Leonardo | Page 359 | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Leonardo

LEON 38.3 - Jellyfish on the Ceiling and Deer in the Den: The Biology of Interior Decoration

Few homes are without at least one or two representations of living things. The author argues that this penchant for organic decoration is related to what Edward O. Wilson calls “biophilia,” an innate urge in humans to have contact with other species. As many people now live apart from the natural world, pictures, statues, dried flowers and other reminders of flora and fauna are ways of satisfying biophilic urges.

LEON 38.3 - Caution—Objects Are Closer Than They Appear: Perspectively Inverted Pseudoscopic Images behind Accelerated Space

Perspective inversion reverses the flow of naturalistic pictorial space, creating a disorienting, anti-naturalistic sense of space. Inverted perspective's subversive power appears limited, however, given that no art-historical examples depict fully inverted objects in systematically inverted “unlimited spaces,” such as landscapes. The author addresses this limitation through analysis of “converse” and “pseudoscopic” 3D images—Charles Wheat-stone's two paradigms for inverting binocular depth.

LEON 38.3 - Phenomenology and Artistic Praxis: An Application to Marine Ecological Communication

The author's ecologically informed art praxis can be traced back to her experiences while deep-diving off Tasmania's eastern coast. These provided a plethora of aesthetic sensations, but also images of the appalling degradation wrought upon the marine environment by humans. Her art focuses upon this juxtaposition between natural harmony and ecological dysfunction.

LEON 38.3 - Complex Curvatures in Form Theory and String Theory

The authors use new aesthetic criteria concerning structures and properties to explain parallel concepts within theoretical astroparticle physics and contemporary form/compositional research. These aesthetic criteria stem from complex curvature models developed both in string theory and in artistic perceptual research on transitional surfaces and concavities. The authors compare the complex curvatures of the mathematically derived Calabi-Yau manifold with one of Akner Koler's sculptures, which explores an organic interpretation of the looping curvature of a Möbius strip.