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Encounter (Resonances) by Hayley Hung and Christian Jacquemin

25 July 2010, 10:35 am

ABSTRACT
This work is about the remediation of one of Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals through the composition of several online sources and additional digital rendering. Based on reproductions of Rothko’s “Red on Maroon” found on the Internet, and using computer graphics compositing associated with moir´e and specular lighting effects, “Encounter (Resonances)” offers a new approach to the presentation of a piece of work that allows a viewer to perceive some of its very subtle nuances. The work echoes Rothko’s mixed media layered painting technique by using reproductions of various color palettes and resolutions as metaphors for the layers of paint in his original works. While each of these copies may instantly remind us of the original work, the graphical rendering of “Encounter (Resonances)” combines them at three levels of representation (global shape, micro and macro structure), in an effort to encourage a level of prolonged engagement and gradual discovery in the artwork.

Full paper

Posted with permission of the authors.

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Kepes and Malina : Some personal observations on Theory and Praxis (First Draft)

24 May 2010, 11:39 pm

by Roger F Malina

When Nina Czegledy and Rona Kopeczky proposed to me their exhibition on Gyorgy Kepes and my father Frank Malina, I was immediately interested. It seemed a natural coupling of two men of the same era, eastern European backgrounds, both were survivors of the same world war and with over-lapping passions. Both were deeply immersed in both artistic and scientific cultures, living examples of individuals who bridged  the two cultures that C.P. Snow had been discussing since the 1950s (1).

I first met Gyorgy Kepes in 1968 when I arrived as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Kepes had recently founded the Centre for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, dedicated to promoting the work of artists in scientific and technological culture, within one of the most prestigious science and engineering universities in the world. My father had just founded the Leonardo Journal at the scientific publisher Pergamon Press, a journal (2) dedicated to promoting the work of artists in the deeper context of a techno-scientific world. Both had been making art that appropriated scientific landscapes as integral parts of the natural world that was the raw material of art making.

Continue reading ‘Kepes and Malina : Some personal observations on Theory and Praxis (First Draft)’ »

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OPEN OBSERVATORY CHALLENGE ROGER MALINA AND THE NEW LEONARDOS

28 April 2010, 6:50 pm

Interview with Roger Malina: Txt: Teresa De Feo / Eng: Mimi Peña
Full interview is posted at http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1764

Teresa De Feo: Mister Malina, you believe in the relationship between science and humanity and particularly in the relationship between science, art and technology and seeing as, according your ideas, seem to be the most fruitful solutions in promoting necessary change. The key word you use, the right direction to follow, seem to be, in this case: the practice of a new science that you call “intimate science ”, the doubt as a driving force behind the cultural development, the value of curiosity as the foundation of a new ethic. It’s clear that many of these words and concepts belong to artistic vocabulary and practices, and this is not by a chance. You underline, like Roy Ascott says, that the correct sentence today is: “ask not what the sciences can do for the arts, ask what arts, and in particular, technology-based arts, do for science?

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Visual Culture and Evolution Online Symposium

31 March 2010, 2:16 pm

WASHINGTON – The Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences
will co-host the “Visual Culture and Evolution Online Symposium” with the
Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (University of Maryland,
Baltimore County) and Johns Hopkins University’s Master of Arts in Museum
Studies Program.  The online symposium will take place on the Internet
from April 5 through April 14.

Join a group of more than 30 international experts – including artists,
scientists, historians, ethicists, curators, sociologists, and writers -
as they discuss the intersections between the visual arts and evolution.
This past year, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth
and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, “On the Origin
of Species,” a number of conferences were held around the world focusing
on the impact of the concept of evolution.  This symposium will be a
platform to discuss both the ideas generated from those activities and the
present impact of evolutionary thought on visual culture.

The symposium, which will be conducted through software designed for
online courses, will be publicly accessible at http://www.vcande.org.  The
online format overcomes geographic and financial barriers, enabling
leading figures in these fields from around the world to engage in the
discussion without a major disruption to their research and practices.

Kevin Finneran, editor in chief of Issues in Science and Technology, will
moderate the discussion. Issues is the quarterly policy journal published
by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
Institute of Medicine, and University of Texas at Dallas.

Visit the symposium:

http://www.vcande.org

For a complete list of symposium panelists, visit

http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Experience_Future_Events_Vcande_Participants

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The Impact of Computers on the Arts, Sciences and Humanities

23 March 2010, 5:58 pm

Abstract : Intimate Science and the End of Theory in Astronomy

Modern astronomy has been transformed by the computer sciences in a number of ways. Large computerized instruments now collect almost all our information about the universe. This data is deposited into large databases called Virtual Observatories. This data, unlike photographic plates in general, is made publically available on line so that researchers, whether professionals or amateurs, can access it. This has led to a re birth of amateur astronomy with significant contributions both by experts and interested publics. An example of this is the Berkeley Open Infrastructure Consortium (BOIC) which allows the public to be involved in research ranging for malaria and climate modeling to analyzing data from planets.

A second impact has been the growth of computer simulations as a major way of developing scientific hypotheses, particularly in complex systems or systems with large numbers of particles. This has been particularly successful in cosmology and modeling the evolution of structure in the universe where we now have a self consistent simulation that models the universe from soon after the big bang to the present. Scientific simulations have acquired an independent status as verifiable hypotheses in astronomy. Some have called this development the End of Theory in the sense that in cosmology there is no compact description of the universe with predictive power (as is the case for instance in quantum mechanics or electricity and magnetism). Instead the hypothesis consists of a computer model, with a large number of built in physics and system descriptions, together with rules for calculation. Predictions of the simulation are then compared with data from large data bases, often in virtual observatories.

The third impact has been the development of scientific visualization techniques for investigating and searching for correlations and patterns in large datasets. Analytic techniques coupled with visualization techniques are credited in leading to new discoveries (an example is the work of artist Donna Cox with the astronomer Colin Norman); there are a number of examples of visualization driven discovery in mathematics, and a field called Visual Mathematics, has evolved. The classical field of Image Science has been re invigorated with new possible connections to the arts.The result of these three development: large open data bases, simulation techniques, and scientific visualization have led to changes in both the content and methodology of modern astronomy.

Certain problems could not be attached without modern computer science, hence the direction of research is modified, and the scientific method itself is changing with scientific simulations acquiring epistemological status.

Powerpoint

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Twine: Art-Science and Science-Art Curricula

19 March 2010, 5:49 pm

Twine: Art-Science and Science-Art Curricula

Leonardo Education Forum co chair Victoria Vesna and Leonardo Executive Editor Roger Malina are interested in examples of courses and curricula that are in the art-science field- such as courses on art and biology, art and mathematics, art and chemistry etc.

We are not collecting art and new media curricula, but the broad range of arts ( all forms from performing , sound, visual etc) connecting to all sciences, hard and social sciences. We are including art and new technologies if they are not new media ( eg nano tech)

People who have taught an art-science or science art class, at university or secondary school level, in formal or informal settings are invited to contact roger malina at rmalina—at—-alum.mit.edu

We realise its hard to differentiate art-science from art-technology and that the boundaries blur ( eg nano science is hard to separate from nano technology), but a art and robotics class isn’t really what we are trying to compile here !! There are other resources that are compiling new media programs ( eg see pier luigi capucci’s resource http://edulist.noemalab.org/ as part of the YASMIN network, also Paut Thomas’ resource at
http://www.nomad.net.au/education

Please feel free also to add references/literature relevant to developing curriula in art-science or articles you have written about your pedagogy.

We thought we might try and organise a workshop or panels for educators who are developing curricula in the art science area.

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Pre-2003 Publications in JSTOR

19 March 2010, 3:17 pm

Pre-2003 citations of Roger Malina Publications in Leonardo are below the break. This list is from JSTOR and includes links to the stable JSTOR addresses.
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Editorial: Intimate Science and Hard Humanities (Leonardo, February 2009)

16 March 2010, 9:11 pm

Intimate Science and Hard Humanities
Leonardo Journal Editorial by Roger Malina to appear 2009

Re-reading Darwin’s Origin of Species on its 150th anniversary, one is struck by the lucidity and humility of the argumentation and the transformative power of its conclusions. Yet the theory of evolution is still not widely understood or accepted. Arrhenius first wrote about the impact of increasing CO2 on global climate in 1896, and yet among governments the issue was still argued until recently. The projects of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution are incomplete. Scientific knowledge is not culturally appropriated. In many ways science has become a cargo cult. Many people use the cell phone for daily survival but could not explain the difference between a photon and an electron.

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LIMITS OF COGNITION: ARTISTS IN THE DARK UNIVERSE

16 March 2010, 8:56 pm

LIMITS OF COGNITION – MUTAMORPHOSIS 2008 text

ABSTRACT
Discoveries in cosmology reveal that 97% of the energy and matter content of the universe is in a form that is of an unknown nature, called dark matter and dark energy. For all of human history, our species has been studying only the same kind of matter that it is made of (baryonic matter), and this matter and energy is a minor constituent of the world. The human senses are very badly designed to investigate the total content of the world.

Science and technology have led to the development of a large range of different kinds of instruments to allow us to perceive parts of the world below the thresholds of our unaided senses. Other kinds of instruments allow us to access parts of the world that emit energy of a kind that our senses cannot even detect in principle. There seems to be an innate human urge to continue exploring current limits of our perceptual systems, building new cognitive territories. Such a urge would presumably have survival advantages for the human species resulting in a selective advantage during human pre-history. Now they provide the ground for development of new human cultures.

The role of artists is essential in helping us develop the kinds of intuitions, new metaphors, explanatory concepts, and linguistic elements that are needed as we explore the new extreme territories, from micro to macro scale. As scientists continue to extend the limits of perception and cognition, artists have an important role in shaping the science of the future and new possibilities for art-science collaboration exist..

New generations of artists are sufficiently trained in science to begin to contribute actively to the exploration of these extreme environments. Artists in residence, such as the one co sponsored by the Leonardo organization at the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, are helping to provide platforms for new art-science collaborations. Through such collaborations we can imagine that the experience of extreme environments will become culturally appropriated with the development of new languages, analogical and metaphorical frameworks and indeed new intuitions that will frame our imagination and artistic and scientific futures.

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Intimate Science and Hard Humanities: A Call for Open Observatories

16 March 2010, 8:48 pm

Re-reading the Origin of the Species by Darwin, on its 150th anniversary, one is struck by the lucidity and humility of the argumentation as well as the transformative power of its conclusions. Yet the scientific theory of evolution is still not widely understood or accepted by most people. Arrhenius first wrote about the impact of increasing CO2 on global climate in 1896, and yet at the highest level of government the issue is still argued until recently. Somehow the ambitious enlightenment projects of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution are incomplete. Scientific knowledge is not culturally appropriated. In many ways science has become a “cargo cult’. Many people use the cell phone for daily survival, but could not explain the difference between a photon and an electron. Governments want high technology employment growth, but don’t see why you need theoretical or fundamental scientists. Continue reading ‘Intimate Science and Hard Humanities: A Call for Open Observatories’ »

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