Forthcoming Issue 1
Mish Mash, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, issue 1, 2010
Launching, or in this case re-launching, a magazine is a difficult task. The first issue is a fundamental undertaking; it tells about the potential, the trajectory and the future developments of the publication. More daunting is inheriting the great tradition of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac - a seminal publication in the field of art, science and technology - and changing it. What to keep and what to change, balancing the old with the new, is a complex exercise to respond to the pressures of contemporary e-publishing. It is also crucial to retain the important tradition and audience that has supported for so many years an internationally recognized publication.
Paul and I have tried to respond to the these different pressures and the title of the first issue is a reflection of the process in which we are immersed. Contemporary digital media and multiple interactions appear to be a mish mash of information, churned through different multiple media systems and re-mediated, or simply re-posted, in a complex galaxy of news that reaches the level of ‘visual and textual’ pollution.
Different forces are at work in the creative processes, speed and slowness are two of them. Since LEA is a magazine that deals with the increasing instantaneity of contemporary society and the changes in the publishing industry, there is a need in the editorial framework to respond to both needs.
The first need is that of providing a space for fast publications and quickly signaling important events while the second calls for slower interactions that develop synergies and connections around ideas, materializing them in research projects, artworks or symposia.
The video is by Francesco Villa who is a young graphic designer and photographer studying for his MA in Communication Design at the Politecnico of Milan. He wrote in the description of his video that: “Five Memos to 2015” is an academic project that I did in my first year of bachelor degree. The concept was to translate in a visual language the book American Lessons aka Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino.
LEA aspires to be a place where speed and slowness meet. The American Norton Lectures of Italo Calvino on the different contributions to creativity and aesthetic by slowness and speed, apollinean and dionysiac, has been one of the sources of inspiration. LEA will be a place where the two speeds coexist, with fast publishing commentaries, news and updates, as well as long term and slowly developing reasearch projects, artworks or symposia.
The first issue of the new LEA, Mish Mash, will reflect this approach and will be a collection of articles that will analyze the complexity of contemporary artistic, scientific and technological practices.
Posted by: Lanfranco Aceti
