this new art project is commission by the french Nuclear Waste Commission is intended
to create ways of marking the places where radioactive waste is stored for thousands
of year- very much in keeping with the goals of the Long Now Foundation.

Are there other artists projects around the mediterranean tied to nuclear waste sites ?

roger

Le nouveau projet de Veit Stratmann Une Colline, résulte d’une étude artistique commandée par l’ANDRA (Agence nationale pour la gestion des déchets radioactifs) à l’artiste. Elle consiste à imaginer un dispositif de mémoire des centres de stockage des déchets radioactifs, en vue de transmettre aux générations futures toutes les informations sur l’existence et le contenu des sites construits pour garder ces déchets.

http://www.synesthesie.com/dossier.php?idSection=1724&idFolder=1726&idSub=0

roger

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

SymBIOtic ART & Science:
An Investigation at the Intersection of Life Sciences and the Arts

A conference jointly sponsored by
the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts
February 28-March 1, 2011
at the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Recommendations

Participant list

Agenda

Meeting Written Record

Meeting Graphical Record

Information on Meeting web site

Appendices

Narrative of the meeting (Turchi)

Keynote slides (Root-Bernstein)

Executive Summary

On February 28 – March 1, 2011, twenty-four participants, primarily life scientists and visual artists, choreographers, and literary scholars, met at the National Science Foundation’s headquarters in Arlington, VA, to discuss the intersections among their disciplines, how there work informs each other’s, and the nature of collaboration between artists and scientists. Participants were selected for this small, first-time meeting exploring collaborative work because each scientist had worked with or been deeply influenced by an artist and each artist had a working relationship with a scientist; in several cases, the person was both a practicing artist and a scientist. The meeting also was experimental in format, using both a graphic artist as a facilitator, and a creative writer to react and report on the progress of the meeting. Staff of the two agencies also sat in as observers, with National Endowment for the Arts’ staff participating at times in the discussion.

The meeting was a first-time collaboration itself on this particular topic between the federal agencies and between two institutions of higher education – one large, public university, the University of Montana, and a small, private liberal arts college, Marlboro College in Vermont. Not surprisingly for this type of exploration, the participants raised more questions than they answered. Are the arts using science merely for validation and the sciences using the arts mostly for their powers of expression? What is it like to listen to another discipline? What are the benefits of collaboration? Do we gain new perceptions or new knowledge? How do we create a receptive climate for collaboration and convince “hierarchies” that this is valuable work, necessary to the future of society? How do you evaluate collaborative work? How are the discipline’s research methods and creative discoveries alike or different? Is experiential or embodied learning understood as legitimate? How do we engender creativity; what are generative environments for interdisciplinary work? What would a truly integrated study using the arts and the life sciences look like?

As participants described their work to each other, they discovered the range of interactions that are possible. Work was inspired or informed by other disciplines, or became actual joint research and collaboration. A closer relationship occurs when scientists and artists each contribute their knowledge and influence each other to the degree that they each change their ideas, presentations, and even their teaching methods. The expressive power of the arts can be used to communicate scientific findings and to propel learning. Science, especially neuroscience, is offering insights into how the arts affect cognition. The arts, uniquely dance, can “embody” the physical experience of a scientific experiment, as exemplified by Liz Lerman’s talk and dancers’ performance of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, at the meeting.

Collaboration is driven by the need to discover; it is a symbiotic relationship, characterized by receptivity, trust, and a fascination with each other’s worlds. As one participant observed, if you ask a big enough question, you need more than discipline for the answer. The group discussed the world’s need for creative thinking. We live in the “adjacent possible” – not knowing what will or even can happen. We need more than reason to live our lives, and “art let’s us know without knowing.” How do we enable humanity to be creative so that solutions are found to unpredictable or intractable problems? “We need alternative visions for they way things can be.”

The creative process itself was examined by participants from several areas. Whether described as self-directed, unstructured learning or play; trial and error, conditions for accidents; observation and feedback, the process was seen as the same for the artist and the scientist. Artists can assist scientists to break out of conceptual blocks to be more creative; artists, in turn, are inspired to discover by the astonishing content of the sciences exploring life. It was stated that scientists use creative methods like artists more than they rely on the “scientific method.” Science can articulate “cognitive architecture,” and the arts can “complicate our imaginations” by simulating lived interactions. Elucidating the common practices between the arts and the sciences can change the way science is taught.

Generative environments were seen as long-term, place-based learning environments. Small liberal arts colleges were noted to be especially conducive to and rewarding of interdisciplinary work. Some participants at larger institutions said they did their interdisciplinary work in spite of where they worked. It was also observed that knowledge also is generated now through global networks. There was no agreement on whether this type of collaborative work needed a special place to occur.

Collaboration is difficult, the participants agreed, yet it is motivated by flexibility and knowledge that extends beyond one’s own discipline, “the power of contagious enthusiasm,” and the need for answers to human problems.

The participants recommended most generally:
 Build a list of collaborative visual art-science, dance-science and literature-science projects to collect a larger database of examples
 Open the meeting web site to the public to see the examples and add to the discussion
 Create a joint NSF-NEA funding program for multi-year projects
 Approach private foundations as well
 Consider tapping NSF’s Research Coordination Network grants to support a network
 Develop these ideas; reconvene a small group to deepen this discussion and its findings

Christopher Comer Ellen McCulloch-Lovell
Principle Investigator Project Director
For the National Science Foundation for the National Endowment for the Arts
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences President
University of Montana Marlboro College
Missoula, Montana 59812 Marlboro, Vermont 05344
Chris.Comer@mso.umt.edu emlovell@marlboro.edu
406/243-2632 802/258-9244/5
SymBIOtic ART & Science:
An Investigation into the Intersection
Of Life Sciences and the Arts
February 28-March 1, 2011

List of Participants

Janine Benyus (V)
Natural Sciences Writer
Lecturer/University of Montana
Founder
Biomimicry Institute
Helena, MT

Claudine Brown (G)
Assistant Secretary for Education & Access
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC

Steve Calanog (V)
Federal On-Scene Coordinator
Emergency Response Program
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, DC

Mel Chin (V)
Visual Artist
New York, NY

Bevil Conway (V)
Artist & Neurobiologist
Professor of Neuroscience
Wellesley College
Cambridge, MA

Felice Frankel (V)
Photographer & Research Scientist
Center for Materials Science & Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA

Melanie Gifford (V)
Art Conservator
Res. Conservator – Painting Technology
Scientific Research Department
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC

Laura Grabel (D)
Professor of Science in Society
Wesleyan University
Middletown, CT

Amy Chase Gulden (V)
Visual Artist
Regional Director
Visual Understanding in Education
New York, NY

Kathy High (V)
Visual/Media Artist, Curator, Educator
Associate Professor of Video & New Media
Department of Arts
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Troy, NY

Patrick Hogan (L)
Literary Scholar
Professor of English
Program in Comp. Lit. & Cultural Studies
Program in Cognitive Science
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT

Kristin Horrigan (D)
Dance Faculty
Marlboro College
Marlboro, VT

Stuart Kauffman (D)
Biologist
Macmillian Scholar-in-Residence
College of Medicine
College of Engineering & Math. Sciences
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT

Liz Lerman (D)
Choreog., Performer, Writer, Educator
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange
Tacoma Park, MD

Roger Malina (G)
Astrophysicist & Editor
Leonardo: Intl. Soc. Arts, Sci., & Technol.
San Francisco, CA

Nalini Nadkarni (G)
Biologist, Ecologist
Professor of Environmental Studies
Evergreen State College
President, International Canopy Network
Olympia, WA

Muriel Poston (G)
Botanist, Educator
Dean of Faculty
Robert Root-Bernstein (G)
Artist, Physiologist
Professor of Physiology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI

Susan Sgorbati (D)
Choreographer & Mediator
Dance Faculty
Bennington College
Bennington, VT

Frederic Swanson (L)
Writer
Professor
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR

Ashley Taggart (L)
Writer, Playwright, Educator
Director, IES Abroad Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

Peter Turchi (L)
Writer
Professor of English
Arizona State University
Phoenix, AZ

Lisa Zunshine (L)*
Writer, Literary Scholar
Professor of English
University of Kentucky

Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, NY
Lexington, KY

*Dr. Zunshine contributed materials to the web site but was prevented from attending the meeting because of weather-related flight cancellations in the Midwest

Letter in brackets after participants name indicates primary area of representation:
D = Dance; G= General, or multiple fields; L = Literature; V= Visual Arts

SymBIOtic ART & Science:
An Investigation at the Intersection of Life Sciences and the Arts

A conference jointly sponsored by
the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts
February 28-March 1, 2011
at the National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA
AGENDA

Monday, February 28

9:00 AM Welcome by NSF and NEA principals: Joanne P. Roskowski, Acting Director, Biology Directorate, NSF & Joan Shigekawa, Senior Deputy Chairman, NEA

9:15 AM Introduction to meeting purpose and process by co-principal investigators:
Dr. Chris Comer, U. of Montana, & Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Marlboro College

9:30 AM Introduction of graphics facilitator Patricia Hilton and participants

9:50 AM Discussion #1: ORIGINS — moderator: Chris Comer
• What motivated you to cross disciplines and how did you do it?
• If you work with a science or art partner, how did you identify that person/persons?
• What do artists gain from working with life scientists; what do scientists gain from working with artists?
• How frequently are these collaborations happening and why?

Introductory speaker: Felice Frankel
Summation speaker: Bevil Conway

11:00 AM Discussion #2: PROCESS – moderator: Mel Chin
• What is the state of interaction among the arts and the life sciences?
• How is the creative process the same or different in dance, literature, visual arts, and the life sciences?

Break into small groups by dance, literature, and the visual arts, with artists and cooperating scientists in the same groupings (60 minutes with 10-minute reports from three groups @ conclusion of breakout sessions).

12:00 PM Reports and discussion
12:30 PM LUNCH

1:15 PM Animated Keynote: Choreographer Liz Lerman with biologist Laura Grabel,
with video, discussion, and audience participation

2:30 PM Discussion #3: ADVANCES—moderator: Muriel Poston
• What new knowledge is being generated by collaborations among the arts disciplines and the life sciences?
• What novel or unforeseen possibilities, including new methods of working, are created by collaborations (with examples from participants)?
• How have new technologies opened collaborative possibilities?

Introductory speaker: Roger Malina
Summation speaker: Kathy High

3:30 PM BREAK

3:45 PM Discussion #4: TOPICS—moderator: Ellen McCulloch-Lovell
• Based on the above discussion, what are the topics that have surfaced that bear further discussion, research, and investigation?
• How will evolutionary theory and neuroscience add to our understanding and teaching of the arts?
• What does the concept of embodied knowledge mean for scientific understandings?

Introductory speaker: Patrick Hogan
Summation speaker: Lisa Zunshine

5:00 PM BREAK

6:00 PM Working Dinner @ Dan & Brad’s at the Arlington Hilton Hotel with keynote on Creativity + Discussion by Robert Root-Bernstein

Tuesday, March 1

9:00 AM Introduction: Brief recap of first day and two keynotes, discussion, issues

9:15 AM Discussion #5: VISION—moderator: Susan Sgorbati
• What would a truly integrated study of the arts and life sciences look like?
• How would it shape knowledge? Teaching? Civic participation?

Introductory speaker: Stuart Kaufman
Summation speaker: Claudine Brown

10:30 AM Discussion #6: IMPLICATIONS—moderator: Bill O’Brien
• What are the implications of what we have been discussing and discovering?
• What do we know about other art/science collaborative efforts?
• How can inquiry be taught? Can creativity be taught?

Break into small multidisciplinary groups

11:30 AM Reports and discussion

12:00 PM LUNCH

12:45 PM Discussion #7: STRATEGIES—moderator: Ellen McCulloch-Lovell
• Why is collaboration important to the arts and to the sciences?
• What are the fertile areas for collaboration and discovery?
• What are the next steps for stimulating this work?

2:30 PM Observations and summation by invited writer Peter Turchi

2:45 PM Conclusion: COMMUNICATION & PUBLIC DISCOURSE—moderator: Chris Comer
• How are we going to produce a report and potential recommendations?

3:15 PM Adjournment

INFORMATION ON WEB SITE and WEB-BASED ACTIVITIES

The web site for the conference became operational about one-month prior to our meeting at NSF and it is at the following URL: http://www.cas.umt.edu/rai/ There are several “buttons” on the left side of the page.

AGENDA. The meeting was based around focused discussions, not standard presentations, and so participants did not prepare a talk. We asked someone to tee up, or comment on, each discussion area, and we tried to tap the expertise of our very diverse group of participants for that purpose. But everyone had a chance to describe their experiences and express opinions.

DOCUMENTS FOR ATTENDEES. We invited everyone — in advance of the meeting — to submit something they have written or produced that is relevant: perhaps a PDF of a paper they had written recently, something that captured their activities or views, or a picture or description of an art piece. Of course they were free to write something specifically for this meeting, but not required to do so. This feature could also be used as a portal to comment on others’ submissions. The first document posted was a copy of the Whitepaper we wrote to NSF to suggest this meeting.

To access the Document/Comment portion of the site, a user ID and password were needed.

HANDY MAPS. Still contains a map showing the neighborhood around NSF with restaurants and faster food shown. It also contains a map of the DC Metro system.

APPENDIX 2
Graphics from keynote speaker, Robert Root-Bernstein

Sample slides are reproduced here, the full set of slides may be obtained from the meting website

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

We continue to welcome submissions to Leonardo Journal in
the area of art and biology:
http://www.leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/art+biocall.html

We are pleased to announce as part of the project the publication
of the e-book version of George Gessert’s book GREEN LIGHT

roger

http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/green-light

GREEN LIGHT
by George Gessert

Humans have bred plants and animals with an eye to aesthetics for centuries: flowers are selected for colorful blossoms
or luxuriant foliage; racehorses are bred for the elegance of their frames. Hybridized plants were first exhibited as fine
art in 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed Edward Steichen’s hybrid delphiniums. Since then, bio
art has become a genre; artists work with a variety of living things, including plants, animals, bacteria, slime molds,
and fungi. Many commentators have addressed the social and political concerns raised by making art out of living material.
In Green Light, however, George Gessert examines the role that aesthetic perception has played in bio art and other
interventions in evolution.

Gessert looks at a variety of life forms that humans have helped shape, focusing on plants—the most widely domesticated form
of life and the one that has been crucial to his own work as an artist. We learn about Onagadori chickens, bred to have
tail feathers twenty or more feet long; pleasure gardens of the Aztecs, cultivated for intoxicating fragrance; Darwin’s
relationship to the arts; the rise and fall of eugenics; the aesthetic standards promoted by national plant societies; a
daffodil that looks like a rose; and praise for weeds and wildflowers. Gessert surveys recent bio art and its accompanying
philosophical problems, the “slow art” of plant breeding, and how to create new life that takes into account what we
know about ecology, aesthetics, and ourselves.

http://mitpress-ebooks.mit.edu/product/green-light

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.