Contents
Editorial
-
The Edge of Beginning AgainDiana Ayton-Shenker
Artists’ Articles
-
PlantConnectCarlos Castellanos
Abstract
This paper describes PlantConnect, a real-time interactive system that explores human-plant interaction via the human act of breathing, the bioelectrical and photosynthetic activity of plants, and computational intelligence to bring the two together. Part of larger investigations into alternative models for the creation of shared experiences and understanding with the natural world, the work is presented as a concrete implementation of a possible model based upon reciprocal interplay and information flows between human and nonhuman worlds. -
Culturescape: Environment, Science, and Art at BundanonNigel Helyer, John Potts
Abstract
This article describes the website Culturescape: An Environmental Portrait of Bundanon. This online portrait, a collaboration combining environmental science and art, includes an interactive environmental map of the Bundanon region in New South Wales, Australia, and documentation of environmental artworks by Nigel Helyer, all initially installed at Bundanon. The interactive map displays soil quality data at Bundanon in sonified and visualized form. The user hears a sonification of environmental data, represented as a musical piece, and sees a visualization of mineral data as a graphic display. -
In-Habitant: An Inquiry into a Non-Dualistic Duality of Human and NonhumanUmut Tasa
Abstract
In-Habitant is an art and life project based on artist Umut Tasa’s decadelong encounters with urban wildlife. It is a quest to utilize art as a research method to contemplate her memories, nature discoveries, audiovisual records, and archive of haiku and prose through a body of artworks. These artworks bring together the corporeality of nonhumans with their digital re-presentation and literary text with creative coding. The author inquires into dualistic and nondualistic ontological approaches to human-nonhuman relations in urban settings. -
Sound of Ikebana: Fluid Artwork Created under Zero-G Using Parabolic FlightNaoko Tosa, Akihiro Yamada, Yunian Pang, Shigetaka Toba, Azusa Ito, Takashi Suzuki, Ryohei Nakatsu
Abstract
The authors, led by artist Naoko Tosa, discuss their collaboration on the video artwork Sound of Ikebana, made by applying sound vibration to fluid and shooting it with a high-speed camera. To study the fluid’s shape under zero gravity the authors experimented with generating the artwork under weightlessness achieved through parabolic flight. The authors confirmed that a new shape significantly different from the one created under normal gravity is created. A three-dimensional artwork was also generated by shooting the phenomenon from multiple viewpoints. -
Mythical Mushrooms: Hybrid Perspectives on Transcendental MattersXiaojing Yan
Abstract
This paper focuses on the authors artistic practice. She has cultivated a series of evocative sculptural works out of lingzhi fungus by designing a controlled, human environment that, over time, gives way to an organic process. This hybrid bio-art experiment relies as much on science as it does on fate. Lingzhi holds cultural significance in Chinese culture and is called “the mushroom of immortality.” Yan’s works juxtapose Chinese mythology with contemporary culture to highlight environmental and social issues; her investigations with lingzhi mushrooms delve into the meaning of spirituality and metamorphosis and explore questions about being and becoming, art and nature, art and science, nature and existence.
General Articles
-
Act of Fiction: Simultaneously Experienced Multiple Perspectives of (Un)reality When Engaging with Narrative-Based ArtEinat Amir, Joshua Sofaer, Mikko Sams
Abstract
The authors propose a new conception of the mechanism that occurs during a narrative-based art experience—the “Act of Fiction.” They claim that there is no “suspension of disbelief” but rather something more similar to our decision-making systems, enabling us to simultaneously be present in the real and the unreal (fictional). The article’s first part contains a narrative account in which an Act of Fiction takes place; it exemplifies what it also describes. The second part provides an analysis of this phenomenon through a review of current literature and our position on it. The third part proposes an outline for a primary examination of what might be happening in the brain in the experience of an Act of Fiction. The authors conclude by suggesting directions for future research. -
Entangled Poetics: Two Bioartists in the Anthropocene
Abstract
Poet-artists Christian Bök and Karin Bolender pose two interventions into bioart, with radically different conceptions of the nonhumans involved. In Böks Xenotext project (2002–present), a microbe becomes an archive and writing machine through DNA manipulation. Bolender’s The Unnaming of Aliass (2002–2020) documents her life with the ass Aliass and the unexpected results it yields. Both projects attempt to establish communication with nonhumans, but their approaches have drastically different consequences. Bök ultimately ends up reinscribing well-worn anthropocentric biases. In contrast, Bolender’s capacious version of animal husbandry moves away from machines and mastery over circumstances and animals, following a principle akin to Karen Barad’s “intra-action” to suggest a course correction for bioartists’ work with nonhumans. -
Noise-Canceling Technologies for Smartphone Cameras: Self-Image in the Age of AnxietyCarloalberto Treccani
Abstract
Noise-canceling technologies for smartphone cameras allow individuals to control and customize their self-images. These technologies that are used to automatically eliminate unwanted visual noise, such as excessive grain or lighting issues, skin imperfections, and teeth stains, are now widely used on smartphones to transform a noisy photograph into a “clean” and “ideal” image. In this paper, the author conducts a critical analysis of (1) the increasing popularity of these technologies through their application in smartphone cameras; (2) their active involvement in the construction of users’ ideal self-images; and (3) their contribution to increased instances of visual phobias, obsessions, anxieties, and irritation.
General Note
-
Metabolism and ArtFiona Johnstone, Adam Bencard
Abstract
Metabolism holds potential as both a crucial topic and an analytical tool for our current biopolitical moment, for understanding the agency and significance of material forces as they move into and through bodies. From this vantage point, this article suggests practicing a metabolic gaze by reading together metabolism and contemporary art. It discusses ways of defining metabolism that might be productive in helping to produce tools and touchstones for metabolic readings, before presenting examples of artworks that might be interestingly illuminated by light of this sign.
Theoretical Perspective
-
How Do We Experience Digital Arts? An Exploration through Latour’s Modes of ExistenceDominik Schlienger
Abstract
This article explores the divergence between the practice and theory of technology as observed through an interdisciplinary free-improvisation workshop that critically engaged with (digital) technology Bruno Latour’s “technical mode of existence” proposes an intriguing interpretation of this differentiation. What is it that we experience when we engage with “digital art”? How does this bear on conceptualizations of technologies? The “fictional” and “reference” modes of existence further aid in understanding the digital as it pervades culture and media. Using examples from music, visual arts, and observations from the workshop, dystopian visions of technology are disentangled and reconfigured. Embodied agency and kinesthesia play a major role in this process.
Special Section: LASER
-
LASER Nomad: Road Maps for Art and Science Research into Ancestral KnowledgeLuca Forcucci
Abstract
LASER Nomad is a mobile research laboratory for fieldwork. It is based in Berlin and run by UBQTLAB.ORG, a platform for arts and science research that produces talks, podcasts, and collaborative concerts in specific geographic sites. The focus is on the sonic arts to investigate epistemology emerging from arts, science, and technology as rituals in the context of indigenous knowledge and cybernetic systems. LASER Nomad aims to emphasize contemporary research melding into perception with ancestral knowledge and with nonclassical science. LASER Nomad forms part of the LASER network talks developed by Leonardo/ISAST and initiated by Piero Scaruffi. -
Diffractive RendezvousGisele Trudel, nina Czegledy
Abstract
This article is an open-ended discussion of five events from the LASER series hosted at Hexagram in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, between 2014 and 2021. LASERs at Hexagram interweave the research-creations of its members in dialogue with local and international guests. Emerging from the audio-to-text transcriptions of previous documentation of these LASERs, the word “movement” becomes a novel lens of analysis for this text, according to a “diffractive” approach. Thoughts and actions afforded by this word produce a surprisingly gentle yet compelling interdisciplinary weave, to inspire future editions.
Special Section: Music and Sound Art
-
SoundRunner: Out of the Starting Blocks
Abstract
This paper presents a project in the art-science nexus. SoundRunner is a platform that exploits the potential of electroacoustic music to create an interactive sound- and music-making experience. The project investigates how data on running performance can be harnessed in real time to drive musical creation. A range of psychological indices (and associated analyses) is used to assess the effects of the SoundRunner platform on runners. Driven by health and well-being imperatives, the project served to augment running experience with unique sound and music. The paper discusses implications regarding running performance and the further technological development of SoundRunner. -
Fragile Intersections: An Installaformance as SystemFrancisca Morand, Javier Jaimovich, Mónica Bate, Isabel Jara-Hinojosa
Abstract
Fragile Intersections is an interactive performative installation based on voice, movement, dance, biosignals, artifacts, and visual projections. It premiered in October 2021. This article describes the development of its three interrelated parts: two interactive and autonomous artifacts that capture and re-signify corporeal signals of the participants, and a performance by a dancer, who becomes an agent for subtle forms of dialogue with the installation. The authors discuss the characteristics of Fragile Intersections as a system founded on the dynamic relations of its different components, where multiple meanings and subjective processes appear during the exploration in this hybrid space of an installaformance.
Special Section: Science and Art: The Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue
-
Collaborations in Art and Medicine: Institutional Critique, Patient Participation, and Emerging EntanglementsFiona Johnstone
Abstract
In recent decades, collaborations between artists and clinicians or biomedical researchers have become increasingly common and now constitute a distinctive category of art-science collaboration. This article reflects on the intellectual and material conditions of such collaborations, exploring two genealogies for these practices—”sciart” and arts and health—with a focus on two key areas: (1) the need for stakeholders to recognize fine art practice as research and knowledge-production (rather than merely as illustrative, educational, or therapeutic); (2) the challenges and opportunities presented by patient-participant involvement. Finally, it explores critical medical humanities as an emergent framework currently shaping these kinds of collaborations.
Special Section: Seize the Moment
-
Seize the Moment: A Transdisciplinary InitiativeBri Noonan, Jenny Strickland
-
MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE? CLIMATE CHANGE IS URGENT AND CHANGE NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOWRachel Bowditch, Karen Jean Martinson
Leonardo Reviews
-
The Phantom ScientistJan Baetens
-
Thinking with Sound: A New Program in the Sciences and Humanities Around 1900Michael Punt
-
Environing MediaJussi Parikka
-
AnnotationJan Baetens
-
ACEVEDO in Context: Analog Media 1977–1987 · Digital Media 1983–2020Amy Ione
-
Drawing Thought: How Drawing Helps us Observe, Discover, and InventGeorge Shortess
-
A Better Ape: The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How it Made us HumanGregory F. Tague
-
Piranesi and the Modern AgeRobert Maddox-Harle
-
Contemporary Photography in France: Between Theory and PracticeJan Baetens
-
Leonardo Reviews Online
Endnote
-
The Metaverse, 2030: A Boring Virtual Future Averted by Inspired Entrepreneurs and ArtistsPeter Friess, Alain Ruche