In 1971, artist Frieder Nake denounced the production of computer art. Paradoxically, Nake, a pioneer of computer art, participated in groundbreaking exhibitions across Western and Eastern Europe in the 1960s. These shows blurred boundaries between artists and scientists to evaluate the viability of art as visual research for its aesthetic and social potential. This article reexamines Nake’s position in context, from his initial understanding of generative art’s redemptive political role and his later view post-1968, following revolutions that demonstrated computers’ entanglement with the North Atlantic capitalist military-corporate research complex.
{"title":"Frieder Nake and the Ethics of Cold War Computer Art","authors":"Cindy Evans","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02446","url":null,"abstract":"In 1971, artist Frieder Nake denounced the production of computer art. Paradoxically, Nake, a pioneer of computer art, participated in groundbreaking exhibitions across Western and Eastern Europe in the 1960s. These shows blurred boundaries between artists and scientists to evaluate the viability of art as visual research for its aesthetic and social potential. This article reexamines Nake’s position in context, from his initial understanding of generative art’s redemptive political role and his later view post-1968, following revolutions that demonstrated computers’ entanglement with the North Atlantic capitalist military-corporate research complex.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"27 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91039594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
texts that “the lines are ever-transferring, constantly generating, constantly renewing, never fully built, as if always on the brink of their own vanishing,” which is not only good but also serves as a leitmotif for much of the work here. And that’s just a peripheral we see. The computer, operating on a trivial level, isn’t even on show. But it’s present by its absence, as it were, and bits of paper would not remotely be as conceptually redolent. Now what comes? Just look at some of the 14 section topics: Mainframe Mystique, Mathematical Agents in the Computational Imagination, Reboot: Mondrian and Klee in the Computer Lab, Art and Computer in the Age of Protest, Coding Dance and Dancing Code, Social Cybernetics, Information as Art, Weaving, the hugely influential New Tendencies and so on. The striking thing is that the chronological and conceptual categories often map quite well onto general trends and problematics in art. Someone leafing through the photos might not immediately know that they concerned computer art. These days, the medium is nearly always the message. Earlier it was. . . different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is a great difference between, say, Edward Ihnatowicz’s large interactive robotic sculpture Senster, completed in 1970, and . . . Oh, I’ve got it I think: That great work was about the interaction it generated. People even got married in front of it as it hovered “proudly” in the background, responding positively to gentle sounds and gestures, shying away from loud noise or violent movements. People’s gazes were on others’ interactions. Today it would be about the thing with which the public incidentally interacted. No one gets married in front of . . . well, you know the sort of stuff. Philips, of electrical goods fame, showed Senster in their flying saucer– like Evoluon, in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. To them it was a spectacle, shown in a literal segment of circus ring. When it took too much attention away from their fridges and light bulbs, they discarded it (it has since been rebuilt), allegedly without even telling the artist. (The director of the Evoluon told me he was very sad about this. He himself had completely understood what the work was really about, seeing it every day, with and without visitors.) This is what hinders much history of the computer-based arts: they are seen as images, or spectacles, but they are much more than that. Simpler, quieter, often more in tune with minimalism and conceptualism. Hence, again, the failure of artbots, only dealing with what things look like, or we could better say, actually nothing. We could make art using artbots, but it would not be what the bots produced. Tasked with showing images about artbotor AI-art, the bots show images indistinguishable from those generated by first-level prompts. So, the computer arts of 1952 to 1982 could have been so important in the history of mid-century art. Well, I have news: They were central, in themselves. It’s not that
{"title":"The Unification of the Arts: A Framework for Understanding What the Arts Share and Why","authors":"Jan Baetens.","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02437","url":null,"abstract":"texts that “the lines are ever-transferring, constantly generating, constantly renewing, never fully built, as if always on the brink of their own vanishing,” which is not only good but also serves as a leitmotif for much of the work here. And that’s just a peripheral we see. The computer, operating on a trivial level, isn’t even on show. But it’s present by its absence, as it were, and bits of paper would not remotely be as conceptually redolent. Now what comes? Just look at some of the 14 section topics: Mainframe Mystique, Mathematical Agents in the Computational Imagination, Reboot: Mondrian and Klee in the Computer Lab, Art and Computer in the Age of Protest, Coding Dance and Dancing Code, Social Cybernetics, Information as Art, Weaving, the hugely influential New Tendencies and so on. The striking thing is that the chronological and conceptual categories often map quite well onto general trends and problematics in art. Someone leafing through the photos might not immediately know that they concerned computer art. These days, the medium is nearly always the message. Earlier it was. . . different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. There is a great difference between, say, Edward Ihnatowicz’s large interactive robotic sculpture Senster, completed in 1970, and . . . Oh, I’ve got it I think: That great work was about the interaction it generated. People even got married in front of it as it hovered “proudly” in the background, responding positively to gentle sounds and gestures, shying away from loud noise or violent movements. People’s gazes were on others’ interactions. Today it would be about the thing with which the public incidentally interacted. No one gets married in front of . . . well, you know the sort of stuff. Philips, of electrical goods fame, showed Senster in their flying saucer– like Evoluon, in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. To them it was a spectacle, shown in a literal segment of circus ring. When it took too much attention away from their fridges and light bulbs, they discarded it (it has since been rebuilt), allegedly without even telling the artist. (The director of the Evoluon told me he was very sad about this. He himself had completely understood what the work was really about, seeing it every day, with and without visitors.) This is what hinders much history of the computer-based arts: they are seen as images, or spectacles, but they are much more than that. Simpler, quieter, often more in tune with minimalism and conceptualism. Hence, again, the failure of artbots, only dealing with what things look like, or we could better say, actually nothing. We could make art using artbots, but it would not be what the bots produced. Tasked with showing images about artbotor AI-art, the bots show images indistinguishable from those generated by first-level prompts. So, the computer arts of 1952 to 1982 could have been so important in the history of mid-century art. Well, I have news: They were central, in themselves. It’s not that","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"60 1","pages":"542-543"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79475875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
of Amarillo Ramp, completed on his behalf by Tony Shafrazi, Nancy Holt, and Richard Serra. Inside the Spiral is a robust example of the degree to which his art continues to stimulate us today. I highly recommend the volume to those interested in ecological art, the creative process, environmental concerns, and interdisciplinary studies. It will no doubt become the definitive volume on this artist for a long time. It is enhanced with an extraordinary collection of images (photographs, posters, artwork, etc.), including a section of plates, and is divided into six parts: Prologue and Background; Prehistory and Early Painting; Clandestine Fantasies, 1962– 1964; Mutation of Artistic Persona, 1965–1968; Professional Consummation, 1969–1970; and Expansion and Returns, 1971–1973. Following the study itself, Boettger includes 50 pages of notes and a condensed list of books in Smithson’s library. Finally, it is noteworthy that the way in which Smithson reached outside of the traditional gallery is increasingly common today. Despite his abbreviated career, he was a pioneer in this respect. His trajectory left me wondering how his art would have grown had he lived another thirty or forty years. With Smithson, I find the question of what might have come later particularly compelling given how radically artmaking, technology, and our interest in the environment have evolved in recent decades. How environmental change is so evident today is particularly thought-provoking in relation to Smithson’s legacy, because his earthwork work is alive and has become a part of our larger narrative as a result.
{"title":"Literature’s Elsewheres: On the Necessity of Radical Literary Practices","authors":"Jan Baetens.","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02443","url":null,"abstract":"of Amarillo Ramp, completed on his behalf by Tony Shafrazi, Nancy Holt, and Richard Serra. Inside the Spiral is a robust example of the degree to which his art continues to stimulate us today. I highly recommend the volume to those interested in ecological art, the creative process, environmental concerns, and interdisciplinary studies. It will no doubt become the definitive volume on this artist for a long time. It is enhanced with an extraordinary collection of images (photographs, posters, artwork, etc.), including a section of plates, and is divided into six parts: Prologue and Background; Prehistory and Early Painting; Clandestine Fantasies, 1962– 1964; Mutation of Artistic Persona, 1965–1968; Professional Consummation, 1969–1970; and Expansion and Returns, 1971–1973. Following the study itself, Boettger includes 50 pages of notes and a condensed list of books in Smithson’s library. Finally, it is noteworthy that the way in which Smithson reached outside of the traditional gallery is increasingly common today. Despite his abbreviated career, he was a pioneer in this respect. His trajectory left me wondering how his art would have grown had he lived another thirty or forty years. With Smithson, I find the question of what might have come later particularly compelling given how radically artmaking, technology, and our interest in the environment have evolved in recent decades. How environmental change is so evident today is particularly thought-provoking in relation to Smithson’s legacy, because his earthwork work is alive and has become a part of our larger narrative as a result.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"103 1","pages":"552-553"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85842990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article the authors activate decolonial feminist art history as a transdisciplinary protocol for organizing quantitative data. In foregrounding precolonial calculation tools as the basis for a new data visualization method, they present questions about how scientists might negotiate multiple interrelated variables in their research, opening more possibilities for narrating complex causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change and facilitating discussions about the relationship between climate change and settler-colonialism through visual means. While data science has historically prioritized Cartesian and Euclidean geometry as the most efficient tools for data visualization, the authors draw on Indigenous calculation tools that allow for more visual and semantic flexibility than the x-y axis.
{"title":"Touching Variables: Decolonial Approaches and New Tools for Ecological Data Visualization","authors":"Katie Anania, Cooper Stiglitz","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02445","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02445","url":null,"abstract":"In this article the authors activate decolonial feminist art history as a transdisciplinary protocol for organizing quantitative data. In foregrounding precolonial calculation tools as the basis for a new data visualization method, they present questions about how scientists might negotiate multiple interrelated variables in their research, opening more possibilities for narrating complex causes and effects of anthropogenic climate change and facilitating discussions about the relationship between climate change and settler-colonialism through visual means. While data science has historically prioritized Cartesian and Euclidean geometry as the most efficient tools for data visualization, the authors draw on Indigenous calculation tools that allow for more visual and semantic flexibility than the x-y axis.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"25 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85861268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
social embedding, which is characterized by what is called in French artification, on the one hand, and intermediality, on the other hand. “Artification,” that is, the integration of a nonartistic medium in the institutional artistic realm, is a relatively recent phenomenon in France (it goes back roughly to the early 1980s), which explains the profound mutability of this medium: The position of photography is less rigid than that of other art forms, and for this reason the medium is capable of permanently redefining itself in relation to changing contexts and conditions. This mutability involves a persistent reflection on what photography is but also on what it can do. Medium specificity is far from being the final horizon of photography as art today, but since the status of the medium is still relatively open, it continues to be on the radar. This formal and technical concern helps avoid any form of blatant political instrumentalization, even in the case of photographers with a direct political agenda. Intermediality, that is, the possibility of combining photography with other media, either in one single production such as a book or in a sequence of linked performances (a set of photographs moving from a website to a museum installation, for example), is a feature that reinforces the social and political impact of photography, which can progressively build new and different forms of interaction with various types of audiences. One easily understands that in an ecocritical perspective, artification and intermediality are vital characteristics as well as crucial advantages of a medium that aims at exploring the permanently changing relationships between art and environment. Yet what does the author mean by these relationships? Méaux explains from the first page that her book prioritizes a very particular type of photography, namely the type that aims at questioning our conventional ways of thinking of the Anthropocene. Photography, in this regard, is seen as an artistic medium with a strong cognitive as well as political dimension, for it forces the audience to rethink the mutual dependence of nature and culture (to put it very simply), to ask new questions on the forms and impact of the photographic medium itself, and eventually to make room for these issues in the larger social debate. The two major sources of inspiration of this critical take on photography and the Anthropocene are, for Méaux, first, John Dewey and his book Art as Experience (1932), a work that dismantles the dichotomy between life and art, and second, Jacques Rancière, whose ideas on the distribution of the sensible have given a new political meaning to formal experimentalism as a way of making room for underprivileged or despised experiences by equally unacknowledged or misrepresented social groups and individuals. In Méaux’s book, the photographic projects that depart from ecological concerns help reject false or fossilized ideas on the nature/culture divide, to start with
{"title":"Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure","authors":"E. Ferrara","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02441","url":null,"abstract":"social embedding, which is characterized by what is called in French artification, on the one hand, and intermediality, on the other hand. “Artification,” that is, the integration of a nonartistic medium in the institutional artistic realm, is a relatively recent phenomenon in France (it goes back roughly to the early 1980s), which explains the profound mutability of this medium: The position of photography is less rigid than that of other art forms, and for this reason the medium is capable of permanently redefining itself in relation to changing contexts and conditions. This mutability involves a persistent reflection on what photography is but also on what it can do. Medium specificity is far from being the final horizon of photography as art today, but since the status of the medium is still relatively open, it continues to be on the radar. This formal and technical concern helps avoid any form of blatant political instrumentalization, even in the case of photographers with a direct political agenda. Intermediality, that is, the possibility of combining photography with other media, either in one single production such as a book or in a sequence of linked performances (a set of photographs moving from a website to a museum installation, for example), is a feature that reinforces the social and political impact of photography, which can progressively build new and different forms of interaction with various types of audiences. One easily understands that in an ecocritical perspective, artification and intermediality are vital characteristics as well as crucial advantages of a medium that aims at exploring the permanently changing relationships between art and environment. Yet what does the author mean by these relationships? Méaux explains from the first page that her book prioritizes a very particular type of photography, namely the type that aims at questioning our conventional ways of thinking of the Anthropocene. Photography, in this regard, is seen as an artistic medium with a strong cognitive as well as political dimension, for it forces the audience to rethink the mutual dependence of nature and culture (to put it very simply), to ask new questions on the forms and impact of the photographic medium itself, and eventually to make room for these issues in the larger social debate. The two major sources of inspiration of this critical take on photography and the Anthropocene are, for Méaux, first, John Dewey and his book Art as Experience (1932), a work that dismantles the dichotomy between life and art, and second, Jacques Rancière, whose ideas on the distribution of the sensible have given a new political meaning to formal experimentalism as a way of making room for underprivileged or despised experiences by equally unacknowledged or misrepresented social groups and individuals. In Méaux’s book, the photographic projects that depart from ecological concerns help reject false or fossilized ideas on the nature/culture divide, to start with","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"3 1","pages":"547-549"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76479157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
When appreciating a painting, people often classify it into a style. The extent to which the painting is regarded as a typical example of the style is called the style prototypicality. The authors propose a method of quantifying style prototypicalities and experimentally validate this method using the drift rate parameter of the drift diffusion model. This parameter is calculated from participants’ decision-making response times. The authors find a positive correlation (r = .88, p < .001) between the drift rates and the quantified prototypicalities for the paintings used in this study, confirming the psychological appropriateness of the proposed quantification method.
在欣赏一幅画的时候，人们常常把它分为一种风格。一幅画被视为一种风格的典型例子的程度被称为风格原型。作者提出了一种量化风格原型性的方法，并利用漂移扩散模型的漂移速率参数对该方法进行了实验验证。该参数根据参与者的决策反应时间计算得出。作者发现漂移率与本研究中使用的绘画的量化原型性之间存在正相关(r = 0.88, p < .001)，证实了所提出的量化方法在心理上的适当性。
{"title":"Using a Drift Diffusion Model to Validate the Quantification of Style Prototypicality as Assessed by the Viewers of Paintings","authors":"Shigen Fang Ogata, Yoshimasa Tawatsuji, T. Matsui","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02433","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 When appreciating a painting, people often classify it into a style. The extent to which the painting is regarded as a typical example of the style is called the style prototypicality. The authors propose a method of quantifying style prototypicalities and experimentally validate this method using the drift rate parameter of the drift diffusion model. This parameter is calculated from participants’ decision-making response times. The authors find a positive correlation (r = .88, p < .001) between the drift rates and the quantified prototypicalities for the paintings used in this study, confirming the psychological appropriateness of the proposed quantification method.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86005372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Margrit Fischer-Hotz, born in 1938, is a Swiss artist based in Zug. She began painting using mixed media in the second part of her life and developed an intense and inspired artistic career after the death of her husband, Walter E. Fischer, a renowned Swiss nuclear and particle physics scientist who was instrumental in founding the Paul Scherrer Institute in the late 1980s. The artistic work of Fischer-Hotz is largely inspired by research in physics, biology, space research, and the great scientists of the past century and of our time. She testifies here about her journey and her approach.
玛格丽特·费舍尔-霍茨(Margrit Fischer-Hotz)出生于1938年，是瑞士楚格的一位艺术家。她在生命的后半段开始使用混合媒介进行绘画，并在她丈夫沃尔特·e·费舍尔(Walter E. Fischer)去世后发展了一段充满激情和灵感的艺术生涯。沃尔特·e·费舍尔是瑞士著名的核与粒子物理学家，在20世纪80年代末帮助建立了保罗·谢勒研究所(Paul Scherrer Institute)。费舍尔-霍茨的艺术作品很大程度上受到了物理学、生物学、空间研究以及上个世纪和我们这个时代伟大科学家的启发。她在这里见证了她的旅程和她的方法。
{"title":"Energy Is Never Lost: A Portrait of Swiss Artist Margrit Fischer-Hotz","authors":"Margrit Fischer-Hotz, Maya Minder","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02447","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Margrit Fischer-Hotz, born in 1938, is a Swiss artist based in Zug. She began painting using mixed media in the second part of her life and developed an intense and inspired artistic career after the death of her husband, Walter E. Fischer, a renowned Swiss nuclear and particle physics scientist who was instrumental in founding the Paul Scherrer Institute in the late 1980s. The artistic work of Fischer-Hotz is largely inspired by research in physics, biology, space research, and the great scientists of the past century and of our time. She testifies here about her journey and her approach.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"206 1","pages":"-"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80441705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
microhabitats or pocket forests to help people reimagine their place in nature, a “new ecology” (p. 169) without boundaries. In a special chapter on symbiotic ways of thinking, Zonca sees that fungus “cultivates” alga in a “nutritional strategy” to help it symbiotically survive (p. 174). Fungus cannot support itself, but when merged with alga as lichen, both flourish. This organism raises biological, philosophical, and political questions of individuality. In miniature, lichen supports other tiny organisms, so it’s a symbol of a forest: part consists of and contributes to the whole. Lichens, as nineteenth-century German and Russian botanists began to realize (not without controversy), represent plural entities, a form of communalism or at best mutualism. Symbiosis means two beings are cohabiting one organism without parasitism, both sharing one life externally and internally. This idea was confirmed late in the nineteenth century with the realization that fungi on plant roots were also symbiotic. In fact, many ecological theories of that time were driven by lichen studies. Following a long tradition of thinkers before, up to, and beyond Plato, Zonca continues his discussion of symbiosis with the idea that sympathetic harmony among species rests on a political foundation. By the 1870s in France, mutualism was viewed as social and biological, with voluntary association and shared assistance: Nature was not widely held to be a cooperative rather than as justifying capitalistic competition. He cites work by Lynn Margulis, who posited that on a cellular level, with the sharing of interacting genetic materials, evolution is fundamentally symbiotic. He goes on to note how symbiotic ideas from biology now touch many disciplines, from the arts to economics. None of this thinking reduces Darwin’s opinion about the struggle for existence. Links between organisms, Zonca admits, can become tentative. He suggests, therefore, that the idea of symbiosis not include shades of mutualism. A focus, rather, should be on an indefinite relationship that contains competitive cooperation epitomized in the fungus (earth)/alga (sea) lichen that’s laden with microbes so that the whole is almost void of singular identity. In nature, the secret to success is not dominance but political interdependence with a lack of separation. Symbiosis is not later acquired but integral to the formation of lichens. Thus, the concept of individuality is held in question, since what is considered a single organism is indeterminately open to other formations in potential process. This is a powerful metaphor that can shape not only ecological but also social thought. It’s not just that genes respond to the environment but that symbiotic partnering with the environment contributes to an organism’s genetic constitution, as is evident in lichens. Artists and poets capitalize on the notion of ecological fragmentation, according to Zonca. Symbiosis is about affiliating qualities and capacities to in
{"title":"Photographie Contemporaine et Anthropocène","authors":"Jan Baetens.","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02440","url":null,"abstract":"microhabitats or pocket forests to help people reimagine their place in nature, a “new ecology” (p. 169) without boundaries. In a special chapter on symbiotic ways of thinking, Zonca sees that fungus “cultivates” alga in a “nutritional strategy” to help it symbiotically survive (p. 174). Fungus cannot support itself, but when merged with alga as lichen, both flourish. This organism raises biological, philosophical, and political questions of individuality. In miniature, lichen supports other tiny organisms, so it’s a symbol of a forest: part consists of and contributes to the whole. Lichens, as nineteenth-century German and Russian botanists began to realize (not without controversy), represent plural entities, a form of communalism or at best mutualism. Symbiosis means two beings are cohabiting one organism without parasitism, both sharing one life externally and internally. This idea was confirmed late in the nineteenth century with the realization that fungi on plant roots were also symbiotic. In fact, many ecological theories of that time were driven by lichen studies. Following a long tradition of thinkers before, up to, and beyond Plato, Zonca continues his discussion of symbiosis with the idea that sympathetic harmony among species rests on a political foundation. By the 1870s in France, mutualism was viewed as social and biological, with voluntary association and shared assistance: Nature was not widely held to be a cooperative rather than as justifying capitalistic competition. He cites work by Lynn Margulis, who posited that on a cellular level, with the sharing of interacting genetic materials, evolution is fundamentally symbiotic. He goes on to note how symbiotic ideas from biology now touch many disciplines, from the arts to economics. None of this thinking reduces Darwin’s opinion about the struggle for existence. Links between organisms, Zonca admits, can become tentative. He suggests, therefore, that the idea of symbiosis not include shades of mutualism. A focus, rather, should be on an indefinite relationship that contains competitive cooperation epitomized in the fungus (earth)/alga (sea) lichen that’s laden with microbes so that the whole is almost void of singular identity. In nature, the secret to success is not dominance but political interdependence with a lack of separation. Symbiosis is not later acquired but integral to the formation of lichens. Thus, the concept of individuality is held in question, since what is considered a single organism is indeterminately open to other formations in potential process. This is a powerful metaphor that can shape not only ecological but also social thought. It’s not just that genes respond to the environment but that symbiotic partnering with the environment contributes to an organism’s genetic constitution, as is evident in lichens. Artists and poets capitalize on the notion of ecological fragmentation, according to Zonca. Symbiosis is about affiliating qualities and capacities to in","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"56 1","pages":"546-547"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87592969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As the question of art-practice-as-research is considered, a reasonable way to assess its validity is to compare the aims and practices of art with those of traditionally research-oriented disciplines like science and philosophy. Examination of ideas from the philosophy of science and art theory suggest shared emphases on rigour by community consensus, and on the generation of new ways of seeing and of thinking.
{"title":"Art as Enquiry: Theoretical Perspectives on Research in Art and Science","authors":"Kate McCallum","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02450","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02450","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 As the question of art-practice-as-research is considered, a reasonable way to assess its validity is to compare the aims and practices of art with those of traditionally research-oriented disciplines like science and philosophy. Examination of ideas from the philosophy of science and art theory suggest shared emphases on rigour by community consensus, and on the generation of new ways of seeing and of thinking.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74028968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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