{"title":"On Newton Harrison: An Open Mind and a Bad Attitude","authors":"R. Barnett","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02379","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02379","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"13 1","pages":"300-301"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82322838","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}
Abstract This paper provides a reflection on a practice-based computational art project titled Programmoire that explores the presence of computation within the medieval Arabic tradition of magic squares in both its mathematical origins and its magical mutation. The research speculates on an alternative history for technology rooted in the history of magic. Through examining the shared use of symbolic logic and active syntax between coding languages and symbolic magic, the project asks what technology can look like if used as a magical tool and how artistic practice can guide this exploration.
{"title":"Programmoire: Refiguring Witchcraft for a Creative Agency via Computational Art Practice","authors":"Batool Desouky","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02376","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02376","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper provides a reflection on a practice-based computational art project titled Programmoire that explores the presence of computation within the medieval Arabic tradition of magic squares in both its mathematical origins and its magical mutation. The research speculates on an alternative history for technology rooted in the history of magic. Through examining the shared use of symbolic logic and active syntax between coding languages and symbolic magic, the project asks what technology can look like if used as a magical tool and how artistic practice can guide this exploration.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"146 1","pages":"244-250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79954220","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}
quite distinct terms in understanding technology sometimes matters. This is one of the key issues in Endless Intervals, which undoes the entanglement of digital and electronic. Jeffrey West Kirkwood revisits the prehistory of what we now call “the digital” to remind us that the division of a flow to produce a sign did not start somewhere in the mid-twentieth century but has a history that precedes even the controlled use of electricity as an energy source and a resonance that extends beyond technology to how the work of the mind has been understood. In this, the book follows Hugo Munsterberg, a prolific writer and strenuous advocate of public engagement with science who drew a connection between cinematic form and the psyche. More exactly, the way that narrative strategies imported from literature, theater, and film and moving image technologies were used in the cinema developed conventions that seemed to make explicit some ideas of how human cognition worked. Quite what the causal link was between these conventions—if there was one—is not a primary concern of film criticism at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Munsterberg was active. What was important, however, was how a particular theory of human psychology was made apparent in productions for the cinema at the time. Endless Intervals makes a considerable effort to link what it calls early cinema and period psychology with a very well-informed account of the various players and moves in European theories of psychology, in particular the role of instrumental experimental psychology and the struggles at the time in Germany. It is a fascinating and intricately woven story that makes its case within its own terms but is not entirely convincing, in that while it is at pains to use precise language in some areas, in others it is less precise, as, for example, film, cinema, and the cinematographe become interchangeable terms at moments when it matters. Similarly, the invocation of early cinema, which may be a reasonable academic and publishing category, makes no sense in a context that predates the cinema as an institutional form of reception that developed its own modes of production and film form to maximize profits. Cinema is quite distinct from many other affordances of the technology that were also developing as products, including things called topicals, topographics, instrumental film, educational film, surveillance film, and of course narrow-gauge cinematography. Narrow-gauge film became a dominant format for the amateur film-maker and the “home movie” industry, which persists today and vastly exceeds the “footage” of mainstream cinema in the circuits of the estimated 15 billion mobile phones in use in 2021. Moreover, early cinema was a term that did not exist for people like Munsterberg and only took off in the late 1970s when material that was not widely available was released by the archives and ignited new interest in a form of film-making that was unfamiliar and dismissed as p
{"title":"Poetic Cinema and the Spirit of the Gift in the Films of Pabst, Parajanov, Kubrick and Ruiz","authors":"Will Luers","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02395","url":null,"abstract":"quite distinct terms in understanding technology sometimes matters. This is one of the key issues in Endless Intervals, which undoes the entanglement of digital and electronic. Jeffrey West Kirkwood revisits the prehistory of what we now call “the digital” to remind us that the division of a flow to produce a sign did not start somewhere in the mid-twentieth century but has a history that precedes even the controlled use of electricity as an energy source and a resonance that extends beyond technology to how the work of the mind has been understood. In this, the book follows Hugo Munsterberg, a prolific writer and strenuous advocate of public engagement with science who drew a connection between cinematic form and the psyche. More exactly, the way that narrative strategies imported from literature, theater, and film and moving image technologies were used in the cinema developed conventions that seemed to make explicit some ideas of how human cognition worked. Quite what the causal link was between these conventions—if there was one—is not a primary concern of film criticism at the beginning of the twentieth century, when Munsterberg was active. What was important, however, was how a particular theory of human psychology was made apparent in productions for the cinema at the time. Endless Intervals makes a considerable effort to link what it calls early cinema and period psychology with a very well-informed account of the various players and moves in European theories of psychology, in particular the role of instrumental experimental psychology and the struggles at the time in Germany. It is a fascinating and intricately woven story that makes its case within its own terms but is not entirely convincing, in that while it is at pains to use precise language in some areas, in others it is less precise, as, for example, film, cinema, and the cinematographe become interchangeable terms at moments when it matters. Similarly, the invocation of early cinema, which may be a reasonable academic and publishing category, makes no sense in a context that predates the cinema as an institutional form of reception that developed its own modes of production and film form to maximize profits. Cinema is quite distinct from many other affordances of the technology that were also developing as products, including things called topicals, topographics, instrumental film, educational film, surveillance film, and of course narrow-gauge cinematography. Narrow-gauge film became a dominant format for the amateur film-maker and the “home movie” industry, which persists today and vastly exceeds the “footage” of mainstream cinema in the circuits of the estimated 15 billion mobile phones in use in 2021. Moreover, early cinema was a term that did not exist for people like Munsterberg and only took off in the late 1970s when material that was not widely available was released by the archives and ignited new interest in a form of film-making that was unfamiliar and dismissed as p","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"5 1","pages":"328-330"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75124222","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}
to offer critiques of big business and big science. Rogers is especially interested in whether an artist engaged in credible scientific procedures might still be called an artist, or if a scientist might themselves be considered an artist based on their engagement of the public imagination. In Chapter 6, Rogers discusses her own curatorial project, Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology. She explains how her intention was to establish public dialogue with, and participation in, scientific processes and knowledge-making procedures, not to fill a perceived knowledge deficit. It seems clear that Rogers’s ASTS project has stemmed from this kind of curatorial work. As a curator, she forms links between works to create new material assemblages through which knowledge may be produced. Similarly, the vision of art-science that Rogers outlines involves artists re-skilling, speculatively designing, or otherwise imaginatively engaging scientific protocols, to render novel assemblages of materials, people, and technologies that problematize art and science boundary concepts. One area that might be interesting to unpack further is the division of art and science processes into either “material” or “rhetorical” categories. Although Rogers acknowledges that these terms are imperfect, there perhaps remains a risk that, by describing everything in terms of material/ rhetorical agency, her analysis establishes new categories of division, even as she breaks down art/science dualisms. The rhetorical associations of a system cannot be changed without changing the materials assembled therein, and conversely, as the materials networked change, so too do the rhetorical positions through which they speak. That said, I sympathize with Rogers’ position: She is both a theorist aiming for a systematic analysis of art-science and a member of the art-science community. Adopting accessible, albeit imperfect, terms is arguably more impactful as a form of advocacy than would be a purist theoretical project with a correspondingly more limited audience. I think Rogers’s approach is commendable for this practical stance. It is clear how her theories can be applied, and so her work moves beyond the purely critical into the practically useful, which, if the intention is to build more equitable, aesthetically inclusive systems of knowledge, is an essential criterion for success. In this respect, Rogers comes across as sharing much with her case studies, such as the Blaschkas, whose scientific models she describes as “cutting-edge heuristic apparatuses” (p. 222); this definition could equally well be applied to Rogers’s own theoretical project.
{"title":"Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology","authors":"Roberta Buiani","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02389","url":null,"abstract":"to offer critiques of big business and big science. Rogers is especially interested in whether an artist engaged in credible scientific procedures might still be called an artist, or if a scientist might themselves be considered an artist based on their engagement of the public imagination. In Chapter 6, Rogers discusses her own curatorial project, Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology. She explains how her intention was to establish public dialogue with, and participation in, scientific processes and knowledge-making procedures, not to fill a perceived knowledge deficit. It seems clear that Rogers’s ASTS project has stemmed from this kind of curatorial work. As a curator, she forms links between works to create new material assemblages through which knowledge may be produced. Similarly, the vision of art-science that Rogers outlines involves artists re-skilling, speculatively designing, or otherwise imaginatively engaging scientific protocols, to render novel assemblages of materials, people, and technologies that problematize art and science boundary concepts. One area that might be interesting to unpack further is the division of art and science processes into either “material” or “rhetorical” categories. Although Rogers acknowledges that these terms are imperfect, there perhaps remains a risk that, by describing everything in terms of material/ rhetorical agency, her analysis establishes new categories of division, even as she breaks down art/science dualisms. The rhetorical associations of a system cannot be changed without changing the materials assembled therein, and conversely, as the materials networked change, so too do the rhetorical positions through which they speak. That said, I sympathize with Rogers’ position: She is both a theorist aiming for a systematic analysis of art-science and a member of the art-science community. Adopting accessible, albeit imperfect, terms is arguably more impactful as a form of advocacy than would be a purist theoretical project with a correspondingly more limited audience. I think Rogers’s approach is commendable for this practical stance. It is clear how her theories can be applied, and so her work moves beyond the purely critical into the practically useful, which, if the intention is to build more equitable, aesthetically inclusive systems of knowledge, is an essential criterion for success. In this respect, Rogers comes across as sharing much with her case studies, such as the Blaschkas, whose scientific models she describes as “cutting-edge heuristic apparatuses” (p. 222); this definition could equally well be applied to Rogers’s own theoretical project.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"19 1","pages":"322-324"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76782125","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}
{"title":"Eco-Art: On the Topography of the Harrisons","authors":"Carinne Knight","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02382","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"7 1","pages":"306-307"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82741228","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}
D. Doyle, Richard Glover, Martin Khechara, Sebastian Groes
Abstract During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–2021), a research project that analyzed strategies utilized by recent STARTS Prize winners and nominees, a number of the artists and scientists described having needed to build a “third space,” or to meet on “another plane,” in order to communicate and find a common language for art-science collaborations. The project team, from University of Wolverhampton (U.K.), collaborated with Ars Electronica and STARTS on the research and found ways to explore the third space concept in three collaborative art-science projects.
{"title":"Exploring the Third Space in Art-Science: The Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies Project","authors":"D. Doyle, Richard Glover, Martin Khechara, Sebastian Groes","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02377","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02377","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During a series of interviews undertaken in Identifying Successful STARTS Methodologies (2019–2021), a research project that analyzed strategies utilized by recent STARTS Prize winners and nominees, a number of the artists and scientists described having needed to build a “third space,” or to meet on “another plane,” in order to communicate and find a common language for art-science collaborations. The project team, from University of Wolverhampton (U.K.), collaborated with Ars Electronica and STARTS on the research and found ways to explore the third space concept in three collaborative art-science projects.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"19 1","pages":"257-261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75171171","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}
Abstract This article seeks to strengthen the epistemic case for sci-art by demonstrating how partnerships across paradigms can combine methodologies rooted in multiple knowledge traditions. Drawing on Robin Nelson’s multimodal conceptualization of artistic research and Bruno Latour’s model of science as a circulatory system of heterogeneous human and nonhuman phenomena, the author characterizes sci-art as a form of posthuman praxis, which opens new epistemic positions through transversal forms of inquiry, thereby revealing shared human/nonhuman cultures. Sci-art is thus proposed as a means of drawing together humans and nonhumans into more productive, empathic associations.
{"title":"The Epistemic Case for Sci-Art: Toward a Posthuman Praxis","authors":"Jacob Thompson-Bell","doi":"10.1162/leon_a_02317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02317","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article seeks to strengthen the epistemic case for sci-art by demonstrating how partnerships across paradigms can combine methodologies rooted in multiple knowledge traditions. Drawing on Robin Nelson’s multimodal conceptualization of artistic research and Bruno Latour’s model of science as a circulatory system of heterogeneous human and nonhuman phenomena, the author characterizes sci-art as a form of posthuman praxis, which opens new epistemic positions through transversal forms of inquiry, thereby revealing shared human/nonhuman cultures. Sci-art is thus proposed as a means of drawing together humans and nonhumans into more productive, empathic associations.","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"19 1","pages":"292-298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77803328","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}
the coherence of the collection. (For some reason “Q” and “X” have been snubbed, although there are plenty of objects that could fit the agenda). Each of the 85 essays has at least one key image of the “object” and gives some account as to why it is no longer as prevalent as it once was. There is an introductory essay by the editors intended to outline the argument of the book. Largely this is based on correlation rather than causality, and indeed inasmuch as extinction is a condition that prevails after the death of the last individual specimen it is difficult to reconcile this with the continued existence and indeed functioning of many of the examples that have been chosen. The idea of extinction might have had more purchase if Williams’s distinction between technological systems and technological devices had been factored in. However, overall the critical framework of the introduction invokes much of the sentiment of the authors cited at the beginning of this review, but the argument is slippery, and at times there is a sense that technology studies has been somewhat reimagined away from the literature. There is also a sense of a cargo cult in the way that many of the key images appear as perfectly crafted product photographs. Rather like an auction catalogue in that they reveal precise detail in ways that are purposely deprived of meaning. Similarly, most of the essays are straightforward and have great charm, and the book is great fun to dip in and out of. The standout essays are of course by Edgerton. Nothing could be more resonant of misapplied endeavor than a huge plane pretending to be a boat. But as his careful study of the flying boat makes clear, when the capital costs of infrastructure (i.e. runways) are devolved to the carrier, landing on open water is possibly the only sensible option for long haul heavy payloads. Moreover, he points out that the history of the flying boat is not quite over, since they are still built and used in some circumstances. It seems that Howard Hughes’s infamous Spruce Goose is not quite the exorbitant vanity project that Hollywood suggests. Many of the essays are more personal, and Richard Wentworth’s piece on the slotted screwdriver is one of the more heartfelt. He reflects on his own relationship with the demise of the slothead screw in favor of the crosshead version which, as his son points out, is becoming dominant in the building trade because they speed up the process. For many years it has been clear in fabrication that connecting a star shaped driver is quicker and requires less precision than aligning a flat bladed screwdriver with a slot. The new screws may be expensive, but they are fast, self-countersinking, made of hardened steel, and do not shear. They may not be the best technical solution, but technological form, in the main, prioritizes production imperatives over consumer needs. This new screw needs a special star driver, so good luck trying to take them out after twenty years when they
{"title":"Terra Forma: A Book of Speculative Maps","authors":"J. Parikka","doi":"10.1162/leon_r_02348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02348","url":null,"abstract":"the coherence of the collection. (For some reason “Q” and “X” have been snubbed, although there are plenty of objects that could fit the agenda). Each of the 85 essays has at least one key image of the “object” and gives some account as to why it is no longer as prevalent as it once was. There is an introductory essay by the editors intended to outline the argument of the book. Largely this is based on correlation rather than causality, and indeed inasmuch as extinction is a condition that prevails after the death of the last individual specimen it is difficult to reconcile this with the continued existence and indeed functioning of many of the examples that have been chosen. The idea of extinction might have had more purchase if Williams’s distinction between technological systems and technological devices had been factored in. However, overall the critical framework of the introduction invokes much of the sentiment of the authors cited at the beginning of this review, but the argument is slippery, and at times there is a sense that technology studies has been somewhat reimagined away from the literature. There is also a sense of a cargo cult in the way that many of the key images appear as perfectly crafted product photographs. Rather like an auction catalogue in that they reveal precise detail in ways that are purposely deprived of meaning. Similarly, most of the essays are straightforward and have great charm, and the book is great fun to dip in and out of. The standout essays are of course by Edgerton. Nothing could be more resonant of misapplied endeavor than a huge plane pretending to be a boat. But as his careful study of the flying boat makes clear, when the capital costs of infrastructure (i.e. runways) are devolved to the carrier, landing on open water is possibly the only sensible option for long haul heavy payloads. Moreover, he points out that the history of the flying boat is not quite over, since they are still built and used in some circumstances. It seems that Howard Hughes’s infamous Spruce Goose is not quite the exorbitant vanity project that Hollywood suggests. Many of the essays are more personal, and Richard Wentworth’s piece on the slotted screwdriver is one of the more heartfelt. He reflects on his own relationship with the demise of the slothead screw in favor of the crosshead version which, as his son points out, is becoming dominant in the building trade because they speed up the process. For many years it has been clear in fabrication that connecting a star shaped driver is quicker and requires less precision than aligning a flat bladed screwdriver with a slot. The new screws may be expensive, but they are fast, self-countersinking, made of hardened steel, and do not shear. They may not be the best technical solution, but technological form, in the main, prioritizes production imperatives over consumer needs. This new screw needs a special star driver, so good luck trying to take them out after twenty years when they ","PeriodicalId":93330,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo (Oxford, England)","volume":"18 1","pages":"215-217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77506852","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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