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Leonardo

LEON 35.5 - Ten Key Texts on Digital Art: 1970-2000

This article highlights ten major written works that reflect the brief history of digital art. The lack of public knowledge on digital art is largely due to a lack of standard text. While seen by most as a relatively new art form, several exhibitions are mentioned here dating from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, all of which have had a major impact on the development of the field. Authors and editors chosen for the list include Gene Youngblood, Jasia Reichardt, Cynthia Goodman, Friedrich Kittler, Michael Benedikt, Minna Tarkka, Peter Weibel, Espen Aarseth, and Ulf Poschardt.

LEON 34.5 - From Memory Arts to the New Code Paradigm: The Artist as Engineer of Virtual Information Space and Virtual Experience

This paper examines contemporary developments in the creation and experience of immersive 3D art projects in the context of spatial and information design. It takes into consideration historic forebears, particularly the ancient Greek art of memory, contemporary theorists, and current new media artists who are pushing code and application design to new limits. The essay specifically addresses the role of the artist as “coder” and application engineer and anticipates concerns and possible technological developments in data visualization and virtual spaces.

LEON 34.3 - The Language of Iconica

Visual languages play an important role in electronically mediated communication. In particular, iconography has developed as an important component of user interface design. Interactivity makes an icon an active agent in communication, rather than a passive communicator. The author's interactive work Iconica uses icons to represent the function and structure of an artificial-life model. In this work, iconic elements are the basic building blocks of a world literally made of language.

LEON 34.3 - The Touch through Time: Raoul Hausmann, Nam June Paik and the Transmission Technologies of the Avant-Garde

This essay outlines the historiographic implications of the strange convergence between Berlin Dadaist Raoul Hausmann's Optophon (1920–1936)—a “synaesthetic” instrument designed to transform sound signals into light signals and vice versa—and Nam June Paik's pioneering 1960s television work. Hausmann articulated a new, “televisual” form of presence, which also implied a new form of tele-tactility.