{"title":"An Interview with Simon Penny: Techno-Utopianism, Embodied Interaction and the Aesthetics of Behavior","authors":"Jihoon Kim, Kristen Galvin","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_136","url":null,"abstract":"In your writing you have criticized immersive Vr technologies for their dream of detachment from human flesh and their rhetoric of command and control. Do you think your critical assessment is relevant to today’s media artworks and communication technologies based on Vr? The 1990s was the formative decade for interactive art and digital culture, and throughout I critiqued both the technology and the rhetoric around the technology. Many theorists were expounding Utopian ideas of convergence, social harmony, world peace, spiritual redemption or collective intelligence. This worried me because while the technology was ostensibly new, the rhetoric was just another chapter in 200 years of techno-utopianism. Theodore Roszak quotes a poem about the steam train from the 1830s, “steel and her handmaid steam will make utopia only half a dream” and will “”¦bring peace on every line.” If you change key words to “Internet” and “Computer” it sounds like the rhetoric of the 1990s.(”¦)","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"53 374 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126013780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Electronic Literature as Language Game: A Philosophical Approach to Digital Artifact Subjectivity","authors":"Mauro Carassai","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_36","url":null,"abstract":"As a theoretical endeavour to interconnect machinic intelligence and literary subjectivity, the present paper discusses implications of a reconfigured understanding of recent digital literary artifacts within the specific frame of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. The first half addresses some of the ways in which a Wittgensteinian inter-subjective model of interaction might apply in the case of selected digital works (Michael Joyce’s Twelve Blue and Judd Morrissey’s The Jew’s Daughter ) developed out of aesthetic possibilities specific to digital/computational media. The second half envisions critical consequences of reframing literary negotiations in terms of Wittgensteinian ”˜language games’ for second-generation works of electronic literature.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129582854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Narrating System Intentionality: Copycat and the Artificial Intelligence Hermeneutic Network","authors":"Jichen Zhu, D. Harrell","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_160","url":null,"abstract":"Computer systems designed explicitly to exhibit human-like intentionality (seeming to be about and directed toward the world) represent a phenomenon of increasing cultural importance. In the discourse about artificial intelligence (AI) systems, system intentionality is often seen as a technical property of a program, resulting from its underlying algorithms and knowledge engineering. By contrast, this article proposes a humanistic framework of the AI hermeneutic network, which states that along with any technical aspects, system intentionality is narrated and interpreted by its human creators and users. We pay special attention to system authors’ discursive strategies in constructing system intentionality. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our theoretic framework with a close reading of a fullscale AI system, Douglas Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell’s Copycat .","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125559773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Energy Geared to an Intensity High Enough to Melt Steel: Merce Cunningham, Movement, and Motion Capture","authors":"C. Noland","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_120","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897161_2012.17(2)_120","url":null,"abstract":"The paper is concerned with the relation between everyday human social conditioning and the specialized skills demanded by choreography. Exploring the choreographic methods of Merce Cunningham, the author shows how choreography requires an entrainment of the body that mirrors modes of corporeal socialization while deviating in significant ways from the conditioning normally received. Cunningham works with constraints that have little to do with social convention, but that remain historical insofar as they reflect the technological conditions of a particular era. In the paper, his methods are traced from the inception of chance operations to the employment of Life Forms and the software-aided creative process.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123412429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collaborating with the Enemy","authors":"Shane Mecklenburger","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_156","url":null,"abstract":"Cost of Opportunity is a project that creates a series of diamonds as artworks. The Gunpowder Diamond will be produced entirely from carbon found in .223 Caliber assault rile ammunition.The gunpowder is safely neutralized in a laboratory and the carbon it contains is isolated. Future proposed art-diamonds include the Road-kill Diamond from Nine-Banded Armadillos killed on Texas thoroughfares and the Superman Diamond from a 1983 cellulose acetate film print of Superman III (wherein Superman crushes a lump of coal into a diamond). A monetary value for each diamond is to be determined at a live auction, generating funds for future diamonds in an ongoing series of stones made from various culturally charged materials. The project explores personal and cultural valuation, materiality, and the way market pressures have altered the definition and function of art. Multiple attempts to secure research funding reveal the limits of interdisciplinarity and institutional aesthetics, inspiring the artist, Shane Mecklenburger, to steal the diamond once exhibited, a plan he has yet to reveal to his collaborator.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128733434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Academic Vanitas: Michael Aurbach and Critical Theory","authors":"D. Joiner","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_8","url":null,"abstract":"In a satiric series of sculptures, Michael Aurbach uses laughter to lampoon the excesses of the contemporary scholarship known as critical theory. Spun from psychology, linguistic hermeneutics, and philosophy, critical theory, in Aurbach’s view, tends to deemphasize art objects, substituting fatuous speculations for straightforward analysis. The Critical Theorist (2003) is a fantastical contraption on a metal table, each element of which is a visual joke. Reliquary for a Critical Theorist (2005) parodies the tradition of containers for relics. Two Plexiglas “books,” C’est Nothing and Deux Nothing (2009), continue the notion of vacuity. And Critical Theory’s Secret (2010) imitates a safe. It’s empty, however, mocking the notion of an underlying meaning.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130890544","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Making of Empty Stages by Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning","authors":"G. Giannachi","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_102","url":null,"abstract":"In this interview to acclaimed theatre photographer Hugo Glendinning, Gabriella Giannachi discusses with him the making of his latest work, Empty Stages (2003–11), a documentation about empty stages, touching on his collaboration with UK theatre company Forced Entertainment and Tim Etchells, who co-authored some of the images,as well as photographic methodologies and relections about emptiness, absence, presence and performance.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122840362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transmediation as Betrayal: The Case of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac","authors":"Lanfranco Aceti","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_4","url":null,"abstract":"When inheriting the history of a publication like the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) it is difficult to stay faithful to historical traditions and at the same time catch up with the evolution of contemporary online media and social networks.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114570196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nexus of Art and Science: The Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at University of Sussex","authors":"C. Aicardi","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_56","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_56","url":null,"abstract":"The author explores the relationships between science and art that have developed at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) of the University of Sussex, which harbours an internationally renowned, leading research group in Artificial Life, Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Robotics. The aim is to establish whether and how interdisciplinary art-science practices at CCNR may lead to novel forms of knowledge production. Using fieldwork material as well as bibliographic and web resources, it showcases a number of initiatives and realizations. It also examines how individual researchers may understand, conceptualize, and justify, their experience and practice at the art-science junction in Artificial Life. This paper derives from the author’s PhD research project, of which a main focus has been to investigate interdisciplinary practices in the field of Artificial Life, which cross over the ”˜two cultures’ divide. Artificial Life art is a predominant case of such interdisciplinarity crossover in the ield of Artiicial Life in general, and in the Sussex research group in particular.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114793383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Order in Complexity","authors":"F. Nake","doi":"10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5900/SU_9781906897116_2011.17(1)_138","url":null,"abstract":"Order in complexity. Yes, of course, when confronted with a complex situation, we usually search for order. Otherwise we have no chance to make sense out of the situation. We make sense, and it seems we always want to make it. Sense is not there to discover. It requires our activity. It is a construction.","PeriodicalId":389750,"journal":{"name":"Leonardo electronic almanac","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128916837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}