roger

I hope things are well with you. Is there any way you can pass along this online project link your contacts

  Thank you.  John Holland

http://www.naturescienceart.wordpress.com/

I have recently launched a new online project, Curious, An Introduction to Big Ideas in Nature, Science and Art. This project is an effort to introduce leading-edge ideas in science and art. It is particularly aimed at those who want real answers to serious questions that they have inquired about since childhood, and are often not addressed at home or at school.

Much of the reason that these answers aren’t available in primary and secondary classrooms is that some of the most intriguing and even astounding information has only been available within the last 25 years.

Subjects which traditionally have been thought of as largely abstract and unsuited for analysis such as music, love, life, sex, and death suddenly have new and profound meaning in light of late 20th and 21st century discoveries in evolutionary biology, brain science, and genetics. In short, we are undergoing a major revolution in the sciences, and it is having a large impact on our understanding of who we are and how we see ourselves and others.

The contents of Curious were first posted in serial form, which ran from early September through the end of November, 2011. The project is now complete and can be viewed online indefinitely. I plan to update various Chapters as new information becomes available. 

http://www.naturescienceart.wordpress.com/

Looking for a Professor position in Arts-Humanities/Science-Engineering ?

9 Positions open at UT Dallas:

http://malina.diatrope.com/2011/10/31/9-positions-in-artscience-technology-at-ut-dallas/

We start reviewing the applications January 23- but the positions are open until filled

roger malina

http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/

The arts and culture activities can be found at:

http://web.me.com/annadumitriu/Alan_Turing_Year_Arts/Home.html

Alan Turing Year 2012 Arts and Culture Subcommittee
The Alan Turing Year 2012 Arts and Culture Subcommittee has been formed to develop and promote cultural activities inspired by the work of Alan Turing.

Roger Malina

A mailman list has now been set up for anyone interested in joining in the discussion and being
kept informed:

https://lists.viz.tamu.edu/listinfo/nsead

If you want to join go to the link.

In addition there is a document sharing site:

http://www.viz.tamu.edu/faculty/lurleen/main/NSEAD/

roger malina

NSEAD

Vision

We will become the leading advocate for collaboration among the sciences,
engineering, arts and design, fostering innovation and learning that impact
community sustainability and economic growth

Mission

We operate in entrepreneurial, sustainable ways to identify and promote broader
impacts for communities and individuals in new areas of practice, research and
critical discourse achieving creative excellence and intellectual merit.

Goals

Advocacy for research and creative work
The network facilitates experimentation with new methods, materials, and modes
of creative inquiry and understanding in order to spawn groundbreaking
discoveries and inventions.

Advocacy for learning and education
The network promotes life-long learning by supporting topics, pedagogies, and
evaluation methods that integrate the sciences, engineering, arts and design.

Advocacy for partnership
The network is a nexus for strategic partnerships among individuals and
organizations including government, industry, civic and academic institutions
fostering initiatives that bring together diverse disciplines and domains.

Advocacy for innovation and economic development
The network champions partnerships that value sustainability, community
development and social entrepreneurship, in order to spur economic growth.

I have drafted this text for the VIDA catalogue which celebrates the 25th anniversary
of the Artificial-Life Art movemement. COmment and suggestions welcome

Roger Malina

Artificial Life in Art and Science 25 years later: New Worlds and Virtual Humans

Introduction

VIDA this year is looking back at the 25 years since the first artificial life conferences. Fifty years ago the Macy Conferences led to a similar new emerging field of practice in Cybernetics (1). These two fields, artificial life and cybernetics, are of course ‘joined at the hip” in understanding how order develops in complex systems and more generally the understanding of intelligence, life and consciousness. These are big agendas in the sciences and in the arts and humanities; and each generation of scientists, scholars and artists deploys new tactics, tools and methodologies. So what developments over the past twenty five years have changed the discussion since the A-Life conferences? In this article I want to expand on two areas of current scientific excitement which I think will be among developments that will inform future A-Life and A-Life Art: the discovery of exo-planets and the new emerging science of complex networks.

Post Mechanical Reproduction

In the 1989 Supplementary Issue of Leonardo for SIGGRAPH (2) I reviewed the articles we had published since 1967 on work by artists using computers. Leonardo co-editor David Carrier had recently made the inflammatory statement in an editorial: “ … it is genuinely unclear to me whether any art made using computers is truly significant” (3). Today e-culture has developed to such an extent that we now have entire computer based industries in arts and entertainment, yet within the traditional fine arts institutions this question is still heard. In the article I developed a number of ideas, but focused on the assertion that the interesting computer art was the kind of new art forms that could not have been made without a computer. Though computers have been used in many forms of tradition art making, much of it could have been made without the use of computers, perhaps more slowly or more laboriously. Much of the special effects, graphics and animation arts are in this category. But new forms of art that could not have been made without computers are now established.

In the Leonardo article, I pointed to the work of Harold Cohen and Roman Verostko using AI algorithms as one area that seemed particularly promising, in particular because it enabled a form of creative collaboration between the artists and the software system. I also discussed the work in shape grammars by Stiny and Gips, Joan and Russell Kirsch, Ray Lauzzana and Lynn Pocock-Williams as fundamental in developing rule based systems for creation of art. Rule based generation of art, coupled to the science of complex systems in general, has become common. And as inter-active systems have become more sophisticated the ‘collaboration’ between humans and software systems has become routine and the work of the pioneers preceded the field of A-Life.

In 1989 the Santa Fe A-Life workshop proceedings began to appear (4). For the 1990 Leonardo Supplementary Issue for SIGGRAPH (5), my article was titled “ The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Mechanical Reproduction” I used the Santa-Fe text by Langton to argue that just as A-Life could locate life-as-we-know-it within life-as-it-could-be, an art agenda within the computer arts could now be delineated as locating art-as-we-know-it within art-as-it-could-be. One of the goals was creating an artistic or creative ‘other’ with the key issue of ‘post-mechanical’ or ‘generative’ reproduction as the new agenda. The reference to Walter Benjamin’s “post mechanical” term referred to an earlier time when new communication and media technologies were emerging; in general of course we see new art forms evolving rather than replacing prior ones. Roman Verostko had been arguing that software could be viewed as genotype (6). Software systems with learning, memory, extrapolation have proliferated and such art is often ‘post mechanical’ in the sense that it implements strategies that are also implemented by living systems. It is fair to say that this pioneering work has been a fruitful ground for many developments in A-Life Art. And in the new special effects industry we see the dream of ‘virtual’ actors beginning to be implemented; the more general term of “Virtual Humans “ has developed to refer both to the way on line behaviours affect and modify the behavior of humans in physical space, as well as autonomous on line avatars and virtual creatures. As the VIDA artists have amply demonstrated this agenda is now being implemented and the concept of Virtual Humans is now culturally embedded; the cultural dream of human-made ‘poeisis’ is taking form.

Life-As-It-Could-Be: New Worlds

In 1987 at the time of the A-Life conferences the only planets known to us were the planets around our solar system. In 1995 scientists Mayor with Queloz made the first discovery of planets around other stars (7). The discovery of 51 Pegasus was made at the Observatoire de Haute Provence, part of the Observatory where I work, and this discovery electrified the scientific community. For all of human culture, we had been limited to the handful of planets around our on sun; and indeed in human mythology these celestial messengers assumed ‘extra- human’ importance. Thanks to two space missions, the CNES COROT and NASA Kepler satellites, and a number of ground based telescopes such as the HARPS and SOPHIE projects, new exo-planets around other stars are being discovered at a rapid rate; at the time of writing over 1000 planets have now been discovered. It is now speculated that there are more planets in the universe than stars, and that many planets are ejected into interstellar space during the formation of planetary systems. This is a ‘galilean’ revolution’. The conditions for the appearance of life forms appear to be plentiful.

Many of these exo-planets have solid surfaces and are in the so-called ‘habitable’ zone around their star with the likelihood that liquid water exists on their surface. The search for evidence of life on these planets is now under way. It is fair to say that the ‘search for life as it could be’ is limited mostly by our imagination of what forms life might take and how to detect its presence at a distance. A-Life artists should contribute to this quest; the work of artists in robotics, bio-mimetic systems, self repairing and propagating art works are forms of ‘experimental’ exo-biology.

Even though there have been large advances in the sciences of artificial life, our understanding of ‘enabling’ structures and processes remains very limited. What makes the originating of self-sustaining life possible is still un-answered, Stuart Kauffman in his book “Re-Inventing the Sacred” (8) reviews the large advances in the sciences of complexity but fingers the ‘mystery’ of how emergence leads to self-consciousness as beyond the limits of current science. Recently the US research agency DARPA issued a call for proposals (9) to explore ‘physical intelligence’, or forms of intelligent systems not based on biological analogs. Nano-scientist Jim Gimzewski , one of the grant awardees, has discussed the need to understand ‘inter-facial’ intelligence (10), or how is it that when you keep adding atoms together at some point the physical system starts acquiring functionality that are building blocks of self-propagation and intelligence ( memory, anticipation, empathy etc). Gimzewski is a very prominent proponent of art-science collaboration as one way to overcome the roadblocks to scientific inquiry (10). A-Life Art is one strategy. In my 1990 Leonardo article (5) I referred to the ideas of Australian artist Sally Prior and her call for the ‘technologies of artificial compassion”. We are still very far from responding to this challenge and this is surely an artists agenda.

The new Science of Complex Networks

As stated above there is a basic open question; how is it that when you keep adding atoms together the system starts acquiring functionality that becomes part of intelligence? The science of complexity has contributed fundamental ideas to the general phenomenon of emergence but in recent years new discoveries in network mathematics has introduced new sources of motivation and inspiration. This new science of complex networks is beginning to provide some tools (11) that are of a trans-disciplinary nature since they apply to network topologies in widely differing networked structure from the internet, to genetic networks, to transportation systems. The topological structure of a network encodes inherently the enhancement and suppression of certain kinds of behaviors; many networks follow growth rules such as power law distributions; network growth and instabilities can be modeled predictively. Bruno Giorgini in his work on the Physics of the City, models the complex networks of human pedestrians and in the models developed a parameter for ‘free will’ is postulated (12). Is free will a result of network structures ? At the instigation of complex network scientist Laszlo Barabasi, Leonardo has initiated a series of conferences on Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks (13). Led by Maximillian Schich and Isabelle Meirelles, the Leonardo Day conferences confront the work of scientists, humanities scholars and artists to illuminate how the structure and organization of complex networks allow for trans-disciplinary understanding to be developed. Not only can mathematical tools be shared, but the research questions emerging in the arts and humanities can drive scientific inquiry and the direction of complex network research. And artists are among the researchers developing the applications of the new mathematical insights. In a sense it is a resurgence of some of the ideas of bio-morphism, but renewed by the understanding of A-Life through the sciences of complex systems and the science of complex networks.

Art-Science Collaboration

The Artificial Life, and Complexity, research communities at their beginnings in general were exceptional in their open-ness to the involvement of artists in their conferences and discussions. The success of VIDA has in many ways emerged from this open-ness to culturally driven scientific research agendas. Since 1987 the art-science landscape has been transformed both in terms of creative practice and institutional platforms. A-Life Art is an ‘exemplar’ in the sense that the work of artists has influenced the work of scientists as well as the more usual influence of science and technology on the work of artists. As e-culture has developed, the cultural and entertainment industries have become significant drivers of research and development in science and technology not only in the computer sciences, but also in robotics, mathematics and we are beginning to see this in the life sciences as the bio-arts expand and appropriate biotechnologies in the same way that artists appropriated and re-directed areas of computer development.

In the united states, a recent discussion within workshops organized by the US National Science Foundation and the US National Endowment for the Arts have begun to articulate a new agenda of converting STEM ( Science,….) to STEAM (14) ( or coupling the arts and humanities within STEM education). This recognizes the fact that the cultural imagination is often a productive entry point for young people, and driver motivation of careers in science and technology.

A major challenge remains the institutional contexts that make it possible for artists and scientists to collaborate on joint research agendas. The work recognized by VIDA has been produced in a bewildering variety of institutional settings from artist’s studios, to cultural to scientific to industrial settings. The ‘make’ and hacker communities have provided new forms of enabling social structures. Part of the challenge is the heterogeneity of practices that need to be accommodated. Creative practices within the arts (whether visual, sound, literary, performance etc) vary with deployment differing individual and collaborative approaches. Within the science areas covered by artificial life, there are very different scientific cultures in genomics, ecology, cognitive sciences, biology. Approaches of experimental scientists often differ from those of observational sciences.

As a result of this heterogeneity, a rich ecology of institutional platforms is developing within and outside of academia. Organisations such as Symbiotica, Sci-Art in Zurich, IMERA in Marseille, Science Gallery Dublin use anchoring within institutions of higher education. Non profit sector organizations such as ANAT, Arts Catalyst, Leonardo, Zero-One, Le Laboratoire broker art-science collaboration anchored in the cultural sector. Cultural institutions such as ZKM, Ars Electronica, FACT, Future Everything , Art Science Museum in Singapore have developed mixed programming and research structures. And competitions and prizes such as Ars Electronica, VIDA continue to play an important role in advocating and promoting work that involves actual collaboration between artists and scientists. The creation of institutional frameworks that enable self generating sustainable creation of art that drives science and engineering agendas is perhaps the new frontier of A-Life Art.

References:

1) Macy conferences; American Society for Cybernetics: http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacySummary.htm
2) Roger F Malina, Computer Art in the Context of the Journal Leonardo, 1989 Leonardo SIGGRAPH Supplemental Issue, p 67.
3) Editorial: The Arts and Science and Technology: Problems and Prospects, David Carrier, Leonardo , Vol. 21, No. 4 (1988), pp. 341-342
4) Chris Langton, Artificial Life II , Proceedings of the workshop on artificial life held February, 1990 in Santa Fe, New MexicoAddison-Wesley, 1992
5) Roger F Malina, Digital Image-Digital Cinema: The Work of Art in the Age of Post Mechanical Reproduction, 1990 Leonardo SIGGRAPH Supplemental Issue, p 33.
6) Epigenetic Painting: Software as Genotype, Roman Verostko, Leonardo , Vol. 23, No. 1 (1990), pp. 17-23
7) Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (1995). “A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star”. Nature 378 (6555): 355–359.
S. Kauffman, 2008, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. [Basic Books]
9) DARPA Physical Intelligence Program: http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/DSO/Programs/Physical_Intelligence.aspx
10) James Gimzewski, : What Art can do for Science: Learning to Learn ,Consciousness Reframed 11, Trondheim, 2011, http://www.scribd.com/doc/56513746/226-2010-TEKS
11) See in particular the work of Laszlo Barabasi: http://www.barabasi.com/
12) Bruno Giorgini: http://malina.diatrope.com/2011/09/25/free-will-theory-of-the-mind-and-the-physics-of-the-city/
13) http://artshumanities.netsci2012.net/
14) http://stemtosteam.org/

2. Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution (Leonardo Books) http://www.amazon.com/Green-Light-Evolution-Leonardo-ebook/dp/B004FTP71Y/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325284446&sr=1-2 by George Gessert (Apr 30,

3. The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science (Leonardo Books) http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Sense-Synesthesia-Leonardo-ebook/dp/B002RDEV8K/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325284446&sr=1-3 by Cretien van Campen (Oct 31, 2007) – Kindle eBook

4.The Language of New Media (Leonardo Book Series) http://www.amazon.com/Language-Media-Leonardo-Book-ebook/dp/B0058J530K/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325284446&sr=1-4 by Lev Manovich (Jun 28, 2011) – Kindle eBook

5.VOICE (Leonardo Book Series) http://www.amazon.com/VOICE-Leonardo-Book-Series-ebook/dp/B00653KTLQ/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325284446&sr=1-5 by Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson, Theo van Leeuwen and Theo van van Leeuwen (Nov 9, 2011) – Kindle eBook

6. CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy (Leonardo Books) http://www.amazon.com/CODE-Collaborative-Ownership-Leonardo-ebook/dp/B001E6GPDU/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325284446&sr=1-6 by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (May 1, 2005) – Kindle eBook

http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v64/i8/p42_s1?isAuthorized=no

Tom D. Crouch, NASA Art: 50 years of Exploration, Physics Today. August 2011, p 42

Has any one on this list seen the exhibition NASA Art: 50 years of Exploration ?. It was at
the Washington DC National Air and Space Museum and is travelling to Las Cruces,
New Mexico, Wausau, Wisconsin and Davenport, Iowa. In this brief article in Physics Today,
Tom Crouch provides a brief background the the creation of the NASA art program
Launched in May 1963. The program was started at the request of NASA Administrator
James Webb to “see what NASA could do in the field of the fine arts to commemorate
past historic such as Shepard’s and Glenn’s flights, as well as future historic events that
We know will come to pass”.

Eight artists were dispatched to cover the flight of Gordon Cooper, the last Mercury
Astronaut. Several thousand works of art have been produced and collected by NASA.
The exhibition shows a selection of 73 of there works. Artists whose work is illustrated in the article include Norman Rockwell, Alexander Calder, Robert T McCall, Annie Leibovitz, Chakaia Booker.

It is hard to tell from the illustrated selection of paintings, but the art works seem to be
of the “commemorative’ type as commissioned, many of the paintings are figurative, some ‘illustrative”. Though NASA Art commissioned major artists such as Rauschenberg and Calder,
the approach to commission art strikes one as ‘conventional’. Where NASA led with
innovative engineering and scientific risk taking, the approach to art making seems in
general ‘safe”. Perhaps this is to be expected for art commissioned by a government
agency to ‘commemorate historic events”. Yet JAXA with it’s space art program has been
adventurous with ‘experimental art’ included in the programming. And as readers of this
list know there is exciting art making connected to space going on, through various artists
residencies enabled by cultural organizations.

If anyone has seen the exhibition it would be great to have your comments.

We are pleased to announce the new PhD at the University of Texas, Dallas which seeks to enable research and education that couples the Arts and Humanities with the Sciences and Engineering. We are seeking first rate candidates from diverse backgrounds (Academia, Private Industry, Non Governmental Organizations, Make and Hacker collectives) within the ATEC Arts and Technology PhD Program.

More info at:

http://www.utdallas.edu/admissions/graduate/degrees/detail.php?d=1641.

Roger Malina has been named Distinguished Chair of Arts and Technology and
Professor of Physics in the School Natural Sciences and Mathematics and will be supervising student research projects. Students with backgrounds in Science, Engineering or Arts and Humanities may enroll in the PhD.

In addition to the art-science research Projects, a Leonardo Initiatives Office has been established in partnership with Leonardo/ The International Society for the Arts and Society. Projects will include a program on Experimental Publishing and Curating in partnership with the EMAC Emerging Media and Communications program at UT Dallas.

More information on the PhD:
http://www.utdallas.edu/admissions/graduate/degrees/detail.php?d=1641

More information on ATEC and EMAC:
http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/atec/
http://emac.utdallas.edu/

More Information on Leonardo Organisations:
www.leonardo.info
www.olats.org

If you might be interested in enrolling in the PhD program feel free to contact
Roger Malina: rmalina(at)alum.mit.edu

I take the liberty of bringing to your attention the Leonardo fundraising appeal>
Though most of our activities are volunteer powered, it takes a small dedicated
staff behind the scenes to create the conditions for serendity to happen !!

We arent on kickstarter yet- but see below for easy way to help

http://www.leonardo.info/isast/donations.html

Roger Malina

From Art- Science Collaboration Ideas to Cultural Innovation and Invention ?

For over 40 years, Leonardo has tirelessly supported the ideas and innovation of inventors, pioneers and trailblazers working at the intersection of art, science and technology. Their work and findings have been highlighted at conferences, symposia and events around the world, as well as through Leonardo’s ground-breaking journals, books, web sites and social media programs. Your donation to Leonardo/ISAST provides critical support for Leonardo programs, such as the Leonardo Educators and Students Program and the popular monthly LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) series, while enabling us to identify and develop the next generation of innovative programs for the community.

http://www.leonardo.info/isast/donations.html

Help us move the vision of Leonardo forward through a generous donation today!

Leonardo/ISAST is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that relies on the support of its community. Donations are fully tax-deductible as provided by law.

We accept donations via PayPal and checks (made out to Leonardo/ISAST, 211 Sutter Street, Suite 501, San Francisco, CA 94108, U.S.A.). Visit

http://www.leonardo.info/isast/donations.html

for links and more information.

We are pleased to invite you to Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks —
3rd Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci 2012 taking place at Northwestern University near
Chicago, IL on the shores of Lake Michigan, on Tuesday, June 19, 2012.

CALL FOR PAPERS: from both scientists and artists and humanities scholars

http://artshumanities.netsci2012.net/

Abstract:
We are pleased to announce the third Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2012 on Arts,
Humanities, and Complex Networks. The aim of the symposium is to foster cross-disciplinary
research on complex systems within or with the help of arts and humanities.
The symposium will highlight arts and humanities as an interesting source of data, where
the combined experience of arts, humanities research, and natural science makes a huge
difference in overcoming the limitations of artificially segregated communities of practice.
Furthermore, the symposium will focus on striking examples, where artists and humanities
researchers make an impact within the natural sciences. By bringing together network
scientists and specialists from the arts and humanities we strive for a better understanding
of networks and their visualizations in general.

The overall mission is to bring together pioneer work, leveraging previously unused potential
by developing the right questions, methods, and tools, as well as dealing with problems of
information accuracy and incompleteness. Running parallel to the NetSci2012 conference,
the symposium will also provide a unique opportunity to mingle with leading researchers and
practitioners of complex network science, potentially sparking fruitful collaborations.
In addition to keynotes and interdisciplinary discussion, we are looking for a number of
contributed talks. Selected papers will be published in print in a Special Section of Leonardo
Journal (MIT Press), as well as online in Leonardo Transactions.

For previous editions papers and video presentations please visit the following URLs:
2010 URL: http://artshumanities.netsci2010.net
2011 URL: http://artshumanities.netsci2011.net

Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Burak Arikan, Artist based in New York and Istanbul: http://burak-arikan.com/
Pedro Cano, Chief Technology Officer, bmat.com: http://bmat.com/
Miriah Meyer, Assistant Professor ,University of Utah: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~miriah/

Organizing committee:
Maximilian Schich, DFG Visiting Research Scientist, CCNR, Northeastern University, USA
Roger Malina, Executive Editor at Leonardo Publications, France/USA
Isabel Meirelles, Associate Professor, Dept. of Art + Design, Northeastern University, USA
Cristián Huepe, Visiting Scholar, Applied Math Department, Northwestern University. USA

Possible subjects include:
* Contemporary art and network science;
* Cultural analytics, culturomics, and high throghput approaches
* Cultural exchange and trade networks (from the Neolithic to modern supply chains);
* Emergence and evolution of canon in art, music, literature and film;
* Evolution of communities of practice in art and science;
* History and theory of network visualization;

http://artshumanities.netsci2012.net/