/ ____ / / /\ / /-- /__\ /______/____ / \ ________________________________________________________________ Leonardo Electronic Almanac Volume 13, Number 8, August 2005 http://lea.mit.edu ________________________________________________________________ ISSN #1071-4391 ____________ | | | CONTENTS | |____________| ________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ------------ EDITORIAL --------- < A Colloquium on Art/Science/Spirituality Reconnections Within Emerging Planetary Cultures @ Melilla 2004, by Roger Malina > A NOTE FROM THE GUEST EDITOR ---------------------------- < Organizing a Symposium, by Julien Knebush> ABSTRACTS --------- < Introductory address by Mohammed Aziz Chafchaouni, Symposium Director > < Foundations for a Culture of Peace and Justice based on Intertradition Cooperation, by Lama Denys > < Approaches of the Planetary Dimension in Media Art, by Julien Knebusch > < Useful Tension Between C.P. Snow's Two Cultures Debate and the Emergence of a Context of Five Cultures in the Planetary Context, by Roger Malina > < Imagination as a Space of Life and of Resistance to Mercantile Logic, by Mohammed Taleb > < Marks and Images of Reality in Media Reasoning, by Hashim Cabrera > < Burdens (and Gifts) of Cinema on Experimental Video - the Idea of Experimentation and Resistance in Cairo, by Samirah Al- Kasim > < Network Projects in Brazil. Gente (online) Que Faz, by Karla Schuch-Brunet > < ME DEA EX: Intertwining Virtual and Real World to Form Immersive/Interactive Theatre, by Neora > < The Interpresence Project, by Arthur Matuck > < GATES - Beyond Net-Art: Real Things Across Cyberspace, by Caterina Davinio > < Mediterranean Maps, by Paolo Atzori and Nicole Leghissa > < Mapping a Thesis in Systems Theory in New Media Art, by Jane Cole Forrester Winne > < A Universal Mother Tongue, by Celestino Soddu and Enrica Colabella > < The Religious Models of Globalism, by Harry Rand > < The Ubiquitous Dot in Cosmic Justice, by Ahmad Mostafa > < La Metafora Andalusi: La Utopia Necesaria, by Emilio Gonzalez Ferrin > < Los conceptos del tiempo y del espacio en el lenguaje de Ibn 'Arabi: un enfoque lingüístico, by Leila Khalifa > < Pensamiento lineal y conocimiento: un proceso alquímico, by Francesca Del Carmen Sanchez > BONUS SECTION ------------- < An Open Letter to the Melilla Conference Participants, from Chris Alexander > ONE FROM THE VAULT: FROM THE LEA ARCHIVES ----------------------------------------- < Cinematic Thresholds - Instrumentality, Time and Memory In The Virtual, by Ed Keller > LEONARDO REVIEWS ---------------- < Dream Bridges - Traumbrücken, reviewed by Rob Harle > < Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body, reviewed by Rob Harle > < Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, reviewed by Kathleen Quillian > < The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely, reviewed by Rob Harle > < Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art, reviewed by Alex Rotas < In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995, reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher > ISAST NEWS ---------- < Lynne Carstarphen Named Coordinating Editor of *Leonardo* > < *Leonardo* Launches Yasmin Discussion List > < Spector and Larson Join Governing Board > < *Leonardo* Book Series Activities > < *Leonardo*/OLATS and Space Study > < *Leonardo* Reaches Out to Educational Community > < *Leonardo* Educators Forum > < The Pacific Rim New Media Summit: A Pre-Symposium to ISEA2006 > < PRNMS Working Group On Container Culture > BYTES ----- < CFP - Leonardo Music Journal 16 (2006) > < SCHOOL OF ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO - FACULTY POSITION IN FILM, VIDEO AND NEW MEDIA > ________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION ________________________________________________________________ LEA's August issue is the first of a double digest, guest edited by Julien Knebush, which re-lives a Colloquium on Art/Science/Spirituality Reconnections Within Emerging Planetary Cultures. This global event was hosted by the 1st International Festival of Cultures. It took place in Melilla, Spain from 18-20 July 2004, and was co-sponsored by Al Andalus Foundation, UNESCO DIGIARTS, Leonardo/OLATS, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. In our journey into the past, One From the Vault relives Ed Keller's *Cinematic Thresholds - Instrumentality, Time and Memory in the Virtual*, which first appeared in LEA in July 1995. Leonardo Reviews features one of its newer reviewers, Rob Harle, whose prolific output and particular combination of interest in biomedicine and architecture, consciousness and culture, situate him at the core of recent publications in our field. He reviews two books: *Dream Bridges - Traumbrücken* and *Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body*. Also included is Kathleen Quillian's first review: *Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition*. Although a newcomer as a reviewer, Kathleen has been a colleague working in the San Francisco office and a great supporter and help. An inundation of news on *Leonardo* awaits in the ISAST news section, and our ongoing series on *The Pacific Rim New Media Summit: A Pre-Symposium to ISEA2006* features yet another working group, this time on container culture. Finally, Bytes features a call for paper for Leonardo Music Journal's next issue. Also, find out more about the availability of a full-time faculty position. ________________________________________________________________ EDITORIAL ________________________________________________________________ A COLLOQUIUM ON ART/SCIENCE/SPIRITUALITY RECONNECTIONS WITHIN EMERGING PLANETARY CULTURES @ MELILLA, SPAIN, JULY 2004 by Roger Malina Astrophysician Editor, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France c/o Leonardo, SFAI, 800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133 U.S.A. rmalina [@] ssl [dot] berkeley [dot] edu / rmalina [@] alum [dot] mit [dot] edu http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr/www/mal.html Modern cosmology and physics emphasize the interdependence of complex systems on scales from the microscopic to the macroscopic. Contemporary genetics reveal the underlying shared genetic identity not only of all human beings, but the genetic relatedness of all life on earth. Current scientific discoveries reconnect science to a number of philosophical and spiritual traditions. These reconnections offer the promise of the development of new philosophical and value systems appropriate to new emerging linked planetary cultures. This promise must face a number of dangers of globalization including: Accentuation of the inequalities within global development, negative aspects of the digital divide, cultural homogenization, over and unsustainable consumption, hyper- specialization, local isolation. The technologies of the Information Society offer tools to counterbalance some of these dangers through the potential of global dissemination of information and knowledge, new models for distance learning, the emergence of a planetary consciousness based on the shared genetic heritage of all human life. But beside these particular dangers how "to be and become" in this world undergoing profound changes? Can we adapt to these changes? How? Artists and scientists have been at the forefront of the use of these new systems to build life enhancing cultural developments in linked planetary contexts. This colloquium, with 20 participating artists, scientists and philosophers, was intended to be a listening post, an opportunity for inter-cultural dialogue and a specific step towards magnifying and amplifying emerging new emerging planetary cultural developments. Speakers presented specific scientific and artistic work, and made visible the cultural/philosophical/religions contexts that set a priori conditions and constraints on the speakers approaches and specific work. The choice of the city of Melilla as host was not an accident. Melilla has a millennial history of multi-cultural, multi- lingual synergy and dialogue within the Mediterranean context. The city offered itself as a podium to communicate outcomes of this first colloquium: To make real the opportunities for the reconnection of art, science and spirituality for the building of new 21st century planetary cultures. The Colloquium was divided into four different sessions articulated around the more general question of relationships between art, science, technology, and spirituality by creation/reinvention of patterns, symbols and integrated practices. In the initial instalment of our two-part digest, we focus on the first two sessions. The other two sessions will be published in the following LEA edition. BIOGRAPHY Roger Malina is an astrophysicist at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille CNRS in France and Executive Editor of the Leonardo publications circulated by MIT Press. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory, he is currently a co-investigator for the Supernova Acceleration Probe Consortium that seeks to build a new space observatory to help understand the nature of dark energy and dark matter in the universe. Collaborating amongst the science team for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Malina employs his expertise to help map the sky in the far ultra void to understand the evolution of galaxies. Malina also serves as Chairman of the Board of Leonardo, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and President of the Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences in Paris. He is Co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and is currently an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and co-chair of their Committee on Space Activities and Society. Since 1982 he has served as Executive Editor of the journal Leonardo. He writes on the relationship between the arts, sciences and technology. ________________________________________________________________ A NOTE FROM THE GUEST EDITOR ________________________________________________________________ ORGANIZING A SYMPOSIUM by Julien Knebusch Assistant Editor Leonardo, France 22, rue Caulaincourt 75018 Paris France jknebusch [@] noos [dot] fr / julien_knebusch [@] yahoo [dot] fr http://www.olats.org Organizing this event was much of a challenge, regarding the topic addressed and the location of the symposium. We gathered scholars, scientists, and artists from very different areas and met in a place completely unknown for international dialogue: Melilla, one of the Spanish cities (enclaves) still existing in Morocco. The city is encircled by a militarized wall, reminiscent of the Israeli wall. Melilla is one of the "doors" to the European Union and astonishing because of the different cultural groups living within the city (Jews, Spaniards, Moroccans, Tziganes, and Indians). The city created a festival entitled the "5 Cultures" within our symposium. We discovered this unusual, complex, and politically sensitive context very late, more or less when we arrived there last summer. As organizers, we came from "outside", but worked together with the Director of the Symposium, Aziz Chafchaouni, who was living in Melilla. It was really a challenge to work with Aziz Chafchaouni in Melilla, Douglas Vakoch in California, Roger Malina in Marseille, Sangeetha Menon in Bangalore (I live in Paris). Together we constituted the organizing committee. During the organization of the symposium (which took six months) and the arrival in the City of Melilla (last summer), I always felt in the middle of a situation where it was very difficult to find one's way around. But this precisely made the whole event very interesting to me. I learned that organizing is always a very delicate issue because of our intervention in a preexisting context of political oppositions, prejudices and given world views. I learned also that there is a true value to a very "open" definition of a symposium - I was very hesitant at the beginning - because our discussions could take unforeseen directions. Certainly our symposium lacked coherence. But, I will keep a very special feeling of our interactions, which were very dense and continuous during the three days we spent in Melilla. Today, I feel deeply influenced by the organization of this event. Beside the intellectual interest of the symposium, this event, the arrival in the city, and the various unforeseen interactions and encounters with the participants constitutes a profound experience for me. I learned that I needed to lose control over the world (predicting what and how something would happen) in order to belong to it. BIOGRAPHY Julien Knebusch was born in Munich (Germany) and now lives in Paris. He obtained a Master's degree in history and politics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and also in cultural management (University Paris-IX-Dauphine). He is currently project leader at Leonardo/OLATS (http://www.olats.org) for the editorial program "Fondements Culturels de la Mondialisation" (Cultural Roots of Globalization). ________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTS ________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS by Mohammed Aziz Chafchaouni Symposium Director Al Andalus Foundation Avenida Reyes Catolicos 10 3er Iz 52 002 Melilla chaf_aziz [@] hotmail [dot] com As we move into the 21st century, humankind has acquired the tools to embark upon a journey toward a new phase of human capacity, toward a universal and holistic understanding of the universe and ourselves. The conference brought together some 25 scientists, international philosophers, and artists, in order to establish the bases of a new hybrid dialogue between art, science and spirituality. The colloquium showed the veracity and the accuracy of the set of themes approached. Indeed, during the last decades, we were accustomed to see emerging binary dialogues among Art/Science, Science/Spirituality, or Art/Spirituality. Multiple international institutions were born from this intellectual ideal and the effort to establish footbridges between the various fields of knowledge and human experience. For the first time in the universal history of ideas, and precisely in response to the era of the globalization, a conference emerges which establishes a "multidimensional" dialogue between the three most essential fields of the human endeavor. During the last centuries, human culture and knowledge domains have become increasingly atomized and specialized, each specialization requiring years of training. With new methods and tools of visualization and communication, humans can achieve an intuitive grasp of planetary cultures and scientific information, while evolving away from isolation and fear, and moving toward responsive appreciation and sharing. While the information necessary to achieve this potential is available through new media and the Internet, there are currently many difficulties in exploring the vast streams of knowledge. Human society is moving deeply into limiting trends of homogenous culture. This is accentuated by the paradox of the current tendency towards drowning in torrents of data. An alternative is to create a universal methodology based upon the breadth of human experience. This paradigm should arise from a deep understanding of our common universal heritage, as embedded in the wisdom and knowledge of cultures East and West. This paradigm will help us filter and organize the ever- expanding cyber universe. In the process, it is possible to utilize the precise data gathered within the scientific domain, as the structural basis for the visualization of information. This will bring the Buckminster Fuller conception of "doing more with less" into the realm of knowledge acquisition. Eventually computer users could be navigating through tridimensional animated highways of interactive content organised according to principles of scientific knowledge. In this way, knowledge can be, in a broad sense, made user friendly, understandable and within reach. Al Andalus Foundation seeks to create new universal tools for Humanity to grasp and experience, in a better and cohesive way, holistic understanding. This conference was conceived to move us closer to this vision. _____________________________ INTRODUCTION TO SESSION 1 The theme of Session 1 was Art/Science/Spirituality relations within planetary cultures and features 14 abstracts. This session dealt with worldwide phenomenon: 1) Creation of a single world which encompasses the planet and 2) of worldwide dissemination of worlds (2). We have planetary cultures emerging today (culture defined by a worldwide extension). The terminology "planetary culture" has been introduced in order to avoid the more common and difficult concept of "globalisation". The session aimed to explore art/science/spirituality reconnections within the context of globalization. _____________________________ FOUNDATIONS FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE AND JUSTICE BASED ON INTERTRADITION COOPERATION by Lama Denys Congrégation Dachang Rimay, France Hameau de St Hugon 73110 Arvillard France lamadenys[@] rimay [dot] net http://www.karmaling.org KEYWORDS unity, diversity, ethics ABSTRACT The Teaching of the Buddha (Dharma) is an art of living based on a spiritual science. In its inspiration I would suggest first to make evident the ethical and spiritual common ground of all peace and justice, wholesome, traditions. Concerning spirituality, the common ground could be summarized as the absolute (God or Nature) experienced before mental representations, names and forms, or in the "know yourself" injunction. Concerning ethics, all wholesome traditions share the altruistic, selfless, love and compassion summarized by the Golden Rule. Awareness of this common and universal ground generates a vision of intertradition unity in diversity. Unity in the fundamental experience, whether ethical or spiritual, and diversity in its expressions and ways of realization. This paradigm of ethical and spiritual unity in diversity, as developed in the "Manifesto for ethical and spiritual unity in diversity", is the heart of an education to religious pluralism and cooperation needed for a global harmonization in a culture of peace and justice. BIOGRAPHY Lama Denys is the spiritual heir of Kyabdje Kalou Rinpoche (1904-1989), one of the greatest contemporary Buddhist Tibetan masters. Since 1980 he teaches in various countries and is the spiritual guide of Rimay Sangha International, a network of Buddhist centers. For more than 20 years, Lama Denys has been very active in intertradition and transdisciplinary dialogue. He is Honorary President of the European Buddhist Union, a participant of the World Council of Religious Leaders, and a member of the former International Interreligious Advisory Committee of UNESCO. He is also co-founder of the United Traditions Network, developing the vision of unity in diversity of all authentic traditions. Inspired by the activity of His Holiness the Dalaï Lama, he supports many initiatives for a culture of peace, justice and non-violence. _____________________________ APPROACHES OF THE PLANETARY DIMENSION IN MEDIA ART by Julien Knebusch Assistant Editor Leonardo, France 22, rue Caulaincourt 75018 Paris France jknebusch [@] noos [dot] fr / julien_knebusch [@] yahoo [dot] fr http://www.olats.org KEYWORDS phenomenology, planetary dimension, media artists ABSTRACT This presentation is about the description of a certain sensitivity, which can be found in contemporary Media Art and further the development of a phenomenology of the global. Contemporary philosophy has considered globalization as an ontological event or issue (Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Sloterdijk for example). We will ask in this presentation how contemporary media artists, from the last 20 years, became aware of globalization, and developed ways of appropriation of this phenomenon. We will outsketch two important approaches of the planetary becoming of one's/our world: 1) an approach centered on the relationship of the individual to entities/notions as otherness or humanity and 2) an approach centered more on the artist's relationship to earth. Within the first group, the global has been experienced differently a) as an autonomous and creative entity (through networks by Roy Ascott in La Plissure du texte, 1984, for example) b) as a wave coming from an expanding center (the global is experienced from a peripheral position, for example in the video of Peter Callas Night's High Noon: An Anti-Terrain, 1988) and c) a component of locality (the global considered as an extension of the horizon of locality, for example by Knowbotik Research in Mental immigration). Within the second group, artists experimented a planetary dimension through the sensing of geophysical processes by using earth science data in a creative manner. The planetary dimension has been: a) seen through an extension of human's vision (visualization of planetary processes by Gloria Brown-Simmons in Oceannet, started in 1997); sensed physically (the body of the planet sensed by the human body as illustrated by the Japanese group Sensorium in Breathing Earth, 1998-2000); sensed physically through one's desire of horizontal extension (for example by Stephan Barron in Traits, 1989). These descriptions could help develop a phenomenology of the Planetary Dimension, which has been initiated in contemporary philosophy (Peter Sloterdijk for example) and sociology (Samuel Bordreuil for example). BIOGRAPHY Julien Knebusch was born in Munich (Germany) and now lives in Paris. He obtained a Master's degree in history and politics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and also in cultural management (University Paris-IX-Dauphine). He is currently project leader at Leonardo/OLATS (http://www.olats.org) for the editorial program "Fondements Culturels de la Mondialisation" (Cultural Roots of Globalization). _____________________________ USEFUL TENSION BETWEEN C.P. SNOW'S TWO CULTURES DEBATE AND THE EMERGENCE OF A CONTEXT OF FIVE CULTURES IN THE PLANETARY CONTEXT by Roger Malina Astrophysician Editor, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France c/o Leonardo SFAI 800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133 U.S.A. rmalina [@] ssl [dot] berkeley [dot] edu / rmalina [@] alum [dot] mit [dot] edu http://www.astrsp-mrs.fr/www/mal.html KEYWORDS PLANETARY CONTEXT, DEVELOPMENT, NETWORKS ABSTRACT C.P.Snow and his colleagues framed a discussion 40 years ago on the need to reconnect the arts and sciences and to help provide the intellectual coherence to drive planet wide development within the context of global inequities and unequal development. However, as the planet has become interconnected, both by the means of transportation and communication, an interesting tension between "holistic" approaches to reconnecting art and science versus "useful differentiation" is appearing as new planetary cultures emerge. I define the "five cultures" as the "art, design and entertainment culture", "the science and government culture", "the engineering and corporate R and D culture", "distributed planet wide world views and value systems", and "new regionalisms and the importance of locality and personal situation". Individuals working within planetary context become used to working in multiple personal situations where projects connect in different ways with the five cultures. Rather than insisting on reunification of dualities, as has been prevalent in western art-science discourse, I wish to emphasize a network model of entry points into problem solving. I will discuss how as an astrophysicist working also within a number of distributed planetary art communities this tension between "holism" and "useful differentiation" can be articulated. BIOGRAPHY Roger Malina is an astrophysicist at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille CNRS in France and Executive Editor of the Leonardo publications circulated by MIT Press. As a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory, he is currently a co-investigator for the Supernova Acceleration Probe Consortium that seeks to build a new space observatory to help understand the nature of dark energy and dark matter in the universe. Collaborating amongst the science team for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Malina employs his expertise to help map the sky in the far ultra void to understand the evolution of galaxies. Malina also serves as Chairman of the Board of Leonardo, The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and President of the Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences in Paris. He is Co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and is currently an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and co-chair of their Committee on Space Activities and Society. Since 1982 he has served as Executive Editor of the journal Leonardo. He writes on the relationship between the arts, sciences and technology. _____________________________ IMAGINATION AS A SPACE OF LIFE AND OF RESISTANCE TO MERCANTILE LOGIC by Mohammed Taleb Philosopher Director Interdisciplinary Arab University (Paris) France KEYWORDS neoliberal globalization, cultural standardization ABSTRACT The explanation of the philosophical vision introduced by neoliberal globalization is a necessary task, as the latter cannot be reduced to an economic process. The neo-liberalisation of the economic sphere (deregulation, financing) only acquires its true meaning when it is considered in a wider spectre that some researchers call mercantile objectivation. This makes us return to the essence, to the very heart of the "capitalist economy" (Immanuel Wallerstein). Objectivation defines the transformation into inert objects of all that exists in the universe, separate and distinguishable: Women, men, nations and nature. What is happening in present day globalization (which has its roots in colonial expansion in Latin-Indian, America, Africa, Asia and in the Arab world) is the intensification of this nihilistic and mortiferous process. Together with economic neoliberation, "Violence of the Imagination" (to take the title of the book of the ex-Guinea Minister of Culture, Animata Traoré as an example) shows the other side of globalization. Cultural biodiversity, linguistic pluralism, imagination, know-how, and the multiplicity of spiritual horizons, represent obstacles for mercantile objectivation. This violation, which makes uniform the cultural identities and standardizes historic personages, is seen as a real attack against the anthropological foundation from which the human adventure is initiated in history. We shall never tire of saying to what extent the human figure that triumphs with globalization is the "unidimensional man" (Herbert Marcuse). This man is disfigured, mutilated and restricted because he is transformed in object. Said another way, it is proclaimed the triumph of the "homo economicus" (Louis Dumont). The General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (which is a treaty of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that entered into effect in 1995) is one of the judicial-political instruments of this mercantile objectivation-westernization-globalization. Its reason for being is to make a contribution to the progressive global disappearance of Culture and Nature from the public arena. Agnès Bertrand and Laurence Kalafatidès, in "WTO, the Invisible Power", have demonstrated that the WTO and GATT aimed at the privatization of the entrails of the earth. There is, therefore, danger in delay. However, as the words of Holderlin, the romanticist, say, "Where there is danger there is also salvation". _____________________________ MARKS AND IMAGES OF REALITY IN MEDIA REASONING by Hashim Cabrera Painter and writer, Spain Fuen Real Alto Camino de Alisné s/n Almodóvar del Río 14720 Córdoba, Spain hashim [@] webislam [dot] com http://www.webislam.com KEYWORDS imaginary world, tawhid, tracks ABSTRACT Art in the media is not a separate art from life nor unaware of science or spirituality. It is more a reasoning that allows the interplay and the meeting and at the same time tends to break the myth, by exhaustion, of the sacred nature of texts and images. The procedures and artistic disciplines find an apt field for their spreading and global reproduction. But the mediation becomes in many cases so powerful that the contents turn into a subsidiary and reference material, inside inexhaustible lots of possibilities. The nature laws and the rules of art join and share the same support. The recurrence of images underlie between the dream of video and the presence of digital pictures, the building of an endless allegory of history and cultures, and that digital environment is lived as an experience of shapeless melancholy, according to what Professor Arnheim said in the 70s of the last century. From the live experience of reality we walk to a relative and consensual reality, that is to say, virtual. We face the dissolution of the subject, the fiction of the I, in a world of images but poor of signs, in a crossroad, like carrier pigeons that stopped in the air for a while to remember their destiny. Contrary to what happens when we contemplate the landscape of nature, when we lean out to the digital one we can get away from the effort of retaining it in our memory, because we know that it can be instantaneous and unlimitedly played. The digital image is kept, protected from oblivion and spoiling, in that same cavern where Plato placed the ideas, in the image world (alam al mithal) where Ibn Arabi discovered his independent and autonomous kind, like a pure spiritual being. The mass media change vertiginously and they bind us to a constant learning of new languages. The field where communication happens now is the net, an open structure, which connects individual nodes, as well as others where group tasks gather. The key of this new way of knowledge and expression is not so much instrumental as something related to identity. The homogeneity of the net and the autonomy of nodes are placating the appearance of a new form of spontaneous organization that collides strongly with the traditional, hierarchic and centralized power structures. We go along from close identities to an open and global identity, from the fragmentary exclusion to the unifying inclusion, from analysis to the integrative experience of the tawhid. BIOGRAPHY Hashim Cabrera was born in 1954. He opted to multidiscipline from 1973, and has since dabbled in analysis of forms in the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Seville, philosophy in the Faculty of Letters of Cordoba, Spanish literature in the Complutense University of Madrid and as a plastic artist and writer. He has also produced works of investigation and artistic pieces around nature/culture, tradition/modernity, thought/vanguard in collaboration with the University of Cordoba, group of investigation TIEDPAAN. Hashim is also the publisher and co-founder of the magazine of information and analysis *Verde Islam* and of the web site www.webislam.com Other projects include the investigation on systems of forms and visual thought with the Museum of contemporary art of Shimewaru, Kyusyu, Japan. He is also a member of the Ras al Hanut Project of Mediterranean intercultural development group, Euromed. _____________________________ BURDENS (AND GIFTS) OF CINEMA ON EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO - THE IDEA OF EXPERIMENTATION AND RESISTANCE IN CAIRO by Samirah Al-Kasim Assistant Professor of Film Department of Performing & Visual Arts American University in Cairo, Egypt 113 Kasr el Aini Street P.O. Box 2511 Cairo, Egypt 11511 salkasim [@] aucegypt [dot] edu KEYWORDS experimental video, discursive formations, in Cairo ABSTRACT There are a series of questions surrounding the possibilities and problems of doing experimental video work in Egypt, most of the latter of which are socio-economically and culturally determined. In this paper I will contextualize the current situation of experimental video-makers in Egypt, for whom there is very little funding and state-sponsorship, and where there is a serious economic recession that impacts the production of art. I will refer to texts on the post-colonial subject in cinema by Robert Stam and Ellah Shohat; different notions of "the global" and culture by Arjun Appadurai; and the "dehumanization of art" by Ortega Y Gasset, among other sources, in describing the context of this techno-cultural scene within the larger context of the aims of this colloquium. I speculate that the reason why there is experimentation happening at all in video, in Egypt, which for simplicity's sake we can consider to be Cairo, while there is very little discussion about aesthetics and practices within the medium, is on the simplest level due to Cairo's timeless cultural diversity. But there is another reason born of the positive and negative effects of globalization: The proliferation of counter- images from the new Arab satellite channels thrown into the generally complex mix of poorly-managed development programs and government corruption, with their impact on every strata of social life. Out of all this springs the artist, who, without my wishing to attribute too great a supernatural power to him/her, is able to more easily confront and possibly transcend borders and lines of law (than the average citizen) and who often belongs to the middle classes and above. Of further impact is the general milieu of the cinema "crisis" with its effects on independent cinema and video-makers; and the seemingly imminent rupture of the "law of order" if the economic situation worsens and if the political "balance" shifts from the hegemony of the corrupt national Democratic Party to an Islamic Brotherhood rulership. But transparent rigidity eventually breeds its own demise - like other moments and experiences where rigid social/cultural/religious and political systems have bred generations of dissident voices (and eyes). Where does the role of spirit come into this? Artists are using electronic means to engage in their relationships to the city and notions of identity and authority, both of which in this particular situation are fragmented and reconsolidated. I speculate that there is spirit enough in these connections, practices and works, to affirm the role of the spirit in artistic production, especially in these times of impending, though perhaps slow-moving, change. BIOGRAPHY Samirah Alkassim is a professor of film studies teaching at the American University in Cairo in the Department of Performing & Visual Arts. She has written about Egyptian cinema (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, Thomson & Gale), and Egyptian video art (*Cracking the Monolith: Film and Video Art in Cairo*, New Cinemas Journal of Contemporary Cinema, UK: Intellect); and recently produced a 35-minute experimental documentary *from here to there* (which takes a boy's imaginary space shuttle as an allegory for the idea of technology in Cairo). She is currently making a documentary about Palestinian identity in Jordan. _____________________________ NETWORK PROJECTS IN BRAZIL. GENTE (ONLINE) QUE FAZ by Karla Schuch-Brunet Photographer, Brazil and Ph.D candidate University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), Brazil email [@] karlabrunet [dot] com http://www.karlabrunet.com/cv_english.htm KEYWORDS network projects, social issues ABSTRACT Faced many times with a lack of knowledge, by foreigners and even Brazilians, about the projects involving technology and social issues in Brazil, I felt the necessity of writing a paper on network projects in the country. It seems that information from the North hemisphere reaches the South but it does not happen often the other way around. So, the intention here is to show abroad some projects done in Brazil. The title, *Gente (online) que faz*, comes from short documentary films showed on TV in Brazil called *Gente que faz* (people that do). Every program presented someone, who, on their own initiative, started any sort of project, had success and helped others generate jobs or community work. The phrase "Gente que faz" became an idiomatic expression that got popular with the general public. It was accepted and used by everybody to describe someone doing something better. The expression was used many times as an opposition to people that say. In Brazil, a lot of people say too much (especially those in politics) and do little. "Gente que faz" were people who said little and did much. They were the anonymous heroes of the neighborhoods and villages. Here "Gente (online) que faz" are projects on the net by people from different backgrounds; they are getting together to generate different work. They are trying to use the net positively. It is what Jim Walch in *In the Net. An Internet Guide to Activists* would term 'better use' of technology. Or what Michael Heim in *The Cyberspace Dialectic* would call virtual realism, a middle path between naïve realism and network idealism. There is a selection of some social and political network projects. It has taken in consideration works that involve collaboration, cooperation and participation above all. I searched how people get together to construct something in the net. How they come up with simple ideas to solve everyday problems. The projects are simple, they don't have the intention of 'changing the world', they are sometimes rethinking the way we see and use media. Some of these works can be thought as examples of Tactical Media. They are using the media in a critical and oppositional way. "Recicle 1 Político" can be an example of that, as many others. "Gente (online) que faz" is about networking, about people working together and contributing to produce something. It is telepresence; it is getting assistance and collaboration of people from other places. It is critical, it is opposition and it is also about 'making'. These are the ideas that "Re-combo", "Rede viva favela", "LigaNóis", "VivaSP", "Autolabs" among others, are working on. See a compilation of the projects in htp://www.networkbr.tk Rede viva favela http://www.redevivafavela.com.br/ VivaSP http://www.vivasp.com/conteudo.asp?sid=3 Re:combo http://www.recombo.art.br/ Rizoma http://www.rizoma.net/hp6.htm Metáfora http://www.projetometafora.org/ LigaNóis http://www.liganois.com.br/ Autolabs http://www.midiatatica.org/autolabs.htm CHD - Coletivo de Histórias Digitais http://chd.memelab.org/ Ajuda Brasil http://www.ajudabrasil.com.br/ CMI- Centro de Mídia Independente http://www.brasil.indymedia.org/ BIOGRAPHY Karla Schuch Brunet was born in Brazil in 1972. She has a degree in Social Communication and another in Language. After university, she got a grant to take her MFA (Master in Fine Arts) in San Francisco, U.S.A., where she studied and worked in digital imaging for three years. Back in Brazil she participated in diverse projects involving photography and the Internet. She also worked for a few years doing commercial work on the web. Parallel to that, she exhibited works such as "Aspire, Strive, Attain", "Corpo Estranho", "Pessoas e Comércio no Centro de São Paulo", "Errante", in San Francisco, São Paulo and Santa Maria. When in São Paulo she taught multimedia students in Universidade Anhembi Morumbi and ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing). Now, with another scholarship from the Brazilian government, she lives in Spain where she is writing her thesis on network projects. _____________________________ ME DEA EX: INTERTWINING VIRTUAL AND REAL WORLD. TO FORM IMMERSIVE/INTERACTIVE THEATRE by Neora Cyberculture explorer and VR worlds creator 16 Usishkin St Tel-Aviv 62591 Israel neoradotcom [@] gmail [dot] com http://www.neora.com KEYWORDS interactive 3D, theatre, virtual reality ABSTRACT The intertwining of science, technology and art results in the experience of the spirit (webster: the intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of man). Thus, inspiration and spirituality, in my approach, define the state of mind, the spirit, achieved by interlacing the virtual and real worlds, to form some new experience of knowledge and understanding. Such experience may be complex/confusing; hence the way to reach clarity depends on our willingness to abandon or redesign our traditional solid grounds. MEDEAEX is an adaptation of the classic Myth of Medea, projected cross-culture wise on: - The Middle-East Reality (Medea = Palestinian, Jason = Israeli officer, Chorus = audience). - The CyberSpace Virtual Reality (Medea is a hacker trying to debug and redesign the script). The MEDEAEX universe is a 3D environment that resides on the Internet and is projected during the performance in 360 degrees around the audience. It is a proactive environment, whereas Medea is a live actress (Khaula ElHadj-Dibsi) all the other characters are pre-programmed bot avatars, and the audience (e.g. the global village) can interact and influence the flow and ambience of the show, using SMS from their cellular phones. The script is fully hyper-textual, based on the original texts by Euripides, Heiner Muller and Seneca. It is written and performed in English, Hebrew and Arabic, and so is the background music cross-cultural and cross-lingual. The exposition to each scene is the actual Middle East News (Medea - betrayed, evicted, exiled, and after all sacrifices her children by sending them as suicide bombers to Jerusalem). The chorus lines are performed with text-to-speech mechanism, allowing online and real time audience to add to their digital singing data bank. The MEDEAEX project has been performed in Schiller Festival Germany, and Acco Festival in Israel in 2003. The technology and mechanisms are now tested as environment for VR studies programs and interactive storytelling projects, in Shenkar College and other installations. It is fully documented (including technical notes, images, critics, full script, video) in http://www.medeaex.org. BIOGRAPHY Neora is the designer and producer of several advanced interfaces for museum sites, academic and commercial web sites. She is the creator of *Ayuni* - telepresence in Nablus, *NYSE*- VR 3D interactive simulation of the trading floor, and of *Medea_ex* (http://www.medeaex.org) - immersive/interactive theatre play, which was performed in the Schiller Festival in Manheim, Germany and Acco Theatre Festival 2003, Israel. Since then, she's been experimenting with online worlds for remote learning, and pro-active projected "cave-like installations" for large audiences. Neora teaches cyberculture in Tel-aviv University, and VR in Shenkar College of Engineering & Design. Neora is involved with the open source movement in Israel, and is the organizer of the first two hackers conferences in Israel (http://www.y2hack4.org). In April 2000, Neora was chosen as one of the 10 most influential people on the Israeli Internet (published in Yediot Aharonot newspaper. The other nine figures were tie/suited distinguished men). She got this title for the insights in her novel, web works, several publications and teachings - all of which were way ahead of her time. In the last millenium, Neora was a UNIX programmer and PC support team leader in Dec Ltd and CDC Ltd for several years, and co-founder/co-developer in SGH, a startup in 1994, for multi- user games. She's the author of *Digital Affair*(Hakibutz Hameuchad Publishing, 1993), journalist, editor and columnist in a few professional magazines and newspapers over the years. _____________________________ THE INTERPRESENCE PROJECT by Arthur Matuck Professor Ph.D MFA School of Communications and Arts University of São Paulo (USP) São Paulo, SP, CEP 05508-900 Brazil arturmatuck [@] terra [dot] com [dot] br KEYWORDS telepresence, experience, intercommunication ABSTRACT RESEARCH PROJECT FOR TELEACTIVE HUMAN LANGUAGE Interpresence exercises the language of mediatecture to propose planetary coalescence through cyberspace. It favours worldwide integration allowing for interactive television and the experience of telebrations between distant cities. Interpresence is defined as mutually sensed human telepresence. As a project Interpresence merges telecommunication, architecture, design, media arts, performance, television, and programming, with implications for cultural studies, anthropology, contemporary theory, epistemology and psychoanalysis. Its curatorial concept purports the telepresential encounter providing for the valorization of the Other through mutual knowledge and co-authored aesthetic propositions. The envisioned systems would enable local participants to interact with remote audiences, they would see and be seen, listen and be listened, experiencing interpresence. THE INTERPRESENCE VISION Interpresence represents an alternative global television. It introduces a political proposition, claiming a right to communicate through technologies that only have to be reconfigured to provide for interpresential experiences. The long-term social design involves the gradual creation of a worldwide network of community or university-operated telesystems. Design and implementation will be carried out through web-based property-free interchange triggering continuous co-evolution. MEDIATECTURE FOR TELEACTIVITY Mediatectural projects for terminals should permit diverse modes of long distance interaction. They were conceived for bilateral and multilateral intercommunication. Teleperformance terminals consist of interpresential units integrating distributed screens with video cameras. A vertical system allows for conversational interactions, while a horizontal one enables table mode interactions. Multiple- connection terminals provide interaction with many remote locations. Specially conceived audience spaces enable remote audioviewing of interactions occuring at teleperformance spaces. MEDIA DESIGN FOR CO-EVOLUTIONARY TELEACTIVITY An intercreative process will be gradually extended through net- collaboration. Concepts, designs, projects, propositions will be available as released information, as common property, providing for a worldwide collective planning, a linux-like co- evolutionary development of the project design. A permanent webpresence would enable long-term quality interaction between participating artists and institutions. Propositions for projects, programs, events and performances will trigger long-distance interconnections. Intervisions, teleactions and videologues would result from community and artistic initiatives supported by institutional agreements. Subsequent coordinated planning and networking would entail a diversity of increasingly creative long-distance human encounters. Those connections will form an invisible web of creative collaboration, and mutual responsibility providing the human structure needed for the unfolding of quality projects and events. The network should entail the co-creation of scripts, technology evaluation, co-planning and finally the actualization of teleactivities. RESEARCH FOR INTERCOMMUNICATION Research for interpresence will be centered upon alternative intercommunication. Proposals for computer-supported systems enabling understanding between speakers of different languages will be encouraged. Software and media design can also be articulated to program intertranslations between different sign systems allowing, for instance, tactile stimuli to be remotely sensed as heat formations varying in form and intensity. Research can also take a different direction. Specially designed software could morph human traces indicating the possibility of artificiality, not only of realism, in the experience of telepresence. BIOGRAPHY Artur Matuck has been an assistant professor at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo since 1984. In São Paulo, Brazil, Europe and North America, he has worked as teacher, researcher, writer, visual artist, video producer, performer and more recently as a designer of teleart events and interactive sites. Since 1977, Mr. Matuck has been delivering conferences and workshops on New Media Arts, Interactive Television, Telecommunication Arts, Performance project Art, Computer-Generated Writing, and Intellectual Property issues. In 1990, he was awarded a prize in the video- art category from the São Paulo Art Critics Association. At the same year, he completed a comprehensive study on the history of video art and interactive television which resulted in a doctoral thesis: "The Dialogical Potential of Television". During 1991, as research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, he produced Reflux, a worldwide Telecommunication Arts, one of the very first artistic experiments to call for collaborative networking activities. In 1995, as post graduate fellow at the University of Florida, he starts experimenting with text-reprocessing programming. Landscript, a web-based tool for person-computer co-authored textual creation was selected to participate in the 25th edition of the Biennial International of São Paulo, in 2002, in the category of net-art. Artur Matuck is the creator of Semion - an international symbol for released information, a theoretical and conceptual contribution to the on- going debates on intellectual property rights and information dissemination in the electronic age. His most recent endeavours involves planning videocommunication and web-based multicultural exchanges between artists, researchers and individuals from different countries and cultures. _____________________________ GATES - BEYOND NET-ART: REAL THINGS ACROSS CYBERSPACE by Caterina Davinio Media Artist, Italy Via Sassi 10 23900 LECCO (LC) Italy davinio [@] tin [dot] it http://www.xoomer.virgilio.it/cprezi/caterinadav.html KEYWORDS Communic/Action, network, poetry ABSTRACT I have been working with new media in Italy since the early 90s, focusing on relationship among word, writing, and new media. Since 1998 my work appeared in the Internet with collaborative projects: *Karenina.it*, still in course, *Parallel Action - Bunker*, online poetry event done for the 49th Biennale di Venezia, *Paint from Nature*, *Global Poetry*, both created in 2002, and the last project, *GATES Beyond Net-Art*, in 2003, dedicated to Pierre Restany. In all these projects there is an increasing relationship between one or more *real* events, and a virtual event online made of e-communication. The reality coefficient has grown progressively in these collaborative works, in polemic against net art as use of software for creating spectacular web pages and net-objects. In my works net-art is network, performance in network of connected artists, poets, critics, theoreticians. *Gates*, as *Global Poetry* in 2002, is a planetary performance that happened contemporaneously in numerous places of the world, in collaboration with experimental artists, who were in the spirit of this totally new experimental adventure, something that was never realized before. These artists created a node of the project in their countries, using also exchange and circulation of materials among the nodes; the circulated materials were poems, digital art, photos and video of real events, but also discourses, theories, critical interventions. Every node was a node of the performance, but also a performance and a meeting in itself: this means that to everybody in this collaborative action, we asked to involve other persons. I have been going in this direction of art as communic-action and relationship since my first net project: *Karenina.it - Poetry in Phatic Function* - the first Italian website dedicated to experimental poetry - described with a definition by Jakobson, that calls phatic the use of the language that has the finality to maintain open and operative the communication channel between the interlocutors. The idea was to open every limit between word and visual art, critic, theories of art, and art, by creating a space of meeting among artists. This space was at the beginning virtual, as it was at that time still new to consider a web page a "space" to explore, where to be present and act. By becoming, during the 90s, this conception normal, acquired, net-art was progressively in the consideration of many artists a run to the up to date software, for creating spectacular websites and pages. For this reason it was important to clarify the original sense of net art as art in network, with its central aspects of communic-action. *Karenina.it* uses ready made found in the world wide web and some techniques of visual poetry, and Futurism, but also focuses on the matter of an art piece in the web, that is deeply linguistic, because digital or digitalized, and because made of data transfer. To these aspects of digital art as linguistic art, net-art adds the one of communication and network, typical of the Internet. This is the idea on which projects such as *Global Poetry* and *GATES* are based on. The Italian node of GATES was at D'Ars Gallery on 18 December 2003. Other nodes were in Chile, Spain, Brazil, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Lebanon, Turkey, Morocco, Greece, Venezuela, and in other countries. Exploring the concept of remote presence and action, and continuous passage form real to virtual and vice versa, using the surface between real and virtual as sensible semiotic area, in the context of relational art, e-Fluxus, Situationism. The call was directed to experimental artists and poets, critics, *e-post-Fluxus- casseurs, post-post duchampists* BIOGRAPHY Caterina Davinio, Italian techno-artist and writer, experiments on non-conventional solutions in computer art, net-art, video, digital visual poetry, Internet-performance, video-performance, and also involves herself in computer printings exhibitions, paintings, and artist's books, using writing and digital techniques. Among the pioneers of Italian digital art, she is experienced in curatorial and consultant activity in international festivals. Her works have been presented in more than 80 exhibitions worldwide; we recall the participation in the Venice Biennial in 1997, 1999, 2001, in the context of new media art and experimental poetry festivals, and in net and Fluxus events of the 50th Venice Biennial. Author of the essay *Techno-Poetry and Virtual Realities* (Mantoa, IT, 2002), first Italian book on this topic, and of the novel *Color Color* (Pasian di Prato, UD, IT, 1998), she has published articles, poems, and digital works in international magazines and journals of the avant-garde. Since 1998 her work has appeared on the Internet with collaborative net-art/poetry projects and events, among them "Karenina.it", a point of reference for the avant-garde, *Global Poetry* (UNESCO, 2002), and *GATES*(2003). For a more detailed biobibliography: http://space.tin.it/arte/cprezi/caterinadav.html _____________________________ MEDITERRANEAN MAPS by Paolo Atzori Communication architect and video-stage designer and Nicole Leghissa Filmmaker and director, Italy atzorman [@] tiscali [dot] it KEYWORDS contemporary Mediterranean Rim, mapping, networks ABSTRACT In this particular historical moment it is fundamental to overcome stereotypes and misunderstandings that characterize the mutual relationship between the Islamic and Western worlds, mainly breaking the reciprocal cultural isolation. A consistent way to approach the problem is to create communication and shared knowledge channels between these cultural realities, taking a clear position against the ideological conflict between West and Islam, North and South of the world, and reaffirming the values of mutual respect and diversities' confrontation. *Mediterranean Maps* consists of a multicultural and interdisciplinary grouping of scientific and cultural institutions of the South and North of the Mediterranean, aimed to research and give expression to a mutual knowledge space: A multicultural, hyper-textual and dynamic Atlas of the contemporary Mediterranean rim that could be continuously updated and freely consultable on line. The group will include artists, scientists and cultural operators, whose mission is to bridge the knowledge gap between North and South of the Mediterranean area. Each partner will propose a specific research/action plan creating a sub-network in different locations and promote the formation of multimedia teams of young professionals, located in every major area covered by the action. During the development of the researches/actions, all individuals and institutions belonging to the different sub- networks will communicate online in a transversal way through the "collaborative platform" specifically designed for this project to archive different kind of documents: Texts, notes, graphics, pictures, interviews, short video reports, graphics, maps, archive images, sounds, etc. MAP-MAKING Until a few years ago, cartography representation has been exclusively static. The project *Mediterranean Maps* envisions a cartographic model that could integrate dynamic processes and automatic sampling by the application of information technology to the data patterns relative to geographical and cultural representation. The maps represent a contemporary view of the Mediterranean area visualized by a digital interface that will enable access and supply indications on possible knowledge courses on a digital sea, navigable in linear and transversal ways. THE LABORATORY BOAT A geographical route on the Mediterranean basin will be drawn to represent the physical link among the different researchers and participating countries. Significant ports will represent the local attractors, where specific actions and special public events will take place at the landing of the boat. The boat, equipped with advanced communication technologies, will host a crew of multimedia and communication experts, scientists and artists, writer and poets, and will originate the map-making process of the Mediterranean Sea. The journey is an exploration, a re-discovery of this region. The travel itself will be a source of data coming from observations of the natural environment, concerning, for example, biology, fluid dynamics, ecology, but also social relationship on a mobile micro-environment. The boat will perform a transversal data collection, traveling along a course unifying all participating Mediterranean ports. This lab-boat, besides being a creative and research forge, is a logistic support to install the public telematic stations (or lighthouses) in the ports. These stations will become the material places from where to launch the data on lines and where to freely join the net global information. TELEMATIC LIGHTHOUSE It is a public wireless interzone for global networking communication implemented on a transportable architecture, planned with environmentally conscious design that minimizes sustenance or resource consumption. Its main purpose is to give shape to the process of communication characteristic of the information age, where communication equals transportation of the mind, establishing dedicated channels of the "MED MAP" network. Its equipment and architecture will be used also for displaying the public event. _____________________________ MAPPING A THESIS IN SYSTEMS THEORY IN NEW MEDIA ART by Jane Cole Forrester Winne Independent MLS Program University of Maine, Orono, USA Owen Smith Chair Jane_Forrester [@] umit [dot] maine [dot] edu ABSTRACT My thesis is in Systems Theory, and this particular presentation displayed through power point, one project in my studies that utilized intuitive and cognitive thought to "map" areas of study in my thesis as mixed media art. The visuals represent interdisciplinary areas of research covering time and space of self directed inquiry as maps. Artworks of my own creation, giving 'voice' to the "mapping out" of my thesis, alone or incorporated with images that depict "maps" represented systems of interest in varying degrees. Accompanying this presentation was a book created for the project to hold text and scans of the full compliment of art works. The presentation was also a collaborative, incorporating work from two undergraduate students, one concerned with musical sound and one performing spoken word of her own writing. I am concerned with exploring the form of systems to discover structure, in part, that may reveal patterns that seem to support the life force. I am looking for what are called in some disciplines 'emergent properties', in others, 'evolutionary' traits, and still others protective or conserving strategies in cultures. I have a wide topical range, including the Ayurvedic and Iching systems, post modern artists/philosophers (fluxus, and Henri Bergson) Ancient cultures spanning from the British Isles to northern China, India to the Mediterranean. Ecological systems theory, the Internet, its history, directions, and alternative economies. _____________________________ A UNIVERSAL MOTHER TONGUE by Celestino Soddu and Enrica Colabella Director of Generative Design Lab Chair of annual international Generative Art Conference Coordinator of EC program "Euro-China Exchange: Technology and Culture of Generative Design Approach" DiAP, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy DIAP, Politecnico di Milano University Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32 20133 Milano Italy celestino [dot] soddu [@] polimi [dot] it http://www.celestinosoddu.com http://www.generativeart.com http://www.generativedesign.com KEYWORDS generative art, codes of harmony, universal language ABSTRACT IDENTITY RISES FROM A SOUNDLESS SITE, BECAUSE BIRDS HAVE NO TEARS A universal language talks as a mother tongue. Generative Design is the idea realized as a genetic Code of artificial events. This generative project is a concept-software that works producing three-dimensional unique and unrepeatable scenarios as infinite expressions of an idea that rises from a subjective visionary world. This approach opens a new era in design: The challenge of a new Natural science of Artificial ware like mirror of human uniqueness. Once more man imitates Nature, as in the act of making Art. This is like a universal language. As DNA in Nature the genetic code of artificial ware identifies a species of objects. So we can design the idea able of generating infinite variations. ARS SINE SCIENTIA NIHIL EST This was an enthusiastically creative operation discovering the cultural approach of Renaissance, able to combine Science and Art. We define a process as a code of Harmony that identifies a representation of our subjective vision of a possible world. The code of Harmony, like all codes, contains some rules that trace certain forms of behaviors. Therefore it is not only a sequence, a database of events, of forms, but a transforming patterns definition: the performing from what exists into the complexity of visionary becoming. The design act changes from forming to transforming, because each form is only one of possible parallel results of the same idea. RUN, LITTLE BOY, FIND THE RIVER IN YOUR MIND This design challenge started up in 1987 with the realization of Generative Projects of architecture, historical cities, industrial design and visions of Art from Piranesi, Picasso and Van Gogh. Today these projects are upgraded as extremely complex and directly operative as interfaces with intelligent productive systems. After 200 years of the industrial era of mass cloned objects, the "unique" object becomes a new answer to the human needs to live in a world where each artificial object can mirror the uniqueness of every person. A mother tongue can generate a universal code. By working in advanced technological fields such as non-linear dynamic systems, artificial life and artificial intelligence, the Generative Design finds again the notions of a new aesthetic and ethical pleasure of rediscovering the processes and characters of Nature in an epoch marked by repeated attempts at the cloning of natural beings. BIOGRAPHY Celestino Soddu, 1945, registered architect, is tenure Architectural Design professor and director of Generative Design Lab at Politecnico di Milano University, Honorary professor at Xi'an University and Shanghai University, Chair of Generative Art International Annual Conference. His architectural projects, realized like AI/AL generative tools, can generate endless different 3D models of architectures/environments characterized by the same artificial DNA. His generative design projects are a useful tool to manage the new intelligent industrial production of each-one-different objects by automatic reprogramming of robots. He has presented his generative works in books, articles, exhibitions and conferences all over the world. _____________________________ THE RELIGIOUS MODELS OF GLOBALISM by Harry Rand Senior Curator, Cultural History National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA AHB 4100, MRC 616 Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 Washington DC 20013-7012 U.S.A. RandH [@] nmah [dot] si [dot] edu KEYWORDS globalism, art-science, religion ABSTRACT The Church pioneered so many aspects of modern globalism that we should heed the reactions of earlier peoples faced with challenges to their values - challenges every bit as monumental as confrontations with modern globalism. The Church first understood the potency of: brand name, trademark, distinctive architecture and presentation imposed on indigenous cultures, a franchisor's location analysis and local market demographics for a franchise outlet (the diocesan system), a mixed formula of buy- in costs that balance local capital with distant management and oversight, the value of uniforms and scripted exchanges with clients, quality control from a centralized headquarters, and profit-sharing; all of this is now associated with commercial globalization. The Church's aesthetic position aimed to link the planet into a network of identical communities. The cultural reaction to this system's rise is still producing a dialogue across cultures about the multiple contexts of commercial and religious globalization, which is a discussion of value. The Church's franchising did not first arise from commercial globalization that overspread national boundaries to create supranational loyalties. The idea of a planetary consciousness and cultural homogenization did not arise from the urge toward a universal empire of assembled landmasses - Mongol, Roman, British, etc., in which subject peoples were encouraged to maximize productivity. The move toward the omni-pervasive (now found in Islam as a kind of corporate globalism) derived from a Christian worldview that dared call itself, in its very infancy, "catholic", universal. No Shinto, Jew, Jain, or pagan had ever thought this way. Globalism is cultural not economic. Before science could arise, one presupposition distinguished it from the technologies found in every high civilization: that the world was governed by a unified field of forces unrelated to the caprices of multiple deities: theology. Theology is not universal, although technology is (beginning with language as an amelioration of the environment); the Church's unintentional gift of theology allowed science to arise, to de-throne the Church. While theology was a precondition for science, the two have long since ceased to engage in constructive debate as artists and scientists strive to build the life-enhancing cultural developments that link, becoming a planetary context. The franchising Church continues to diffuse a unified world without warring gods, divine whimsy, or fate; this (inadvertently) uniformitarian hypothesis is the predicate upon which modern physics developed its radical cosmology that must reconcile the micro to the macroscopic. The conjoining of "art, science, and spirituality" assumes they are sundered. Contemporary science does not need to "reconnect" to spirituality, as they were never disconnected, despite appearances. The present challenge transcends organized religion to regain the generative emotions of awe, curiosity, respect, and diligence that initiated and permeate modern egalitarian society. The religious (distinguished from organized religion) never abandoned science, and still promises a planet-wide ideology resembling classically optimistic and ambitious modernism. BIOGRAPHY Trained as an art historian, Harry Rand has explored long-term patterns of human behavior as evidenced in the ways that art, science, folklore, and religion exchange ideas and shape each other. His publications in this pursuit include threescore museum catalogues, over a dozen books (author or co-author) and over fifty articles or published letters. _____________________________ INTRODUCTION TO SESSION 2 In Session 2, the theme was Art/Science/Spirituality relations: The heritage of the Arabian-Spanish world. We feature four abstracts from this session, which looked at the following questions: How did these cultures consider these relationships? Does the triad make sense in these cultures? How did they integrate these relations? _____________________________ THE UBIQUITOUS DOT IN COSMIC JUSTICE by Ahmad Mostafa Artist, U.K. Fe-Noon Ahmed Moustafa (UK) Ltd 5-9 Creekside Deptford London SE8 4SA fenoon [@] btinternet [dot] com http://www.fenoon.com KEYWORDS geometry, Islam, spirituality ABSTRACT The motto adopted in 500 BC or thereabouts by the Pythagorean brotherhood, which translates roughly as 'a diagram and a step higher, not a diagram and a penny', tells us that the Pythagoreans viewed geometrical diagrams as embodying truthful knowledge capable of sustaining man's spiritual nourishment and showing him the way to rectitude. By the same token the early Muslim scholars believed that geometry is a divine language articulating the coercive laws, which govern all aspects of existence, hence they were motivated to translate most if not all the Pythagorean legacy into Arabic. It is this legacy, which inspired the Abbasid Wazir Ibn Muqla (866-940 AD/ 272-328 AH) to devise the theory of proportional script, an epoch-making system which made it possible for the Arabic script to assume its rightful role as the prime means of expression in the visual arts of Islam. Yet there is no detailed study of this topic existing in print so far, and scholarly attempts at developing a full grasp of the principles involved have for a long time remained inconclusive. I have been extremely fortunate in uncovering the true nature of Ibn Muqla's theory after 14 years of research, which resulted in a doctoral thesis entitled 'The Scientific Foundation of Arabic Lettershapes'. Since time is too short for an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of Ibn Muqla's theory my presentation will focus on the square-shaped dot, the basic unit of measurement in Ibn Muqla's system. It firstly requires the nib of the pen to be cut at an exact angle and conditions the correct manner of holding the pen. Secondly, it determines the surface area and proportions of the individual letter-shapes with respect to each other. Yet the significance of this dot exceeds its role as a measuring device in both 2- and 3-dimensional space. At a conceptual level, the relationship between dot and letter-shapes in Ibn Muqla's system appears intended to mirror that between unity and multiplicity in divine creation, an image taken up and fully explored in later Islamic mystical thought. Indeed, the nature of the dot can be seen as instrumental in explaining further the inner meaning of concepts such as 'Justice', 'Infinity', 'Harmony', and 'Oneness', which reside at the confluence of the rational and the spiritual. It will thereby be shown that Ibn Muqla's achievement of constructing the Arabic script in accordance with certain geometrical rules makes an implicit statement about the metaphysical nature and function of writing, which came to be of abiding significance for the entire artistic tradition of Islam. It will thus become evident that Ibn Muqla's theory, once fully understood, has the potential of clarifying the manner in which the Arabic alphabet came to represent what may be identified as The Structural Morphology in the Artistry of Islam. BIOGRAPHY Ahmed Moustafa is an artist and scholar of international repute and a leading authority on Arabic art and design. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1943, he was initially trained as an artist in the neoclassical European tradition. Drawing his inspiration primarily from Renaissance masters, he subsequently rediscovered his lslamic roots, and his work is now almost exclusively devoted to abstract compositions inspired by texts from the Holy Qur'an. Ahmed Moustafa gained a BA in Fine Arts with Highest National Distinction in 1966 from the University of Alexandria, where he remained as a lecturer in painting and stage design in the Faculty of Fine Arts until 1973. In 1974, he was awarded a scholarship to pursue advanced studies in printmaking at the Central School of Art and Design in London, where he obtained his MA with Distinction in 1978, and where he lectured in Arabic calligraphy from 1980 to 1982. In 1989, he was awarded a Ph.D by the Council for National Academic Awards for his work on the Scientific Foundation of Arabic Lettershapes, undertaken at the Central School of Art and Design in collaboration with the British Museum. This painstaking research over 11 years has illuminated the geometric principles underpinning the visual harmony of all Islamic art and architecture. Ahmed Moustafa has lived and worked in London since 1974 and directs the "Fe-Noon Ahmed Moustafa - Research Centre for Arab Art and Design", which he established in 1983. He has taught and lectured in many parts of the world, and is currently a visiting professor at the Prince of Wales' Institute of Architecture, London, the University of Westminster, London, and the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Alexandria, Egypt. Ahmed Moustafa is a consultant in Islamic art and design on many private projects throughout the Middle East. These have included tapestries for the Royal Pavilion, King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah, and the Royal Reception at King Khald Airport in Riyadh. He has also designed several new Arabic typefaces as well as corporate identity programmes and logotypes for numerous organizations. _____________________________ LA METAFORA ANDALUSI: LA UTOPIA NECESARIA by Emilio Gonzalez Ferrin Professor of Islamic Sociology, University of Seville, Spain KEYWORDS Al-Andalus, Islam, cultural transfer ABSTRACT There is Julian the traitor, and there is Julian the vindicator. They are two previous nametags. Two visions of a same process, from the same inevitable essence: the passage and importance of a part of History. However, these two visions cannot be combined or eliminated, at times they blow this way and that, subject to the burdens of time and circumstance. Both visions refer back to a specific event: the irrefutable existence of an entity called Al-Andalus. The above-mentioned Julian, traitor or vindicator, was supposedly an important person in the Ceuta of 711, the year of the Islamic invasion of Visigothic Spain. According to the chronicles, he paved the way for the invasion. From here on, the significance of what happened is usually eclipsed by its symbolic value and contemporary standing. The History of Spain is not revised with every wave of Colombian, Peruvian and Ecuatorian immigration, but it is with regard to North Africa. Geography becomes earth-based, ideologies become Africanised. However what is more striking is that the symbolic eclipse is not only a product of the present day. The narrow vision of the Andalus reality, its Alleged presences or absences, has converted it into one of the most interesting interpretations of the Andalus and Spanish historical evolution in general. The Spanish Ballads describe it in plain language: the Sarracens came and gave us a beating. God help the bad when they are more numerous than the good. This idea of us being the good does not usually dominate the description of previous invasions like those of the Romans, the Carthaginians or Visigoths, or the Phoenician, Celtic or Byzantinian settlements. Not that our journey through the routes of Islam in Andalucia will lack certain interpretations. This is because there is an interesting game of differing opinions which rarely coincide and that convert the studies on Al-Andalus in an arena of varying positions. This is normally incompatible with science, but curiously does generate an enormous amount of scientific studies. Al-Andalus represented more than the geographical half of the Iberian Peninsula during a large part of what we know as the Middle Ages. In fact, it records to a large extent the dating and classification of the ages in Spanish History. On the other hand, it occupied the total of present day Andalucia, to which it gave its name. If we pay heed to the treatment of present day processes, and even of some fairly recent in time, we can see how the memory or reminders of Al-Andalus does not leave the same kind of trace as that of similar "civilising" groups. As we have already deducted an induced nostalgia exists - probably merciful - that sees it like a blissful dream, which is more or less in disagreement with present day opinion. And, on the other hand, there also exists a selective austere pride that denies we could have been any other way - in reality, we are different. A people's history is its DNA chain. At this point, the purpose of our journey along the routes of Islam in Andalucia becomes clear, from a comfortably distant point of view. The load, as we said, is quite light: historical processes do not end in a moral or with some kind of warning to navigators. They are simply included, make the present possible, and mediatize the future among other numerous conditions. However, given that this future is ramified, faced with uncertainty we tend to dwell too long upon determined elements from former times between dreams nourished from the past. And what is worse, it causes us to try to establish canons: to purge and trim a preferred line of thought, which we want to be continuous. In reality, all we are achieving is to undo the future, with the impoverishing counterweight of denying that we are all that we were and that - as the perfect crime does not exist - all that is buried in the past prepares its revenge. No historic event of the past failed, died, or triumphed entirely. The elements are submerged and are included in subsequent events. Is this not the paragraph that should cover, for example, the way in which Thomas of Aquino translated Aristoteles from the Christian point of view, in what today is known as Italy using the texts of an Andalusian - Averroes - to which he had access through Islamic Sicily? But the example adapts itself to that idea, of the possible cultural impoverishment in the biased analysis: is it scientific, intellectually valid, or humanly acceptable to believe in a Thomas of Aquino in succeeding generations? Is it not clearer to see History as a permanent logical crisis of adaptation to the environment submerged in the circumstances that give rise to the present day, built on the remains of the past? BIOGRAPHY Emilio González Ferrin is a Full Profesor of Islamic Sociology at the University of Seville. He is currently heading a research project for the Centra Foundation (Council of Andalucia) on Al- Andalus, halfway between East and West, which is essential material for the objectives of the foundation which has just been created and which he chairs: Gordion (East and West). He has a Ph.D in Euro-Arab dialogue. He has had numerous articles and six books published on the subject of cultural cooperation with the Arab world, with titles including *Diálogo Euro-Arabe* (1997), (Euro-Arab Dialogue), *Salvaciones Orientales* (1999), (Eastern Salvations), and *La palabra descendida* (The word handed down), an intellectual reading of the Koran that was awarded the "Premio Internacional de Ensayo Jovellanos 2002" (The International Jovellanos Essay Award). He has been a visiting researcher at the universities of Louvain, London, Amman, Damascus and Cairo. He is a jury member for Arts for the Prince of Asturias Awards, and in the last edition he defended the candidacy of the Moroccan writer Fátima Mernissi, who achieved the award together with Susan Sontag. _____________________________ LOS CONCEPTOS DEL TIEMPO Y DEL ESPACIO EN EL LENGUAJE DE IBN ' ARABI: UN ENFOQUE LINGÜÍSTICO by Leila Khalifa Doctor en historia y civilización de la Escuela de Estudios Superiores en Ciencias Sociales (París). Miembro del laboratorio "Estudio y edición de textos de la Edad Media Sección - Arte y Literatura de Occidente-Oriente" (UPRESA 8092) del CNRS y de la Universidad de París IV-Sorbonne, France KEYWORDS Ibn 'Arabi, Islam, spirituality ABSTRACT Ibn 'Arabi se sitúa indiscutiblemente en el corazón del rencuentro entre la ciencia, la espiritualidad y lo imaginario, en tierra del Islam. La exploración de su concepto del mundo puede revelarse fecunda. Nuestra exposición consta de tres partes. En la primera, presentamos la figura de Ibn ' Arabi, al cheik al-akbar, su vida y su obra, así como las grandes líneas de su doctrina (en particular sobre la problemática de la unicidad divina, ahadiyya y wahdaniyya). Mostraremos, igualmente, la influencia de su enseñanza en el mundo musulmán, en Europa, en Japón y en Estados Unidos. En la segunda parte, procederemos al análisis lingüístico del vocabulario de la temporalidad (waqt, zaman, 'asr, dahr) y de la espacialidad (makan, hayyiz, mawdi', mawqa'). Profundizaremos en el uso de algunos de estos términos interesantes (miqat, por ejemplo, significa a la vez el espacio, el tiempo y el acto). En la tercera parte, examinaremos este rico vocabulario en el contexto propio del lenguaje y de la perspectiva akbariana, esencialmente a través del futuhat al-makkiyya. BIOGRAPHY Doctor en historia y civilización de la Escuela de Estudios Superiores en Ciencias Sociales (París). Miembro del laboratorio "Estudio y edición de textos de la Edad Media Sección - Arte y Literatura de Occidente-Oriente" (UPRESA 8092) del CNRS y de la Universidad de París IV-Sorbonne. Presentó y defendió una tesis sobre Ibn 'Arabi en el 2000, publicada con el título *Ibn Arabi. L'Initation à la Futuwwa* (ed.Albouraq, Paris, 2001). Continuó sus estudios de psicología y de historia en la Universidad de Jordania (Aman) y en la Universidad de Nottingham (Gran Bretaña). _____________________________ PENSAMIENTO LINEAL Y CONOCIMIENTO: UN PROCESO ALQUIMICO by Francesca Del Carmen Sanchez Anthropologist, Spain Apartado de Correos 3030 C.P.: 04006 Almería, Spain rasul [@] cajamar [dot] es KEYWORDS Sufism, history, Al-Andalus ABSTRACT The origins go back to the doctrines of DulNun the Egyptian, taken to the peninsula by Ibn Masarra, influenced by al Gazel the Persian, renewed by Ibn al Arif from Almeria and brought back again to East by Ibn Arabi from Murcia. We find the clearest symptom of the continuity of the spirit of Ibn Masarra in the bosom of the peninsular Sufism, in the huge influence made by the esoteric, mystical cultural focus of the School of Almeria. This city, inheritor of the School of Pechina, turned to be a seedbed of heterodox Sufism of masarri filiation. At the beginnings of the 12th century under the rule of Almoravides, Almeria becomes the spiritual metropolis of the peninsula. Here it was where the first and only shout of collective protest was heard against the burning of the books of al Gazel the Persian, which were described as godless by the Alfaquies of Cordoba. During the lifetime of this author his main works Makacid and Tehafort were burnt by an official decree of 1109, enacted by the Almoravid Sultan Yusuf ben Taxufin. The Alfaquies of Almeria, led by el Berchi from Berja, drafted a fatwa of protest, which blamed the behaviour of Aben Hamin, Cadi of Cordoba. This mystic flowing returned, in the 13th century (four centuries after the arrival of Ibn Masarra) with Ibn Arabi from Murcia to East where it came from, but modified in the batini sense. The germs of Sufi Pantheism of Ibn al Arif spread in this way to the furthest countries of Islam (Turkey, Persia and India) contributing to the spreading of "Ixraquuuies" in East Islam. This has been the most plentiful source of inspiration where all philosophers, especially the Persian ones, have gone to slake their thirst of religious ideals, who longed for an explanation of cosmos. Therefore nowadays the voluminous books of Ibn Arabi, inspired by the School of Almeria of Ibn al Arif are reissued constantly in Cairo, Constantinople and Mumbay. The fundamental principles of this school and the symbols of the language are used nowadays in Sufi vocabulary. Even more, the orders and guilds of East are still being inspired in the original rules of the School of Almeria. The last great known master of this school is Abu Isaac Ibrahim ibn al Havy from Almeria. He was born in Velefique (Almeria) in 1158 and passed away in Marrakesh in 1219. He was a first rate mystic poet. His great great grandson Abu I Barakat says that some masters told him that Abu Isaac managed to join 40000 disciples and opened a hall with this invocation: "Lord, make us look for shelter in You and be our most beautiful friendship until the day You send us death. Hidden, concealed, satisfied with your blessing, we will run to You the day we go to meet You". This invocation was the destiny of this school, to perpetuate until today stealthily in these Andalusian lands, overcoming obstacles and changes, covering the language and the apparently easiest customs: food, clothes, words, songs, children´s games. ________________________________________________________________ BONUS SECTION ________________________________________________________________ AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MELILLA CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS by Chris Alexander I was extremely happy when I first heard about this conference, from Roger, and was excitedly looking forward to the discussions. I am profoundly sorry that ill health and stress, caused by the final countdown of production on the four books of *The Nature of Order*, now finally completed, has prevented me from joining you at our conference. I am especially sorry, too, that I shall miss the rich union of many cultures, a subject in itself dear to my heart for decades, and which I was so much looking forward to. I thought, at least I could give you a summary of the remarks I would have made, and that these few pages might be distributed to all of you, in the hope that through this method I can at least join you in the dialogue. For nearly 30 years, now, I have been working on *The Nature of Order*, - an attempt to bring a fusion of the scientific world view, with an adequate view of art and architecture - not merely a theoretical view, or the kind of thing an analytical or critical thinker might produce, but rather something that directly affects the life and day-to-day work of a working artist, like myself - yet simultaneously is clearly expressed in terms that physicists and biologists can appreciate, benefit from - so that in some way our picture of the universe can be altered by this new picture. Above all, none of this can work unless it is seen in a context, which admits God - unrestricted wholeness - as the underpinning of all that is seen and experienced. I certainly do not mean, by this, adherence to any particular religion or religious tradition - but rather, it means that the life of objects and buildings and places, and our inner experience of self, all of which we experience in art, can be understood both in terms congruent with science as we presently know it, and also, that it makes sense in personal terms which touch us in our hearts and activates our hearts. The view of science that provides the underpinning to all four books relies on relatively small number of observations, and a small number, also, of new concepts which define living structure and the processes which generate living structure in objective terms. These include: an attempt to identify wholeness as an objective structure, existing in some degree, in all material systems: a method of observation which allows impartial observers to measure the degree of life in different structures according to their own inner state when in the presence of these structures; an attempt to see all evolution and development in physical systems, in living systems, and in the creation of works of art, as defined by a sequence of structure preserving transformations which take some existing wholeness as point of origin and define a new structure as a new wholeness which is reached from a previous one by structure-preserving transformations. The new way of thinking thus provides a vision of reality in which all events come about as transformations of the existing whole. It takes some effort, and above all study of and creation of worked examples, to understand this theoretical scheme. What is most important, is that all this is not merely a theoretical scheme, but rather a way of thinking, and a set of tools, which first teach the artist to make things, and show the way to making things - paintings, works of sculpture, buildings, and the many manifold possible structures which must appear in buildings at a huge range of scales. The buildings and public spaces which can be reached by these methods are entirely different from those typically created in the 20th century, and point the way to a humane world in the future, and a cogent, and sharable way for people to reach this humane world together. It is no small thing to have attempted a fusion of science and art, in a hard nosed fashion, compatible with scientific thinking, yet inspired and nourished by concern for the well- springs of human experience and in the origin of the human self. I could never have managed even this first step without the range of cultures and civilizations that I have paid attention to, visited, and been part of, during my life. For, the material in these books is largely culture- independent. By that I do not mean that different cultures should be somehow absorbed in some general mass culture of the future. Quite the opposite. It turns out that the criteria of life in artifacts, has the same deep substrate, in all cultures and civilizations, and the work in these four books draws on these hugely different cultures, and shows what is common to them, doing it in a way which honors and respects the art and building traditions of these world wide range of civilizations. In particular, I have benefited from my life long association with Islamic culture and my love of ancient Turkish and Persian carpets, and my long association and friendship with Japan and Japanese people and the projects I have built for them. India, Latin America, Russia, the art of the Pacific, many European nations, Moorish Spain, North Africa, and China have all played a significant role in helping me to understand the phenomena with which I have been concerned. The unification of cultures, and the exchange of profound respect from culture to culture, is vital to the proper understanding of artistic phenomena, and to the practice of individual art, and individual building, in various local cultures today. All this, may find inspiration and support from the studies to which I have dedicated my life. During the last two centuries, art and science were strongly separated. The thought which made sense in science made little sense in art; and vice versa. This has been most uncomfortable. It made both - both art and science in their separate ways - seem less valid, since it was obvious that neither one of them had much claim to an authentic view of reality, able to encompass the strength of human intellect and the stretch of human passion. I think you will find that the world picture I have painted, suggests that there is a single view of matter, the universe, and mind, which stretches wide enough to encompass both. If that is true, we shall all be very much the richer for it, in the future. I hope you will read *The Nature of Order*. It is not bombast that makes me say this, rather the hope that all of you - members of a group dedicated to finding a way forward, in which art and science, and multicultural humanity are fused, made one - may find some basis in the work presented in these books, that allows you to go forward in your own way, and in a way which leaves the schisms of the past and of the present behind. I hope, very much, one day to have the privilege of meeting some of you in person, and invite you, most warmly, to visit me in England, at my house in the country. Please do come if you have the chance, and at the very least I can offer you tea and refreshments, and we may have a chance to continue this dialogue. I am much looking forward to seeing the summaries of the contributions which all of you make to the conference. Here the titles of the four books: Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life Book 2: The Process of Creating Life Book 3: A Vision of a Living World Book 4: The Luminous Ground You may visit the website of the publisher, Center for Environmental Structure Publishing, and preview the books, at http://www.natureoforder.com. Sample chapters from each of the four books, in PDF format, are available for downloading, free of charge, from the website. ________________________________________________________________ ONE FROM THE VAULT: FROM THE LEA ARCHIVES ________________________________________________________________ CINEMATIC THRESHOLDS - INSTRUMENTALITY, TIME AND MEMORY IN THE VIRTUAL First published: (LEA 3:7), July 1995 http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/TEXT/Vol_2/lea_v3_n07.txt by Ed Keller 133 Mulberry #6N NYC 10013 U.S.A. Tel/Fax: 212 431 5705 mantis [@] basilisk [dot] com http://swerve.basilisk.com/C/CineThressH_966.html [Editor's Note: The article presented here is Section 1 of a longer article, the full text of which can be found on the author's web page listed above. It is published here by permission of the author]. THE VIRTUAL I would like to begin with a mise en abyme, a meditation on the nature of the virtual which will throw this essay through its entire trajectory and deposit us in a place where a more detailed development of each of these concepts can occur. As a starting point I find the formulation of the virtual that Deleuze gives us via Proust fascinating: 'Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.' p96, Bergsonism This understanding of the virtual insists upon its operative nature; moreover, the operative nature of something that is not, most likely, visible. It is used by Deleuze within the context of the performance of memory as a force that conditions our perception ineluctably and shapes us as subjects. In Deleuze's investigation of the subject through Bergson's idea of memory, virtuality is the key realm within which memory locates itself. [THIS TEXT CAN BE VIEWED IN ITS ENTIRETY BY LEA/LEONARDO SUBSCRIBERS AT: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e- journals/LEA/archive.html] ________________________________________________________________ LEONARDO REVIEWS 2005.8 ________________________________________________________________ June's editorial for Leonardo Reviews features one of our newer reviewers Rob Harle. As you can see from the reviews published below and in the Leonardo Reviews archive, Rob's research has a particular transdiciplinarity, which makes him a great asset to our project. His prolific output and particular combination of interest in biomedicine and architecture, consciousness and culture, situate him at the core of recent publications in our field. Also included in this month's feature is Kathleen Quillian's first review for us. Although a newcomer as a reviewer, Kathleen has been a colleague working in the San Francisco office and a great supporter and help. We are delighted that she has found the additional energy to publish a review with us. In July's edition, the difficulty one has in imposing a thematic structure on the contributions included in Leonardo Reviews testifies to the extraordinary diversity of the panellists and materials reviewed. Perhaps the consistency lies in the way the copy reflects the complexity and increasing cross- disciplinarity of contemporary scholarly discourse. As ever, certain areas such as film and experimental music are well covered. Jan Baetens scrutinizes a major and timely exposition of Jean-Luc Godard's work, Mike Mosher views the Japanese documentary, *A Visit to Ogawa Productions*, Stefaan van Ryssen assesses Peter Cusak's *Baikal Ice*, and Mike Mosher considers three innovative releases from the prolific Cuneiform Records. Also represented is the growth in literature and events that seek to illuminate the relationship between mind and art using insights from science. Ian Verstegen's review of a book by Lucia Pizzo Russo, *Le Arti e la Psicologia*, shows the value of a Continental perspective on a topic so often dominated by Anglo- American approaches, while Martha Blassnigg's report from the *Light/Image/Illusion* forum on Austria is further evidence of the growing cross-disciplinary activity between the arts and the sciences. Included in July's Leonard Electronic Almanac are Rob Harle's piece on Elizabeth Grosz's book, *The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Uncanny*, which uses Darwin, Nietzsche and Bergson to generate a new philosophical analysis of time, Alex Rotas' review of Jill Bennett's work on trauma and contemporary art, and in the current political climate of concern with African issues Mike Mosher's review of Elizabeth Harney's work on art and avant-gardism in Senegal. All these can be read on-line at http://leonardoreviews.mit.edu Michael Punt (June) Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Reviews and Robert Pepperell (July) Associate Editor Leonardo Reviews _____________________________ REVIEWS POSTED JUNE AND JULY 2005 Art Inquiry: Recherches Sur Les Arts, Volume V (XIV) Cyberarts, Cybercultures, Cybersocieties Published by The Scientific Society in Lodz Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Arte Telemática. Dos intercâmbios pontuais aos ambientes virtuais multiusuário Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen Barricade 3 by ZNR Reviewed by René van Peer Bauhaus: Less Is More by Eliseo Alvarez and Dessau's Bauhaus by Frederic Compain Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens Caging the Beast: A Theory of Sensory Consciousness _ Advances in Consciousness Research by Paula Droege Reviewed by Rob Harle Charlotte: Life or Theater? by Richard Dindo Reviewed by Artur Golczewski Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art by Grant Kester Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg Dream Bridges-Traumbrücken by Wolfdietrich Ziesel Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia) D-B. A: Digital-Botanic Architecture by Dennis Dollens Reviewed by Rob Harle Film and Cinema Spectatorship: Melodrama and Mimesis by Jan Campbell Reviewed by Jan Baetens The Future Is Not What It Used To Be by Mika Taanila Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen Hokusai by Gian Carlo Calza, with additional essays by others Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens Keeping It Real by Sunny Bergman Reviewed by Artur Golczewski Music Query: Methods, Models, and User Studies by Walter B. Hewlett and Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Eds. Reviewed by Joao Pedro Martins, Marcelo Gimenes and Qijun Zhang Pop Trickster Fool: Warhol Performs Naiveté by Kelly M. Cresap Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Pork Chop Blue Around The Rind by Fast 'n' Bulbous Reviewed by René van Peer Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body by Elizabeth A. Wilson Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia) The Subject of Documentary by Michael Renov Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition Lynn Spigel, Ed. Reviewed by Kathleen Quillian What the Body Cost: Desire, History, and Performance by Jane Blocker Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen William Roberts: An English Cubist by Andrew Gibbon Williams Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens Le arti e la psicologia by Lucia Pizzo Russo Reviewed by Ian Verstegen Baikal Ice by Peter Cusack Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art by Jill Bennett Reviewed by Alex Rotas For Ever Godard by Michael Temple, James S. Williams and Michael Witt, Eds. Reviewed by Jan Baetens Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System Is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It by Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner Reviewed by Zainub Verjee Leap Second Neutral by Machine and the Synergetic Nuts and Pork Chop Blue Around The Rind by Fast n' Bulbous and Emissaries by Radio Massacre International Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Light/Image/Illusion‹‹The Aegina Academy A Forum for Art and Science Organized by C3 Center for Culture & Communication and Nederlands Filmmuseum Reviewed by Martha Blassnigg Masterworks of Technology: The Story of Creative Engineering, Architecture, and Design by E.E. Lewis Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia) The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely by Elizabeth Grosz Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia) The Other Side of Nowhere. Jazz, Improvisation, and Communities in Dialogue by Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, Eds., with introduction by Ingrid Monson Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995 by Elizabeth Harney Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity by Maeda Ai Reviewed by Andrea Dahlberg Unsorted: An A to Z for SonicActsX by Arie Altena et al, with an introduction by Taco Stolk Reviewed by René Beekman VAS: An Opera in Flatland by Steve Tomasula; art and design by Stephen Farrell Reviewed by Eugene Thacker A Visit to Ogawa Productions by Oshige Jun' Ichiro, Director; produced by Yasui Yoshio Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Vocals by Ian Breakwell Reviewed by Mike Leggett Walter Benjamin and Art by Andrew Benjamin, Ed. Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher _____________________________ DREAM BRIDGES - TRAUMBRÜCKEN by Wolfdietrich Ziesel Springer-Verlag, Wien, New York, NY, 2004 247 pp., illus. Trade, €36,45 ISBN: 3-211-21269-8. Reviewed by Rob Harle Australia harle [@] dodo [dot] com [dot] au This book is both inspiring and delightful. All text is written in both English and German. "A voice crying in the wilderness" is a phrase used to describe the passion and vision of Wolfdietrich Ziesel. The wilderness alluded to is the impoverished emptiness of postmodernism driven by "turbo- capitalism". Whilst the subject of the book is bridges, the book is really about dreams, ". . . it is a compilation of thoughts about desires and dreams relating to bridges" (p. 9). It is about the state of the built environment and the *quality* of life associated with, and in turn influenced by, the *integrity* of architects, engineers, planners, and construction company executives. Ziesel argues (p. 12) as does Jörg Schlaich (p. 54- 59) that this integrity leaves much to be desired in our contemporary society. Schlaich also stresses, quite forcefully, that the dramatic increase in technologies, which should engender innovation and an exquisitely built environment, has done just the opposite. Technology, especially computer design applications, has the potential to liberate or enslave a designer's imagination. The elimination of the engagement of extreme creative efforts, by allowing computer software to take over, as it were, is a recipe for a bland, uninspired soul-less built environment. *Dream Bridges* is lavishly illustrated with sketches, engineering drawings and photographs, both colour, and black and white. There are six essays, including one by Ziesel himself; all are inspiring and challenging. The first essay - *Dreaming about Bridges - Dream Bridges* by Ziesel explains his attitude to design, and his passion for all things bridges, both metaphorically and literally. Wolfdietrich Ziesel is Professor and Director of the Institute for Statics and Theory of Structures at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Günter Feuerstein's essay, *What is Truth?*, discusses the notion of truth to materials and truth of appearances. He believes Ziesel's work, ". . . stands for a new truth, a new beauty, and therefore a new transcendence in building, without his being doctrinaire or puritanical" (p. 23). Schlaich in *Wolfdietrich Ziesel - A Voice Crying in the Wilderness*, as already mentioned, challenges contemporary architects and engineers and the way they are trained, suggesting alternative methods. Monika Gentner's essay, *Somewhere over the Rainbow* uses examples from literature to help us understand the importance of bridges, not so much in their literal structural sense but in their metaphorical imaginative power. The architects Brell, Cokcan in *Pedestrian Bridge of the Golden Horn* discuss the favorable influence of Ziesel's teaching, "He taught us not just to dream our architecture, but to live it" (p. 184). Finally, Otto Kapfinger's essay, *The Art of Civil Engineering - An Unknown Species in Austria?* comments quite critically on the state of the built environment in Austria, including historical examples and architecture's relationship with technology. The book is mostly set in Austria, Ziesel's homeland, and most of the structures are from this part of Europe. When I started the book, I wondered if this visionary and globally aware designer/engineer would mention the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia - arguably one of the greatest, creative engineering feats of the 20th century. And, yes, indeed on page 16 there is a mention of our beloved "Coathanger" as we Ozzies like to call it. Many of the great landmark bridges around the world are mentioned throughout the course of the book, giving considerable credibility to Ziesel's authority as a leading innovative engineer. The book has an excellent graphic layout and would be at home on any coffee table, though the book is far more serious than just a "nice" production. There is no bibliography, which I think would have been useful for students and researchers. Some of the essays could have been longer and perhaps a little more in-depth, especially concerning a bridge's relationship to the two locations it connects. Although, this aspect of the book is covered, to a certain extent, in the text accompanying the 20 or so "case studies" that intersperse the essays. This book is essential reading for all built environment design students and those professional architects and engineers in practice at present who have the responsibility of further despoiling our visual urban landscape or perhaps *improving* it. It puts such designers "on notice" to leave their egos at the office/studio door and work co-operatively with each other and the hapless public that has to endure and use their creations. _____________________________ PSYCHOSOMATIC: FEMINISM AND THE NEUROLOGICAL BODY by Elizabeth A. Wilson Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2004 136 pp., illus. 5 b/w. Trade, $64.95; paper, $18.95 ISBN: 0-8223-3356-2; ISBN: 0-8223-3365-1. Reviewed by Rob Harle Australia harle [@] dodo [dot] com [dot] au This book is about trying to put "humpty dumpty" back together again. Humpty Dumpty is no less than the *whole* human being. The neurological body, that Wilson rescues from the myopic extremes of second-wave feminism, is bought back to life in a carefully argued and well-written work. Wilson's rescue mission attempts to bring into balance cultural, social and political theories of the body, specifically those of feminism, and biological/neurophysiological theories. "Fierce antibiologism marked the emergence of second-wave feminism" (p. 13). This *fierce* unholistic approach has been as equally unproductive and unbalanced as the extreme scientific reductionism (biological determinism) that feminist critique attempts to expose. *Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body* seems very much to be a book that transcends the extremes of reductionism regardless of discipline. This is in keeping with a "new wave" of avant garde thinkers and writers who have rediscovered the holistic nature of existence. This is evident in research areas as disparate as quantum physics, environmental ecology, medicine, mathematics and architecture. The book has five chapters together with an informative introduction, good bibliography and index. Throughout the chapters Wilson, ". . . moves between the central and peripheral nervous systems and among the cognitive, the affective, and the unknowing, in an attempt to build a critically empathic alliance with neurology" (p. 29). Chapter one, *Freud, Prozac and Melancholic Neurology*, looks at neurological determinism, some of Freud's neurological work, and Kramer's *Listening To Prozac*. The quote from Kramer on page 26, in a sense sums up the nature of Wilson's quest, "Spending time with patients who responded to Prozac had transformed my views about what *makes* people the way they are [my emphasis]." Chapter two, *The Brain in the Gut* discusses neurogastroenterology and psychoanalysis and argues that, ". . . the nervous system extends well beyond the skull, and as it so travels through the body it takes the psyche with it" (p. 47). Chapter three, *Hypothalamic Preference: LeVay's Study of Sexual Orientation* looks at LeVay's study of the hypothalamus, carefully and non-hysterically, and what implications this organ has for the development of gay men, hence the participation of neurology as a role in personality development. Chapter four, *Trembling, Blushing: Darwin's Nervous System* highlights the benefits of assessing some of Darwin's work as an aid to critical neurological thinking. Special attention is giving to the unique human trait of blushing. Chapter five, *Emotional Lizards: Evolution and the Reptilian Brain* discusses various aspects of evolution, the triune brain and how evolutionary theory may be employed to expand ". . . feminist theories of psyche and soma" (p. 95). This chapter also discusses how Oliver Sacks' approach to motor function in reptiles helps us understand neurological modification and development in human beings. My only criticism of this book apart from being rather slim (126 pages) is that developmental psychology and the work of researchers, such as Andy Clark, *Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again*, are not given enough consideration. Clark's "feedback loops" from brain to peripheral nervous system, for example, seem to me to be especially relevant to Wilson's thesis. Yet some of Freud's questionable, outdated theories are given perhaps too much discussion. As an example, Freud's notion of excessive masturbation and/or *coitus interruptus* being implicated in "neurasthenic melancholia" and "somatic weakness" does nothing to help Wilson's argument. A reference to Oriental medicine and the vast experience of the Chinese in this regard could have been a worthwhile inclusion. This is an important book because it moves positively towards bringing about a balance between the extremist views of the antibiologist ranting of certain second-wave feminist theories and the myopic view of absolute biological determinism. _____________________________ TELEVISION AFTER TV: ESSAYS ON A MEDIUM IN TRANSITION by Lynn Spigel, Ed. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2005. 480 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 0-8223-3393-7. Reviewed by Kathleen Quillian kathleen [@] dprojx [dot] org Undoubtedly the Internet has changed the nature of mass communication from a centralized one-way model to a de- centralized multi-directional model. How this will affect the industry of broadcast media has yet to be fully decided. While producers are falling over themselves to try to figure out how to successfully negotiate the media landscape in the age of the Internet, scholars are building upon their cache of expertise to develop a new dialogue of communications studies. In an attempt to give this new era some kind of identifiable form, Lynn Spigel has brought together the perspectives of several leading television scholars in *Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition*. It seems that while the dialogue is still developing around the new nature of mass communication, so too is the language. Throughout the collection, no less than a dozen different terms are given in the attempt to identify the scope of contemporary media communications - terms ranging from "omnimedia" (Martha Stewart's term for her own media empire) to "post-broadcasting" to "the neo-network era." The book is divided into four sections which, broadly speaking, focus on: changes in the television industry in the age of the Internet, television's social context in the larger scope of culture, how television defines or re- defines community and the educational potential of television studies. Aside from two essays devoted specifically to European television (lifestyle programming in Britain and the introduction of television in Sweden, respectively) and a look at the development of Hong Kong as a media capital, the majority of the book is devoted to the many ways that the industry of (U.S.) commercial television has evolved and how it influences, or is influenced by, the Internet. To those of us who cannot conceive of life without the all-pervasive influence of commercial television, this collection of essays certainly gives one pause to think as we work our way through the next generation of mass media. One of the more interesting angles on this is given in *Flexible Microcasting: Gender, Generation, and Television- Internet Convergence* by Lisa Parks, in which the author surmises how the rise and popularity of television game shows foreshadowed the interactivity of the Internet. She then goes on to address how certain forward-thinking big-budget television producers have successfully (or unsuccessfully) negotiated the territory between television and the Internet with programs designed to encourage the involvement of women and youth while still maintaining the dominant ideologies perpetuated by commercial television. The "flow" of the book (referencing a term coined by early television scholar Raymond Williams - mentioned consistently throughout this collection of essays) moves from a rather focused look at new forms of marketing in the television industry to a broader look at the influence of television on culture and society. Two notable contributions presented toward the latter end of the flow are by Anna McCarthy and Lynn Spigel whose respective essays give two very different spins on power and broadcast media. In *The Rhythms of the Reception Area: Crisis, Capitalism, and the Waiting Room TV* Anna McCarthy discusses how the market of closed-circuit television programs both manifests and perpetuates certain social and economic strata in relation to the measurement of time in public waiting areas. Spigel's own contribution to this collection *Television, the Housewife, and the Museum of Modern Art* chronicles a lesser-known and otherwise short-lived era in the early days of television when the Museum of Modern Art experimented with the potential gains offered by the new, avant-garde medium. In this essay, Spigel weaves an interesting narrative around leisure time, niche marketing and the clash between "high" and "low" culture in post- war America. An image of Barbara Streisand posing while singing in the museum gallery, wearing a designer gown similar to the modernist paintings on the wall next to her, illustrates this essay quite well. In the attempt to position so many ideas in one conversation however, inevitably, some parts of the discussion get left out. In this case, it seems that while much thought is developed around the industry of commercial television and the social consequences of the medium in the age of the Internet, the roles of journalists and media activists - those individuals who negotiate and shape the media landscape on a daily basis - were overlooked altogether. The few times the news media is given attention in this collection is only in terms of its absence. Anna Everett's essay *Double Click: The Million Woman March on Television and the Internet* describes how the organizers of the Million Woman March utilized the resources of the Internet to fill in the gaps that were left in the coverage of this event by mainstream media. Similarly, in *Pocho.com: Reimagining Television on the Internet*, Priscilla Pena Ovalle discusses the lack of media attention directed towards the Hispanic community and how one website in particular succeeds in shaping an alternative community by subverting mainstream media. The discussion of television in the age of the Internet would greatly benefit from a focused look at independent media organizations such as the Independent Media Center, Democracy Now! and MoveOn.org who are forced to find their way through and around the tightly-regulated confines of broadcast media to bring alternative perspectives to the table. These organizations largely rely on the power of the Internet as well as what little room is left in public access and public-sponsored media channels to develop dialogues which are sorely lacking in corporate-controlled, mainstream media. We could learn a thing or two from their experiences of communicating through new and alternative avenues in broadcast media. This collection of essays comes at a critical time, when we are looking at not just a change in media, but a change in form, practice and consequence. Whether television producers succeed in steering the market in their favor, governments succeed in maintaining the hegemony through regulation, or citizens succeed in claiming their rightful territory within the new terrain of mass communications really only comes down to who figures things out first. By revisiting the history of television in terms of the new media landscape, we may be able to pick up some valuable clues as to how to go about shaping some kind of acceptable future for broadcast communications. _____________________________ THE NICK OF TIME: POLITICS, EVOLUTION, AND THE UNTIMELY by Elizabeth Grosz Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2004 336 pp. Trade, $79.95; paper, $22.95 ISBN: 0-8223-3400-3; ISBN: 0-8223-3397-x. Reviewed by Rob Harle Australia Harle [@] dodo [dot] com [dot] au It is a brave philosopher that dares to go where many other philosophers have feared to tread. In her latest book - *The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely*, Elizabeth Grosz not only tackles the illusive concept of time head-on but does so with scholarly rigor and an engaging confidence. The book is well written, meticulously researched and like Elizabeth Wilson's recent book - *Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body* (see Leonardo Reviews, June 2005) is like a breath of fresh air in the areas of cultural and feminist studies. Both these books recognize the importance of corporeality to feminist critique and attempt to regain some sort of holistic balance; Wilson through neurology and biology - Grosz through evolution, temporality and corporeality, "…we need to turn again, with careful discernment, to those discourses, once rejected by feminists and political activists, that place the body in the larger cosmological and biological orders in which it always finds itself" (p. 3). Grosz's work outlines a new theory of becoming, "…to replace the prevailing ontologies of being in social, political and biological discourse". What makes this book all the more daring and provocative is her analysis of three of the seemingly strangest bedfellows - Darwin, Nietzsche and Bergson. The relationship of these three major thinkers is not as disparate as one may first think. Grosz brings to life some of the more obscure and little appreciated aspects of their philosophies and discusses these, drawing on the work of Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze. The book has an Introduction, Three Parts (each with three chapters), Conclusion, Notes, and an excellent Bibliography and Index. Part I - Darwin and Evolution looks at Life, Force and Change; Biological Difference; and Evolution of Sex and Race. Part II - Nietzsche and Overcoming discusses Nietzsche's concerns about Darwinism; History and the Untimely; and the Eternal Return and The Overman. Part III - Bergson and Becoming analyzes Bergsonian Difference; The Philosophy of Life; and Intuition and the Virtual. Grosz insists that this work is "…very much an initial exploration" and whilst the body is integral to her discussion, the object of investigation is "…time: its modalities, its forms, its effects on both inorganic and organic materiality" (p. 4). To her credit, Grosz admits in previous work she underestimated the importance of the biological body. "Without some reconfigured concept of the biological body, models of subject-inscription, production, or constitution lack material force; paradoxically, they lack corporeality" (p. 4). This book is very much a critique and analysis of time from a Western philosophical perspective or position. That is, time, whilst not seen perhaps as strictly linear, still "moves forward" (p. 247) from past to present to future. There is no detailed consideration of the Eastern philosophical notion of time being literally "cyclic". This is an important omission because it directly relates to the seemingly teleological aspect of Darwinian evolution (which Darwin himself did not endorse). Whilst material evolution seems to move from simple to ever more complex forms this is an illusion of time itself. And further, it is our human construction of time in the first place that creates the illusion. Grosz discusses the concepts of past, present and future quite extensively but fails to mention what the Eastern philosophers discovered a millennium ago, that the only time that exists or is real is the "eternal present". Time, that is, an elapsed period from one state to another, is very much a condition of mind. Our contemporary Western notion of time is heavily influenced by the introduction of the Town Clock, invented by monks in the Middle Ages. Whilst I believe a discussion of time as cyclic would have enhanced and added balance to Grosz's reappraisal of time, the body and evolution, it does not detract from the importance of her work, especially as it relates to feminist critique and cultural/political investigation. This is an important book, written in a lively, vibrant style, unusual in such complex philosophical discourse. I recommend it as essential reading for all interested in philosophy, feminist critique and the new wave of holistic humanities studies. _____________________________ EMPATHIC VISION: AFFECT, TRAUMA AND CONTEMPORARY ART by Jill Bennett Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2005 208 pp., illus. 23 b/w. Trade, $49.50; paper, $19.95 ISBN: 0-8047-5074-2; ISBN: 0-8047-5171-4. Reviewed by Alex Rotas Bristol, UK alex [dot] rotas [@] bluyeonder [dot] co [dot] uk This is an insightful, timely book. The common notion that the particular experience of looking at art provides access to broader truths is a vague adage that doesn't take us very far. It needs opening up; just how does this leap from an embodied, aesthetic experience to thought occur? Bennett describes this as the link between affect and cognition in the visual arts, and this is the issue she explores. Art, she argues (drawing from Deleuze), has "unique capacities" to trigger an empathic response from the viewer which, far from being an end in itself, ideally leads to thought and critical enquiry. The affective power of the visual is particularly demonstrated in the case of art that draws from trauma, which as she observes, is traditionally defined as being beyond both language and representation. Nonetheless, traumatic experience such as child sexual abuse, the tyrannies of war, civil war and political oppression, the Holocaust, and the events of "9/11" have provided artists with opportunities to engage visually and conceptually in difficult and painful arenas. In particular, she charts the emergence of the thematic category of 'trauma art' since the late 1990s. Interweaving theory drawn from trauma studies, literary studies, art history, visual culture and cultural studies with detailed case-histories, she examines how contemporary art can "engage trauma in a way that respects and contributes to its politics." Her interest, however, is more than with a specific grouping of works and with a particular politics. Her illuminating treatment of the artworks that form her case-studies are already reason enough to buy the book but Bennett has a more ambitious aim. As a contemporary art historian, she sees her remit not as writing about the artworks that form the focus of her inquiry or with demonstrating what they mean, or what trauma is depicted. It is how they work that interests her. How does the particular 'affective imagery' of art drawn from trauma engage us, she asks, and where does it take us? Unlike narrative film, visual art doesn't draw us into an emotional response with a traumatized subject. Equally, it does not elicit a specific 'moral' response, although there are plenty of worthy artworks around that, in telling us what to think, certainly set out to do just that. Yet it is art's affective component, she argues, that paradoxically leads to critical thought just as it is through relinquishing any moral position that a particular piece can enable ethical inquiry. This is a book aimed at a theoretically fluent constituency. Bennett's analysis embraces theoretical discussions of memory, testimony, subjectivity, pain, trauma, and loss plus victim and stranger discourses as well as more art-related issues of representation and the relationship between visual and cognitive processes. It will, therefore, delight a broad, if sophisticated, readership. Nonetheless its primary audience will be readers from art-theory/visual culture/cultural studies backgrounds together with those interested in trauma studies or post-colonial theory. Innovative, courageous and unashamedly attempting to push "the analysis of culture onto new ground", Bennett makes a powerful case for her central thesis that visual arts practice is generative rather than representative. Theory, she sets out to demonstrate, can be derived from visual domains and not just applied to them. The ambitious remit of the book, however, is both its strength and its weakness. It is indeed, as the back-cover proclaims, "written at the highest level" but this implies a readership that can keep up with dense yet often economically argued prose. Bennett covers a lot of ground in this slim volume. Rather surprisingly, the central notion of 'affect' is never defined (or even discussed) and we are left wondering if the 'affective experience' is synonymous with the 'aesthetic experience', as Bennett herself implies towards the end. If so, of course, what exactly does this mean? And though keen to emphasize the open- ended nature of the empathic response, she does assume that when she enjoys the affective element in an artwork, we all will; with the gloriously named Gordon Bennett's work, for example, much as I was fascinated by her analysis, it just didn't happen for me (poor illustrations didn't help). Nonetheless, these are quibbles. This is an exciting read that more than repays the efforts that Bennett demands. Thought- provoking and at times startling, Empathic Vision opens up new ideas that stay with you long after you have closed its covers. And it deals with issues that are now relevant to us all; as Bennett observes, since "9/11", trauma has become a globalized phenomenon. _____________________________ IN SENGHOR'S SHADOW: ART, POLITICS AND THE AVANT-GARDE IN SENEGAL, 1960-1995 by Elizabeth Harney Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2004 344 pp., illus. 78 b/w, 14 col. Paper, $26.95 ISBN: 9-8223-3395-3. Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher Saginaw Valley State University Mosher [@] svsu [dot] edu Among the former French colonies of West Africa, Senegal had the advantage that the French colonial government assiduously trained a managerial and governing class before independence. Yet Senegal was also unique in that the new nation had an aesthetic vision behind it. A post-colonial artistic modernism was proposed and promoted by Léopold Sédar Senghor (1905-2001), independent Senegal's first president, in power from 1960 until 1980. Negritude, a call and strategy for black artists from European colonies to celebrate their blackness, was first articulated in the 1930s by the poet Aimé Césaire of Martinique. Like Senghor, Césaire had studied in the Paris of the 1920s and 1930s where Caribbean, African, Asian and African American students all met. Césaire noted the city's enthusiasm for black artistry, as African artworks and motifs were influencing European artists, poets, dancers and composers (much as the Harlem Renaissance invigorated culture in New York). Senghor, an accomplished poet, was a major theorist of Negritude but with an African variant; his Africanité looked to the African continent's past more than Césaire did. While the Caribbean cosmopolite celebrated the diversity of black people, their experiences and creativity, the Senegalese African romanticized the essentialism of their unique "emotive" and "rhythmic" souls to contrast to dry European Cartesianism and the West. Upon independence, this Africanist aesthetic served a nationalist function, energizing local artists and intellectuals, promoting unity and establishing a relationship between the new nation and the colonialist powers that were the capitals of the art market. The new nation offered support for artists, and president Senghor devoted 25-percent of the state budget to culture. He established art schools, a national museum, festivals and touring exhibitions. Africanité was agreeable to Pan-Africanism, and in 1966 the World Festival of Black Arts was held in Senegal's capital city Dakar. At the new École de Dakar, professor Iba N'Diaye emphasized technical training and was skeptical that emphasis on Africanness wouldn't lead to dismissal of African artists as "noble savages". His colleague Papa Ibra Tall, though himself Paris-educated, discouraged all European influences on his students. Tall founded Senegal's national tapestry school, where works were produced by Badara Camara, Moussa Samb, Ibou Diouf, Samba Balde, Bakary Dieme, Amadou Dédé and Modou Niang. Senghor's aesthetic philosophy also had its critics, including celebrated filmmaker Osumane Sembene (who also criticized his repression of political opponents). Some artists disliked the president's patronizing attitude - he called artists his cher enfants - as he bestowed patronage. Younger artists chafed under Senghor's definitions of acceptable art and found them reactionary. In the 1970s meetings among actors and artists at Dakar's Café Terrasse birthed the Laboratoire Agit-Art. Its leader, Issa Ramangelissa Samb, favored mixed media sculptures assemblages, studied and adopted ideas by Europeans Georgi Plekhanov and Anonin Artaud, and cited political events in Southeast Asia and Latin America beyond Mother Africa. The Laboratoire Agit-Art deconstructed and restaged one epic Senghor poem as a comedy, as well as a Césaire work. They favored a street-level pop sensibility, works created with trash and commercial packing materials or bottle caps found in the marketplace. This American reviewer is reminded of New Yorkers, Claes Oldenburg and his Store in the early 1960s, and Jean- Michel Basquiat in the 1980s. Among Samb's graffiti-like painting was a Che Guevara portrait evincing black bloodlines and a confused expression. El Hadji Moussa Babacar Sy often sold his paintings like stage backdrops on jute sacking material for the price of a full sack of rice. Sy created painted figurate "Skites" kites. Sy used his own footprint as a painting motif, much as did California painter Mike Henderson. To compare the Senegalese artists to American ones is not to say they are unfavorably derivative: It is to acknowledge that the Africans became full participants in a global dialogue. Sy and his friends, sculptor Aly Traoré and painter Moussa Tine, squatted in an abandoned military camp in downtown Dakar in 1977. Soon joined by actors and other performers, musicians, photographers, they named the camp Village des Arts. Sy established a gallery and meeting place there and called it TENQ, the Wolof word for articulation. Suspicious government officials began visiting in preparation for reclaiming the base, offering an unsuitable building in a suburb Colobane where some artists had settled. In September 1983 the Village des Arts was attacked by troops in tanks, the residents were evicted and many artworks and the Village archives destroyed. Under president Diop the World Bank imposed strictures in the early 1980s that caused Senegal to cut support of health care, education, and street cleaning, diminishing the quality of life for most of the citizenry. Inspired by Youssou N'Dour's song *Set*, and a Wolof word for clean and proper, an urban mural squad called *Set Setal* flourished in 1988 and 1989. Many of their painted walls resemble urban murals in the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s, imagery of power and resistance to slaveries, whether economic or spiritual. *Set Setal* murals depicted nationalist or historic content (including the slave trade at Gorée), civic campaigns combatting AIDS, diarrhoea, dysentery and malaria, and portraits of Senghor or the second president Abdou Diouf. They also painted Mao and Lenin, religious figure Cheikh Amadou Bamba, prizefighters Assane Diouf and Manga 11, and Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Mickey Mouse and Tintin. Critics of Senghor's cultural policies saw *Set Setal* murals as evidence that the younger generation were happy to incorporate world influences with African ones. The French Cultural Center, where Sy has painted a mural, was another enthusiastic supporter of *Set Setal*. In the 1990s there have been impressive sculptures in wood and metal by Gubril André Diop (whose treelike *Ecology Sculpture* of 1995 employed recycled beverage cans) and Moustapha Dimé, who reconciles Islam with figuration in his studio in Gorée. There have been mixed media works by Djibril N'Diaye, figurative paintings by Sedou Barry and Ousmane Faye, and non- representational paintings of Kan Si and Viyé Diba. Alpha Wouallid Diallo created history paintings from photographs of battles and events in the founding of the nation of Senegal. Pre- independence traditions of sous-verré glass painting have been revived by Germaine Anta Gaye. She has combined glass painting with wood or gold leaf, and used it to boldly celebrate signares, African women who had intercourse (business or sexual) with Portuguese traders in the 15th century. International notice came early to Senegal's artists, and in the 1960s France's Minister of Culture André Malraux said the best of them "match the greatest European artists for stature". Mor Faye, a painter who died at 37 in 1984, was celebrated by New York critics as the great outsider, "a poor black Picasso," "a solitary medicine man". Sy, Samb and Souleyman Keita showed in London in 1995. Dak'Art, the international art bienniale, has been held in Dakar for over a decade. This reviewer studied with the Africanist Perkins Foss (the first grad student of Robert Farris Thompson) and hungers for more investigations of contemporary African culture. *In Senghor's Shadow* is a subtle exploration of Senegal's artists, their motivations and their relations to the government's cultural policies. Elizabeth Harney presents the political contradictions inherent in national cultural policy, between encouragement of raw and provincial local talent versus rigorous training to world-class standards designed for the discourse of the world's cultural capitals. The book deals with the question of authenticity in a globalist age, the contradictions of the artists' support system, both private patronage and that of the former colonizer. The author has provided us with a satisfying study of one nation's cultural aims and artistic achievements. ________________________________________________________________ ISAST NEWS ________________________________________________________________ LYNNE CARSTARPHEN NAMED COORDINATING EDITOR OF *LEONARDO* Lynne Carstarphen has been promoted to Coordinating Editor of *Leonardo*. In her new capacity she will be taking over from Managing Editor Pamela Grant-Ryan much of the responsibility for coordinating and editing manuscripts for the print journal. Lynne has been involved with *Leonardo* since September 2002, first as Editorial Assistant, then as Associate Editor. She has a background in art history and Internet cataloging, and holds a master's degree in writing. _____________________________ *LEONARDO* LAUNCHES YASMIN DISCUSSION LIST *Leonardo* and the YASMIN Group are pleased to announce the launching of the YASMIN mailing and discussion list, hosted by the University of Athens. It is a collaborative project by a consortium of organizations and individuals around the Mediterranean Rim and region. YASMIN is a network of artists, scientists, engineers, theoreticians and institutions promoting communication and collaboration in art, science and technology around the Mediterranean Rim. YASMIN welcomes information on events, artists' works and organizations' programs, projects and initiatives as well as discussions and critical analysis. YASMIN aims to identify the players and to facilitate cooperation within the Mediterranean Rim. All postings should be relevant to the YASMIN mandate. The official language of the YASMIN list is English. However, posts in the other languages mastered by the moderators are allowed as long as a summary of the post in English is provided. Those languages are currently: Arabic, Catalan, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. We welcome everyone to subscribe to the list at: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/. The list is currently moderated by the following team: Julien Knebusch, Samirah Alkassim, Ahmed Hassouna, Pau Alsina, Dimitris Charitos, Neora Berger and Nina Czegledy. They form the YASMIN Group, together with Roger Malina, Jaco Du Toit, Annick Bureaud and Andreas Giannakoulopoulos. The YASMIN mailing list, co-sponsored by the DigiArts Programme of UNESCO, was made possible thanks to the Internet Society (ISOC), the Rockefeller Foundation, Leonardo/OLATS, The University of Athens, Artnodes-UOC Barcelona and all the coordinators of the YASMIN Group. _____________________________ SPECTOR AND LARSON JOIN GOVERNING BOARD The Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board of Directors welcomes Tami Spector and Larry Larson as two of its newest members. Tami Spector is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of San Francisco. She received her B.A. from Bard College and her Ph.D. from Dartmouth College and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota. She is trained as a physical organic chemist; her experimental research interests are focused on the transformations of strained ring organics, the design and synthesis of organic selective ion transport systems, and spectroscopic analysis of intramolecular hydrogen bonding. In addition, she has published in the field of computational chemistry with an emphasis on molecular dynamics and free energy calculations of biomolecular systems. She also has a strong interest in aesthetics and chemistry and has published and presented work on the molecular aesthetics of disease, John Dalton and the aesthetics of molecular representation, and the visual image of chemistry. Larry R. Larson, principal of Larry Larson and Associates, is a consultant working with arts organizations seeking to use technology to create new ways of reaching and serving audiences. He has specialized in helping these groups use databases and dynamic web sites to realize ambitious programmatic and administrative goals. Larson's current or recent clients include Laurie Anderson, Minnesota Public Radio, Nonesuch Records, the John Cage Trust and the American Music Center. Notably, Larson and his associates recently completed and launched MusicVista.org, a joint web/database development project for a consortium of major American music service organizations. Prior to launching his consulting practice, Larson was Director of Grant Programs for the California Arts Council and was a member of the original National Endowment for the Arts National Information Systems Project (NISP), the first such project of its type. He has also served in senior administrative positions at the San Francisco and Houston symphonies, and has been an advisor on musical and technical matters to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and many others. Larson also serves on the boards of the Kronos Quartet and the American Music Center. For more information about the Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board, see _____________________________ LEONARDO BOOK SERIES ACTIVITIES The past year found the Leonardo Book Series brimming with activity. We are pleased to announce the publication of five new titles in the series: *At A Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet*, edited by Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark; *Visual Mind II*, edited by Michele Emmer; *CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy*, edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh; *The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics and Culture* by Eugene Thacker; and *Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture* by Matthew Fuller - with several more soon to be released. In May 2005, the Math Science Research Institute, Berkeley, CA, hosted a book-signing party for Michele Emmer to celebrate the release of *Visual Mind II*. Visit http://www.lbs.mit.edu for more information. Leonardo/ISAST members receive a 20% discount on Leonardo Books; visit http:www.leonardo.info/members.html for more information. _____________________________ LEONARDO/OLATS AND SPACE STUDY The European Space Agency has awarded a consortium led by the Arts Catalyst, and which includes Leonardo/OLATS, a contract to carry out a 6-month study of possible cultural utilization of the International Space Station. The European Space Agency is interested in opening the Space Station to a new community of artistic and cultural users. The study sets out to focus the interest of the cultural world on the Space Station, to generate a policy for involving cultural users in the Space Station program in the longer term, and to develop a representative set of ready-to-implement demonstrator projects in arts, culture and media. Under the lead of the Arts Catalyst (London, U.K.), the study team includes Leonardo/OLATS (Paris, France), Delta Utec (Leiden, Netherlands) and the MIR Network, a group of European arts organizations in Slovenia, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, U.K. and France. Artists and cultural practitioners across Europe are being consulted on features of the Space Station and its ground-based support facilities - including launch sites, astronaut training facilities and national user support centers. To become involved or receive further information about this study, e-mail the study leader, Nicola Triscott, at iss [@] artscatalyst [dot] org. The European Space Agency press release about the study can be found at: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/Pr_p_EN.html. The German and French translations can also be accessed from this URL. _____________________________ LEONARDO REACHES OUT TO EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY As part of an ongoing effort to reach out to the educational community, Leonardo/ISAST has instituted several initiatives under the Leonardo Educators and Students Program. These include participation in the annual College Art Association (CAA) Conference, Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), the Leonardo International Faculty Alerts list (LIFA) and special discounts on student memberships. Students working in or interested in art, science and engineering are invited to join the Leonardo community with an annual associate membership to Leonardo/ISAST at the special student rate of $48. Benefits include associate membership in the organization, discounts on books and invitations to join us at conferences and symposia, including the College Art Association Conference, SIGGRAPH and the 2006 Pacific Rim New Media Summit and ISEA 2006 Festival and Symposium. Leonardo/ISAST is also interested in connecting with educational organizations and organizations with similar goals and interests through the Leonardo Organizational Membership Program, which was initiated in 2004. Through the program, Leonardo/ISAST connects members of the Leonardo network and organizations, faculty and students who are working at the confluence of art, science and technology. Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to include Intel, the San Francisco Art Institute, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Texas and the University of Plymouth among the current members in the organizational membership program. For more information about student or organizational memberships, please visit the members page of Leonardo On-Line http://www.leonardo.info/members.html _____________________________ LEONARDO EDUCATORS FORUM The Leonardo Educators Forum (formerly known as the Leonardo/CAA Working Group) is soliciting input from students about their interests and needs to help develop programs and activities that could benefit their professional development. One of the focuses of the Leonardo Educators Forum is to provide opportunities and resources in a mentoring capacity for students and emerging professionals in areas relating to the intersection of art, science and technology. Current activities include a mentorship panel at the CAA annual meeting and ongoing mentorship resources provided on the Leonardo On-Line web site and through the Leonardo Educators Forum listserv and blog http://www.leocaa.blogspot.com. Students and emerging professionals are encouraged to offer their ideas and comments about how the Leonardo Educators Forum can assist them in the development of the next generation of art/science/technology researchers and practitioners. Some of the many areas to address include: writing across the disciplines; collaboration between artists/scientists/technologists; essential connections/historical considerations; negotiating the job market; and teaching art/science/technology: working inside and outside of academia. Please submit comments or questions to gharp [@] umich [dot] edu. LEONARDO NETWORK NEWS COORDINATOR: Kathleen Quillian isast [@] leonardo [dot] info _____________________________ THE PACIFIC RIM NEW MEDIA SUMMIT (PRNMS) A PRE-SYMPOSIUM TO ISEA2006 7-8 August 2006, San Jose, California The ISEA2006 Symposium is being held in conjunction with the first biennial ZeroOne San Jose Global Festival for Art on the Edge in San Jose, California, 5--13 August 2006. As part of the ISEA2006 Symposium, the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University will host a 2-day pre-symposium entitled the *Pacific Rim New Media Summit*, co-sponsored by Leonardo. With a purview encompassing all states and nations that border the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific Rim New Media Summit is intended to explore and build interpretive bridges between institutional, corporate, social and cultural enterprises, with an emphasis on the emergence of new media arts programs. In preparation for the summit, seven working groups are currently laying the groundwork for the main areas of investigation to be pursued in depth at the summit: Creative Community, Curatorial, Education, Directory, Eco-Social Activism, Mobile Computing and Urbanity, and Latin American- Pacific/Asia New Media. Following is another statement from one of the working group chairs, in the continuation of our ongoing series as a build-up to the conference. _____________________________ PRNMS WORKING GROUP ON CONTAINER CULTURE SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES The Pacific Rim Curatorial Workgroup is developing a pan- Pacific Rim exhibition, *Container Culture*, as part of the overarching Pacific Rim New Media Summit for the ISEA2006 Symposium in San Jose, California, August 5-13, 2006. The exhibition will feature work by artists in the "catch basin" of the port city where the curator is located or working. It will use standardized shipping containers for presentation of this work. The shipping container is an index of the economic relationships that exist among otherwise culturally diverse Pacific Rim countries and will become a temporary zone of quotidian "white cube" galleries for unstable media placed in the very public context of the central Plaza Cesar Chavez in San Jose. GROUP MEMBERS Steve Dietz (San Jose) stevedietz [@] yproductions [dot] com ZeroOne, co-chair Zhang Ga (Shanghai/New York) z [@] apiece [dot] net Alice Ming Wai Jim (Vancouver) alice [dot] jim [@] centrea [dot] org Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A) Deborah Lawler-Dormer (Auckland) deborah [@] mic [dot] org [dot] nz Centre for Moving Image Guna Nadarajan (Singapore) pups2320 [@] pacific [dot] net [dot] sg Co-chair Ellen Pau (Hong Kong) ellenpau [@] hkstar [dot] com Videotaage Johan Pijnappel (Mumbai) pijnappel [@] hotmail [dot] com Indian Video Archive ________________________________________________________________ BYTES ________________________________________________________________ ***** CALL FOR PAPERS ***** LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL 16 (2006) NOISES OFF - SOUND BEYOND MUSIC These days sound is more than just music. Museums, galleries and artists' studios are getting noisier: it's not that there is so much more "Sound Art," but rather that so much more art has sound. Cellphone ringtones generated four billion dollars in sales worldwide in 2004. Incoming email and outgoing popcorn announce themselves with plops and gongs and boops and beeps - the emerging field of "sonification" addresses this proliferation of all these "earcons" and other representational uses of sound. Sound design is a vital part of Hollywood films and computer games. While CD sales shrink with the proliferation of peer-to-peer file exchange, the creative use of sound is expanding in almost every other part of our lives. For the next issue of Leonardo Music Journal we invite papers on the expanded role of sound in art, science, business and everyday life. Topics could include (but are not limited to): audio art, radio art, phonography; sound design for video, film, and gaming; the role of sound in performance art, theatre, dance; sonificitation; architectural acoustics; instrument design. DEADLINES 15 October 2005 - Rough proposals, queries 1 January 2006 - Submission of finished article Address inquiries to Nicolas Collins, Editor-in-Chief, at: ncollins [@] artic [dot] edu. Finished articles should be sent to the LMJ Editorial Office at lmj [@] leonardo [dot] info. Editorial guidelines and information for authors can be found on our Information for Authors page. Note: LMJ is a peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts are reviewed by LMJ editors, editorial board members and/or members of the LMJ community prior to acceptance. _____________________________ SCHOOL OF ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO FACULTY POSITION IN FILM, VIDEO AND NEW MEDIA The Department of Film, Video, and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago invites applications from artists working in video to teach and expand an innovative curriculum in moving image media. We are looking for artists who work with various applications of video/digital media, experimental narrative and non-fiction forms, installation, video performance, interactive environments and web-based work. Candidates should have a strong conceptual and historical grasp of contemporary issues in the intersecting worlds of independent video production, experimental filmmaking, and new media. The department is committed to alternative forms and practices that emphasize experimentation, innovation, and the hybridization of existing media and modes of presentation. Candidates should demonstrate the ability and desire to participate in curricular initiatives; should be able to work with undergraduate and graduate students in an interdisciplinary, fine arts context; and should have advanced proficiency in one or more areas of the media arts. Applicants must have an active professional creative practice. Teaching experience preferred. The position is full- time, tenure-track and begins in the fall of 2006. Rank and salary are commensurate with experience. Please send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, artist's statement, teaching philosophy, portfolio samples which may include CD-Rom, DVD, VHS, mini-DV, and/or website URLs, names and contact information for three references, and an SASE (if you wish to have the materials returned) by November 15, 2005 for priority consideration to: FVNM Search/LEA School of the Art Institute of Chicago Office of Deans and Division Chairs 37 South Wabash Avenue Chicago, IL 60603 For more information on the School and its programs, available faculty positions, and details regarding application, consult www.artic.edu/saic/public/jobs. For additional assistance, questions may be directed to Shanna Linn at slinn@artic.edu, 312.899-7472. ________________________________________________________________ ___________________ | | | | | CREDITS | | | |___________________| Nisar Keshvani: LEA Editor-in-Chief Natra Haniff: LEA Editor Michael Punt: LR Editor-in-Chief Andre Ho: Web Concept and Design Consultant Roger Malina: Leonardo Executive Editor Stephen Wilson: Chair, Leonardo/ISAST Web Committee Craig Harris: Founding Editor Editorial Advisory Board: Irina Aristarkhova, Roy Ascott, Craig Harris, Fatima Lasay, Michael Naimark, Julianne Pierce Gallery Advisory Board: Mark Amerika, Paul Brown, Choy Kok Kee, Steve Dietz, Kim Machan fAf-LEA Corresponding Editors: Lee Weng Choy, Ricardo Dal Farra, Elga Ferreira, Young Hae- Chang, Fatima Lasay, Jose-Carlos Mariategui, Marcus Neustetter, Elaine Ng, Marc Voge ________________________________________________________________ _________________ | LEA | | PUBLISHING | | INFORMATION | |_________________| Editorial Address: Leonardo Electronic Almanac PO Box 850 Robinson Road Singapore 901650 lea [@] mitpress [dot] mit [dot] edu ________________________________________________________________ Copyright (2005), Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology All Rights Reserved. Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by: The MIT Press Journals, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142 U.S.A. Re-posting of the content of this journal is prohibited without permission of Leonardo/ISAST, except for the posting of news and events listings which have been independently received. Leonardo/ISAST and the MIT Press give institutions permission to offer access to LEA within the organization through such resources as restricted local gopher and mosaic services. Open access to other individuals and organizations is not permitted. ________________________________________________________________ < Ordering Information > http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=4&tid=27& mode=p Leonardo Electronic Almanac is free to Leonardo/ISAST members and to subscribers to the journal Leonardo for the 2005 subscription year. The rate for Non-Leonardo individual subscribers is $35.00, and for Non-Leonardo institutional subscribers the rate is $77.00. 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Fax: (415) 391 1110 E-mail: isast [@] leonardo [dot] info More Info: http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e- journals/Leonardo/isast/placeads.html#LEAads ________________________________________________________________ ____________________ | | | ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS | |____________________| LEA acknowledges with thanks the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for their support to Leonardo/ISAST and its projects. ________________________________________________________________ < End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 13 (08) > ________________________________________________________________