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Leonardo Electronic Almanac                 Volume 8, No. 12
                                          December, 2000
Craig Harris,   Executive Editor
Patrick Maun,   Gallery Editor/Curator
Craig Arko,     Coordinating Editor
Molly Hankwitz, Guest Editor
Michael Punt,   LDR Editor-in Chief
Roger Malina,   LDR Executive Editor

Editorial Advisory Board:
Roy Ascott, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Greg Garvey,
Joan Truckenbrod

                         ISSN #1071-4391
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                          |            |
                          |  CONTENTS  |
                          |____________|

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INTRODUCTION

<  This Issue  >
                                  Craig Harris

FEATURE ARTICLES

<  LIVING ARCHITECTURES: Designing for Immersion and Interaction:
   Welcome and Introduction  >
                                  by Sara Diamond

<  Virtual Reality and the Urban Landscape  >
                                  by Richard M. Levy

<  Navigation through Knowledge Spaces  >
                                  by Thomas Whalen
                                  
<  resistant spaces :: subjects  >
                                  by Linda Wallace

<  Simulation:  The Cultural Anticipation of Our Own Demise  >
                                  by Greg Niemeyer with Julie Daley

OPPORTUNITIES

<  University of Michigan's School of Art and Design and School of
   Music  >
<  Indiana University Center for Electronic and Computer Music  >

ANNOUNCEMENTS

<  OLATS News  >
<  Call for Papers - The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of
   War  >
<  ArtSci2001 Symposium: Catalyst for Collaboration  >

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LEA WORLD WIDE WEB ACCESS
LEA PUBLISHING & SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

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                          |                |
                          |  INTRODUCTION  |
                          |________________|

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<  This Issue  >
                                  Craig Harris, Executive Editor


Leonardo Electronic Almanac
Volume 8, Number 12
Introduction

This is my last issue as Executive Editor of Leonardo Electronic
Almanac, and I am pleased to be offering to LEA readers the first
installment of a series of three special issues based on the Living
Architectures conference at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Molly
Hankwitz is serving as the Guest Editor for this series, and I'm
confident that readers will agree that this series is rich in content
and broad in scope. This installment provides a wide selection,
including an introductory piece, "LIVING ARCHITECTURES: Designing for
Immersion and Interaction: Welcome and Introduction" by Sara Diamond;
"Virtual Reality and the Urban," by Richard M. Levy; "Navigation
through Knowledge Spaces," by Thomas Whalen; "resistant spaces ::
subjects," by Linda Wallace; and "Simulation: The Cultural
Anticipation of Our Own Demise," by Greg Niemeyer with Julie Daley.
Future installments will appear during Volume 9 of LEA.

Again, is has been an honor and pleasure to have served the community
as Executive Editor of Leonardo Electronic Almanac, and I thank all of
those who have contributed to the development of this valuable
publication. Please do continue to participate.

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                   |                      |
                   |  FEATURE ARTICLES    |
                   |______________________|

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<  LIVING ARCHITECTURES: Designing for Immersion and Interaction:
   Welcome and Introduction  >
                                  by Sara Diamond


The following text provides an overview summary of the key issues and
directions of the Living Architectures Event at The Banff Centre for
the Arts, September 22-24th. This is followed by my detailed comments
on the first two days events delivered on the second and third morning
to stimulate discussion and create continuity. I comment briefly on
Day Three, as I did not create a detailed summary. After that, there
are my notes on the action oriented research retreat, which picked up
off of the third and final day's directions. My comments provide links
between presentations. These are followed by a description of the
action oriented research retreat that followed it. My role at all
Banff New Media Institute events is to develop the event concept, play
the role of lead facilitator and provide summaries of all of they key
points through the event. As well, I connect these ideas with others
at the event and with larger concepts, projects and initiatives
outside of that forum. I try to pull action out of these cerebral
events through providing a context where people show their research as
well as present their ideas, much as Jean-Claude Guedon suggests the
need to represent for the subject to understand.

The Living Architecture structure allowed the development of key
research questions over three days, with a one-day project development
and refinement process that led to clear granularity. This research
think tank grouped scholars from across many disciplines in order to
discuss concerns of digitisation within physical and virtual
architectures. The contributors responded my call to arms (or perhaps
armaments):

"This research Summit will develop approaches to designing highly
responsive spaces, contexts and their contents and the needed
intelligent software and tools, including surfaces, network
capabilities, cellular technologies, motion sensing systems,
projection and neural networks. Outdoor environments such as gardens,
extreme sport spaces and nature walks can also be interactive. This
summit will address questions such as; can we develop a shared
protocol? How can we create affordable environments that can link
together and support creative projects and learning? What are the
applications for these environments? How can artists, designers,
architects, software creators build a closer alliance? Where do these
design projects fit in the world of public and private art? Should
spaces create context or be content laden? We will consider case
studies of projects and their needs as well as existing design
protocols. This summit will be a think thank for designers, artists,
architects, computer scientists, cultural theorists, and economists."
The term architecture was used to consider software architecture, in
particular that of large-scale changing data repositories (such as
the Internet). It was used to discover the relationships needed
between physical environments that people in inhabit and the design of
related environments within networks. The fundamental direction of the
research discussions were about human computer interface design,
usability, frameworks needed for the meaningful interpretation of data
and the challenges of designing for the nomadic nature of people,
network and architectures. Architecture as a profession considers the
ways that knowledge about human scale, social life, biological needs,
etc., can be applied to designing useful and aesthetic environments.
Metaphors from space as well as time are often used to understand
computer processes. The visualisation and specialisation of data (3D)
figured as a key element of the discussions.

Key themes of Living Architectures:

The think tank returned consistently to try to find more effective
ways of theorising human computer interaction. Participants compared
strategies that proliferate devices that are explicit stand-alone
computers, and strategies that provide thin client access to embedded
networks and embedded ubiquity within physical environments. There was
a substantive and ongoing debate about the need for realism, in
particular in allowing users or audiences to suspend disbelief and in
a related way, in allowing scientists and designers to localise models
into their own contexts while sustaining key points of exchange. This
latter issue has become a focal point for ongoing research based on
the event. Another discussion about physical environments considered
the changing design components of virtual environment presentation
spaces. Almost a full day was devoted to issues of collaborative
remote design, learning and games play and the relationships between
the designs of spaces

Designers presented their projects that drew on performing arts, human
movement within spaces, drama and staging in relation to architectures
that held embedded technologies, or networks that could transform and
effect the movement within an actual space. We also considered design
for ZeroG and the ways that the loss of constraint in that environment
(NASA Space research) allowed for challenges in rethinking social
interaction and identification.

We considered the tools necessary to provide meaning within the vast
array of disparate objects that make up the Internet and databases. We
looked at the architecture of knowledge, spring and mass systems, 3D
visualisation systems, artificial life and neural network research
using biological and architectural metaphors, space beyond 3D and
designing for that context and returned again to think critically
about the narratives and metaphors that we use to describe and
understand spaces and computing processes. Considerable time was spent
discussing the challenges that architects confront in designing
compatible physical and virtual environments and in designing building
that include intelligence. Design tools were considered for their
inherent biases.

Engineering and computer science discussions considered methods of
developing real time 3D graphic applications, wireless and broadband
delivery of ubiquitous environments and experiences, the design of all
manner of wireless interface devices suited to use within spaces, the
design of an intelligent and networked carapace or aura that
individuals would be able to take with them under all circumstances
needed in their life, deep data base structures and related
challenges. Computing was consistently seen as a means to new levels
of human understanding beyond our physical and cognitive limits.

Here are my detailed considerations of some of the talks:

The Subject Linda Wallace and Sandy Stone, working with her colleague
Samantha Krukowski, provided conceptual bookends for the first day.
The day began and ended considering relationships and the social
spaces these inhabit. Sandy told a story about a preoperative
transsexual whose heterosexual army lover was murdered because of his
relationship with her and the forms of resistance throughout and after
the conflicts. Sandy talked about the recalibration of the subject
within a physical performance space. The participants also expressed
the hope that this performance could be nomadic, acted or re-enacted
as a "real life diegesis" of inclusion and exclusion, in the actual
spaces of resistance where the actual lovers lived out their lives and
death. Linda spoke of the need to consider one's position within a
space as either engaged or indifferent or resistant. Linda and Sandy
spoke to the current constant movement of the subject through physical
spaces, the nomadism that work demands now, often not by choice; the
requirement for tools to accompany the new media worker. Linda called
for lines of flight, the creation of a pod where one can hide within
the intensified surveillance both of data and actual travellers in the
architecture of airports. Sandy demands an erotic touch in the
reconstitution of the subject. She describes the actuality and
physicality of desire enacted (present) contrasted to a desire for
presence when desire is absent.

This notion of absence works as a framing metaphor. Katherine Hayles
has written about this in her discussions of data and the associative,
iterative qualities of data and our use of data. Jean-Claude talked
about archival consciousness, the value of archiving history and
navigation. Doug Macleod's ironic talk suggested that the library and
the archive are a Canadian metaphor for a fraught relationship with
identity. Architecture becomes an Alien practice; instead we prefer
endless information navigation, in a bureaucratic search for identity.

Movement The first day considered movement as a guiding principle
within physical and virtual spaces. We again talked about alien
invasion as a metaphor. Joy Mountford described people looking up at
Christian Moller's buildings from a plaza, seeing his bright
projections on the buildings, and expressing the desire that aliens
land. The projections on the building induced a trance like state and
a sense of community. They exude the glow or magic of science fiction.

We considered movement as providing meaning and function for humans
within spaces. Choreography is the embodiment of movement through the
dancer's body, created by the choreographer or the designer. Is the
choreography of human bodies through spaces engineering? We recognised
the problem of social engineering because this sort of engineering is
always meaningful (it has goals), and stems from self-conscious
attention. We explored associative movement through spaces in the work
of Kristine Woolsey. A key frame freezes a moment in space/time. She
uses the technology and then digital metaphor of a key-frame. Is the
key-frame an incidental snapshot or is it full of meaning, a pivotal
point of transformation? This question refers back to the ways that
narratives are attached to specific spaces as stories of functionality
(kitchen, home, and workplace). How then do we design for those over
determined spaces and how do we shift key-frames, and movements to
create junctures or points of change within those spaces, so that new
forms of social transaction can occur? In Kristine's buildings she
uses interactive media to design and move people through those spaces.

Paul Kaiser also spoke about movement. Paul initially worked with
highly defined choreographs by master artists (Bill T. Jones); now he
quotes every-day movement with an incidental and enhanced perception
that occurs when movement is limited, for e.g. by disability.
Limitation and containment can be used to create behaviours that are
emergent. Richard Povall, composer and computer scientist also poses
the concept of emergence as opposed to the binaries of absence and
presence. Katherine Hayles has written about this shift in the nature
of new media culture. The design of navigation strategies through data
are grounded in notions of emergent behaviours; these too have a
history, for example taking us back to thinking about Buckminster
Fuller's theories of evolutionary spaces and tools. Richard Lovelace
reminds us that there is a history of contents, philosophy and
devices.

Intelligence Artificial life research produces a somewhat paranoid
sensibility in larger publics. These fantasies are enacted in
technology goals and expressed as content for the gaming industry.
Toys become physical expressions of human ideas about AL and AI, as
well as being limited by current capacity. Human subjects are
influenced by the ways that toys and games are designed. The
intelligent toys are made to play with us. What happens in a world
where there are intelligent (although dumb in human terms) toys
socialising human children? Joy Mountford asks what happens when the
toys "know us" and then what happens when the toys are stupid (not
programmed)? What happens when the buildings are smart but the
smartness is not the specific smartness that we (as individuals or
groups) want and need to have designed into them? What happens when
large corporations design the smartness? It's not just a question of
"Are they smart or are they stupid?" It's also, "Who designs
intelligence into these environments and how do they understand
intelligence?" Mark Green reminds us consistently about the limits of
technology. Intelligence in tools is very limited; it's best when its
distributed and it has very limited functionality. In the future, who
will design the interface behind my face?

What kinds of subjectivity are produced by not knowing whether
something is intelligent or not, and what its intelligence is. So how
does our subjectivity get produced within that? How tentative might we
become?

Media Doug MacLeod looked at the power of media to effect architecture
as a practice. He asked how do we grow a creative architecture in
vitro, a visionary architecture, one that is ecological and
understands both the ideas of the virtual and also the very physical
world that we live in, which is also a biological world. Cameron
McNall, a physical architect and theorist used metaphors from the
pre-computing world and the pre-digital world, the images of "Get
Smart". Cameron was pushing us to also think about the physicality of
design and our bodies within physical buildings. There was a warning
there, and in Doug's discussion about surveillance, the panopticon
design of many virtual spaces and buildings.

Tools We then began to talk concretely about tools and design. We
discussed scalability; working small and presenting big or at whatever
scale we want to, both in physical spaces and in wired spaces and on
an intra or extranet. Robert Dickinson from Fakespace spoke about
this. Linda Jacobson, has worked with SGI as their virtual reality
evangelist, to develop principles that integrate depth and allow the
viewer to gain perspective in emerging environments. Then we debated
standards. What are the gains and losses of imposing standards in
software design? What happens when you create languages that control
creative possibilities; MIDI allowed a flourishing of musical
composition and play, but also imposed severe limits especially on
world music rhythms. Open source models characterise academic software
design and are also a metaphor for emergent artwork, as Jean-Claude
Geudon suggested. The question of standards, languages that control
and release, the idea of bringing WIMP interfaces into navigable
virtual spaces (aka Viz Sim).

Discussions explored input and output devices that match or parallel
each other. What devices work with the body, even through the body,
what are the parallel interfaces and outputs?

Denis Gadbois' presentation provoked a debate about history, a thread
that ran through many discussions. How much should new media images
represent something familiar? Someone called again for the death of
representation. History is relevant to product design. Denis argued
the power of realism, Char Davis, corroborated by her
programmer/collaborator John Harrison argued the need for abstraction,
suggesting it is fact more meaningful. Both said the most interesting
new media works are made when mistakes happen. We learn from mistakes
- these open new possibilities.

Social Architectures Scott Snibbe opens up a world of play, where
people are interdependent and connect through proximity, using the
metaphor of the veranoid set which charts the closest paths of
relationships. He takes patterns from nature into the social world and
then from the social back into a new nature. The term proxemics, which
he spoke about, looks at how people play and create relationships
through their closeness to each other; this acts itself out according
to cultural difference. Scott shows the importance of using the right
biological metaphor-- the living architecture becomes digital.
Katherine Hayles provides concept of the skew-mark, a coagulation of
the historical point of transition and change, where ideas begin to
position around certain kinds of moment or Diegesis. Then there's a
shift or change, which is interesting, because that brings us back to
the key-frame. Scott's installations diagram this. So we're definitely
currently looking at these sorts of moments of transition or
transformation.

We had a substantive fight about dimensions. The debate was "What is
dimensionality?" "What is a subatomic set?" We debated about
dimensions in space versus dimensions in time, the ways that we looked
at a dimension as being something that reproduces itself but also
doesn't; how do you represent something that makes a conceptual leap?

A group of computer scientists and architects leapt up and tried to
take us through our next dimension of learning, explaining what the
twelfth dimension is in ten minutes, how you represent the problem of
limits of human perception. Gordon Fitzpatrick noted this. A key
question of research is how to create collaborative environments,
where we can work and play together. We need to know why we should
bother to use technology; technology needs to provide a qualitatively
different experience. In fact, the shifting nature of authorship and
identity ran through the entire day; this is directly related to how
we design both physical and virtual spaces and how we, as subjects
with an identity, understand them. . We also talked about the
appropriate use of medium. Should string quartets be distributed over
networks versus situations that cannot be represented using existing
media? How do we represent new forms of practice? Gordon is here, from
Nortel, in part to say, "Work with those of us designing these systems
to actually push the ways that content and human interaction take
place within them."

We talked about realism and new forms of graphics. We talked about the
death of the polygon. I drew a little diagram that I borrowed from
Brian Wyvil who was talking about the problem of modelling and the
attempt to move the animation industry again from frame animation.
Brian suggested that it is possible to change an industry from
polygons to a revolutionary and efficient way of working with implicit
surfaces, one that requires mathematical imagination. Brian's world is
on the periphery of graphics research as much of art is on the
periphery of pop culture. It was interesting that in that orbiting
universe of computer practice, there's also a tension which many of us
as designers and artists, experience. How as artists do we shift
dialogue and discourse from the periphery to the centre, what happens
when we undertake that?

Which brings me back to Linda from SGI's presentation. What happens
when the virtual environments made by researchers and artists, begin
to become standardised as vizsim? It is interesting to look at where
peripheries collaborate, which again gets us back to the line of
flight. Joy Mountford reminded us that interfaces need to be haptic,
that is touch-based; and sonic, that is surrounded with sound,
body-based in all kinds of ways, not privileging the visual. These are
critical design issues as we think about architecture and
architectural practices.

The Author and Perception Coming back to the discussion of the author,
there was an ongoing discomfort in defining what does/should the
architects do now? Kristine asked, "When the architect enters a
democratic dialogue with the client, discloses information that allows
shared planning with the client, and when the architect also builds as
a contractor, how does the role change?" Jean-Claude asks, "What is
the role of the artist within this shifting framework of authorship?"
This is a collapse of function that opens up new forms. Marcos Novak
and Katherine Hayles, from quite different perspectives, gave some
answers. Marcos gave us the assignment of opening the sensorium, of
our tiny scale of perception, to using virtual tools and architecture
to allow us to imagine beyond our physical capabilities. He saw the
role of architecture as attempting to articulate a cosmology and
provide us with allegory, which is quite different from metaphor.

Katherine Hayles talked about our need to struggle with this problem
of allegory. If we are enframed within the machine, do the senses
become pure simulation? She considers the cunning or adaptability of
our sensory apparatus. We return to, "What is the value of design?"
Design has huge responsibility if we are creating a new sensorium and
creating the role of the interactor within that world. What does the
interactor do, what does interactive media do in relation to a
building? How do we respond? How explicit or implicit should those
actions be? What is the interface; what are its metaphors?

Jakub Segen creates eloquent work, using hand and gestural language
systems that can cross cultures and allow people to speak to each
other, yet could also be culturally specific or localised. These
gestures allow collaboration and self-awareness. I saw a match between
Jakub's work and Scott Snibbe's story of how, as a child, his first
subjectivity was a realisation of his hand's presence. He felt that it
was of his body and outside his body, controlled by his muscles but
also having a will of its own. This notion, of course, has an
awakening erotic sensibility to it. This in turn related to Sandy's
performance about the physicality of the erotic. Char talked about how
the hand represents instrumentality. If we want interfaces dispel
authorship and a directorial instrumentality, then there's times when
the hand is not the appropriate interface. The same is true of visual
interfaces that assume a controlling gaze. What is the role of
passivity, as well as activity, within interaction and within
architecture? Char and John's collaborations struggle with these
issues directly.

Back to the Subject So that brings us to the subject, which is where
I'm going to end the first day's summary, having worked backwards from
the evening. Linda Wallace provided the notion of the living
architectural "media space". Linda suggests that media space is
constantly authored, often not by ourselves but by those outside us.
We create our own pathways within that architecture of media.
Katherine Hayles discussed the simulation as self and the potentially
infinite power of computation and subjectivity within the simulation.
Once resolution is no longer a question, where is the subject get
constructed? This erases the line between our physical selves and our
simulations. Jean-Claude Guedon's definition of the subject is quite
different; it is a subject in negotiation. He notes that the modern
subject acts to give, not possess. This subject shifts in fact, from
ownership to the capacity to give, but to give it assumes possession
in the first place. This is perhaps a collective possession, where the
subject constantly repositions and redefines itself within the group.
He discussed shareware in software and as a metaphor. It provides a
movement in a social understanding of resource movement, creating "a
phonemic atomic subjectivity". Guedon states that human subjects still
require a body of understanding, in other terms, he notes the role of
physicality within the definition of the subject. This is an analogue
way of fixing the subject, even if it's for a moment. We need to see
and feel art works, as well as conceive of these. Representation
remains critical. Marcus Novak, who aptly theorises twelve dimensions,
still decides to make physical work, which acts as an extrusion, a
physical and tactile representation of these, humanly impossible to
perceive dimensionalities. This provides erotics of surfaces that can
be touched, seen and navigated. This differs from Hayles argument.
After his statement a participant called for the death of
representation.

Those were the issues and presentations of the first day.

... [Content omitted: Ed.] ...

[Ed. note: the complete content of this article is available at the
LEA website: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>.]

*************************************************************

<  Virtual Reality and the Urban Landscape  >
                                  by Richard M. Levy

Richard M. Levy, Ph.D., MCIP.
Associate Professor of Urban Planning
Faculty of Environmental Design
University of Calgary
Email: <rmlevy@ucalgary.ca>
URL: <http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rmlevy>

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) from its very beginnings has been used to
visualize architectural and urban space.  Even though VR is not
bounded by the concerns of the physical world, these interactive
abstract worlds rely on a familiar language of architectural elements.
 This paper discusses the influences that urban simulation has played
on the physical design of cities and how the image of the city
continues to serves as an important theme in the creation of virtual
worlds.

... [Content omitted: Ed.] ...

[Ed. note: the complete content of this article is available at the
LEA website: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>.]

*************************************************************

<  Navigation through Knowledge Spaces  >
                                  by Thomas Whalen
           
Thomas Whalen, Ph.D.
Communications Research Centre,
3701 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Canada, K2H 8S2.
Email: <Thom.Whalen@crc.ca>

Abstract

Human beings, as premier creators and consumers of knowledge, have
created a global knowledge space. The World Wide Web provides just one
more technology in a long list that we have developed to navigate
through this knowledge space. Currently we use individual words in
search engines to accomplish this end. However, we are beginning to
experiment with unconstrained language, sentences and dialogues on the
Web. These natural language technologies not only have the potential
to provide a better way to navigate the global knowledge space, but
also provide a richer representation of knowledge because they allow
people to interact with knowledge in the most natural possible way.

... [Content omitted: Ed.] ...

[Ed. note: the complete content of this article is available at the
LEA website: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>.]

*************************************************************

<  resistant spaces :: subjects  >
                                  by Linda Wallace

Linda Wallace
PO Box 1357 , Potts Point, Sydney  2011
Email: <linda@machinehunger.com.au>
URL: <http://www.machinehunger.com.au>

Abstract

This paper posits the idea of 'architectural media space' and how such
spaces might be dealt with by 'alien' subjects -- those who do not
wish to be part of the dialogue the space invites, or assumes.

Bio

Linda Wallace is an artist and curator, currently working on a
doctorate at the Australian National University, Canberra.


... [Content omitted: Ed.] ...

[Ed. note: the complete content of this article is available at the
LEA website: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>.]

*************************************************************

<  Simulation:  The Cultural Anticipation of Our Own Demise  >
                                  by Greg Niemeyer with Julie Daley

Luther and the Emancipation of the Image

Between 700 CE and 1566 CE, a debate called the Bilderstreit (German
for: image debate) polarized the European Catholic Church. At question
was the veneration of images, such as paintings or sculptures, of
Saints, the Madonna, Jesus and God. Such venerations were common
practice, and were sharply criticized by the Iconoclasts, who believed
that any veneration of images violated the second commandment:

(16) Beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for
yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female,
(17) the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of
any winged bird that flies in the air, (18) the likeness of anything
that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the
water under the earth.

Images at the time were barely understood as artifacts, which are
separate from what they represented. This notion was supported by the
practice of including remains of the bodies of Saints in the
artifacts. The image of a Saint was seen as an actual part of the
Saint and was not understood as a simulation or a signifier. This
image culture further intensified the debates regarding religious
artifacts. The protests of the iconoclasts reached its peak in the
Bildersturm (German for: image storm) between 1522 and 1566. In the
Bildersturm, Iconoclasts raided churches and destroyed or burned
religious artifacts, leaving the churches bare and whitewashed.

The actual resolution of the Bildersturm, however, did not lie in the
destruction of images, but in advancing the cultural distinction
between an image and what it represents. In the emerging Protestant
church, it was Martin Luther who first articulated the abstract nature
of the image in 1525:

Whether I want it or not, when I hear Christ, an image emerges in my
heart of a man hanging at the Cross, just as readily as my face
projects itself onto water, when I look into it.

Luther clearly distinguished between the image of Christ and the
Christ himself. He identified the image as a product of an abstract
notion, projected into the heart, comparable to a reflection. With
this abstraction, the religious image was liberated from its
conflicted role as a ritual artifact and was defined as a
communicative representation of an idea or a form.

The dispute over the ritual usage of images in the Catholic Church was
settled by a decree of the Nineteenth Council at Trent in 1564. The
council's Decree on Sacred Images stated that it was not the artifact
itself--the signifier--which was being revered. Instead, the Council
decreed, it was the signified saint who was being revered . Thereby
the artifact was no longer ritualized, but was defined as a device to
communicate an abstract idea.

The role of the image in Western Culture from this point onwards was
to communicate ideas, and the role of the artist changed from artisan
to author. This transformation constituted a fundamental evolution in
Western image culture, and provided the basis for Western visual
culture from Cranach and Durer onwards.

... [Content omitted: Ed.] ...

[Ed. note: the complete content of this article is available at the
LEA website: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>.]

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                           _________________
                          |                 |
                          |  OPPORTUNITIES  |
                          |_________________|

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<  University of Michigan's School of Art and Design and School of
   Music  >

Send to:
Search Committee
School of Art and Design / School of Music
University of Michigan
2000 Bonisteel Blvd. Rm. 2055
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2069

TWO FACULTY POSITIONS:  ANIMATION AND INTEGRATED DIGITAL MEDIA

The University of Michigan's School of Art and Design and School of
Music are collaborating to develop an interdisciplinary faculty team
to engage animation and integrated digital media. The two units are
searching for two full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty to begin
on September 1, 2001.

The School of Art and Design position focuses on visual imaging for
animation; the School of Music position on music and sound design for
integrated digital media. The ideal candidates selected for these two
positions will each have primary academic appointments in one of the
two units with a secondary appointment in the other unit.

Each position entails teaching courses for the primary appointment
unit as well as courses jointly taken by students from both units. 
Full participation in faculty affairs of the primary appointment unit
will be expected. Public performances, presentations and/or
exhibitions are also expected. Both Schools encourage and will
facilitate engagement with the progressive, contemporary human and
technical resources of the University of Michigan.

Qualifications: The ideal candidates will have advanced degrees or an
equivalent combination of education and experience, university-level
teaching experience, and established records of engaging the public in
creative work.

Appointment Level: Rank open and commensurate with experience.

Salary: Commensurate with experience and appointment level.

Application: To include:

o Letter of Application of not more than 2 pages
o Curriculum Vita
o Names/Addresses/Telephone Numbers and e-mail addresses of 3
  references
 (No letters of recommendation accepted at time of application.)
o Documentation of work: All types of documentation accepted, as
  appropriate to present applicant's capabilities and creative
  interests. Explicit review instructions must accompany submission
  materials, particularly those in digital form.

Due Date: March 12, 2001

The University of Michigan, located in Ann Arbor (40 miles west of
Detroit) along the Huron River, is an internationally esteemed public
research university comprised of 19 schools and colleges. Enrollment
on the Ann Arbor campus is approximately 40,000 graduate and
undergraduate students. Ann Arbor, listed as one of the top 10
university towns in the country, has an intellectually and culturally
rich community, with a population of over 120,000.

The University of Michigan is a Non-Discriminatory Affirmative Action
Employer. Women and minorities are strongly encouraged to apply.

*************************************************************

<  Indiana University Center for Electronic and Computer Music  >

Electronic and Computer Music Search Committee
c/o Eugene O'Brien, Associate Dean for Instruction
School of Music
1201 E. Third Street
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405

Faculty, Part-Time and Assistant Director Music Assistant Director of
the Center for Electronic and Computer Music and teacher of MIDI and
Computer Music and teacher of MIDI and Computer Music (part-time).
Appointment effective beginning August 2001.

RESPONSBILITIES:

This is a full-time position with responsibilities divided between
teaching and administration:

(1) Teaching and introductory course in MIDI and computer music (two
sections), supervising laboratory session in the Center for Electronic
and Computer Music (CECM), and assisting the Center's Director with
other courses;

(2) Serving as Assistant Director of the Center, assisting the
Director with installing and maintaining computer music software and
hardware, maintaining the Center's website, developing course
materials, researching and purchasing equipment and software, and in
the general operation of the Center.

QUALIFICATIONS:

Doctorate or ABD in Composition or Computer Music. Active career as a
composer of electronic works. Experience in teaching all facets of
electronic music, including analog and digital syntheses, sampling,
Csound, MAX/MSP/MIDI, sequencing, hard disk recording, standard audio
systems, electronic music history and literature. Previous experience
creating and maintaining an electronic music studio including PC and
Mac music software and hardware, and audio systems. Some UNIX, Web
authoring and networking experience desirable. Specific teaching
experience with MOTU Digital Performer and Freestyle, Digidesign Pro
Tools and Kurzwell synthesizers preferred.

SALARY AND RANK: Commensurate with qualifications and experience.

APPLICATION: Send letter of application, three letters of
recommendation, curcciulum vitae and other credentials to the
following address; please do not send recordings or other materials
unless requested to do so. The search will remain open until a
suitable candidate is identified; review of applications will begin on
February 20, 2001. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

=============================================================
                           _________________
                          |                 |
                          |  ANNOUNCEMENTS  |
                          |_________________|

=============================================================
<  OLATS News  >

URL: <http://www.olats.org/setF6.html>

OLATS is proud to publish the essay "For a new kind of Aesthetics" by
the Italian philosopher and theoretician Mario Costa. This essay is
the text (in French) of the communication that Mario Costa delivered
during ISEA 2000 in Paris last December.

This essay completes the ones already published and is the first of a
new serie of online publication that OLATS has undertaken in its
"Livres & Etudes" (Books & Essays) section. Various texts by Edmond
Couchot, among which the older, unavailable ones, will follow.

For a new kind of Aesthetics, by Mario Costa

Mario Costa's book  The technological sublime, published in 1990
(French transl, 1994; Brazilian, 1995) have received an excellent
reception and it seems to have had "the immense merit to propose an
operating theory to the analysis of the contemporary art" (Annick
Bureaud).

After ten years, and in view of everything else that happened in the
field of technological-aesthetics production, Mario Costa tries to
specify the principles of a new aesthetics.

He maintains that the present situation is already announced in some
movements and artists of the historical vanguards (constructivism,
Gabo, Moholy-Nagy) that have been misunderstood by aesthetics and art
criticism. Then he shows how the traditional concepts of aesthetics
are no more valid.

In fact:
- the production and fruition leave the interior life and change
  themselves in a  sensorial way;
- the production leaves the symbols and aims to assume a cognitive
  essence;
- the activation of signifiants replaces the expression of signifie;
- the concept of   artistic personality changes itself in that one of
  aesthetical-technological searcher;
- the subject and the belonging of works incline to be overcome;
- the interior life is projected outside and becomes  machinery;
- the concept of  form weakens to advantage of that one of  stream.

The essay concludes with the indication of the tasks of the
contemporary aesthetic-technological research and of the strategies
that this one should follow in the actual organisation of art system.

*************************************************************
<  Call for Papers - The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of
   War  >

Please send manuscripts or manuscript proposals to
Michele Emmer
Email: <M.Emmer@iol.it> 
or to the Leonardo editorial office:
LEONARDO
425 Market Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA  95105, U.S.A.
Email: <isast@sfsu.edu>

Call for Papers

The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of War

We live in a time when war, far from being eliminated from the planet,
is a continuing fact of life for many. Some wars are overt military
wars, others are endemic situations of social and economic conflict.

What are the roles of artists and scientists in times of war?  How can
we be useful?  How can our work contribute to new approaches?
Historically the work of some artists and scientists has been
instrumental in shaping perceptions and initiatives.

LEONARDO Editorial Advisor Michele Emmer and LEONARDO seek papers
discussing these and other topics that address the role and work of
artists and scientists in times of war.

Texts that are being published as part of this project include the
following:

Published in Vol. 34, No. 1 (2001):

- MICHELE EMMER: Artists and War: Answers?
- BULAT GALEYEV: Open Letter to Ray Bradbury
- JOSEPH NECHVATAL: La beaute tragique: Mapping the Militarization of
    Spatial Cultural Consciousness

Forthcoming:

- UBIRATAN D'AMBROSIO: Mathematics and Peace: Our Responsibilities
- ALEJANDRO DUQUE: New Media as Resistance: Colombia
- MATJUSKA KRASEK: The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of War
- SHEILA PINKEL: Thermonuclear Gardens: Information Art Works about
     the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex

*************************************************************
<  ArtSci2001 Symposium: Catalyst for Collaboration  >

URL: <http://www.asci.org>

Symposium Announcement & Call for Presentation Proposals

ArtSci2001 Symposium: Catalyst for Collaboration November 2 - 4, 2001
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)

Art & Science Collaborations, Inc. (ASCI) seeks 20-minute
presentations of art-science collaborative projects at any of the
following stages: concept, development, or production.

Projects must involve both artist(s) and scientist(s). Examples:
performances, books, CD-ROMs, net.art projects, CAVE, audio, video,
animations, research, inventions, plays.

This third international ArtSci symposium is being co-produced by The
Graduate Center at CUNY and seed money has been provided by the
Rockefeller Foundation.

Full details at: <http://www.asci.org> Also at the website is a link
to download an 8.5x11" ArtSci2001 flyer (MS-Word format), suitable for
posting or faxing. DEADLINE: March 1, 2001.

=============================================================
  ___________________
 |  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  |
 |___________________|

=============================================================

LEA and Leonardo/ISAST gratefully acknowledges Al Smith and The Malina
Trust for their support of Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
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Sciences and Technology

All Rights Reserved.

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_____________________________________________________________
<  Ordering Information  >

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is free to Leonardo/ISAST members and to
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Individuals and institutions interested in advertising in Leonardo
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Press for details.
===================================================================
<  End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 8(12)  >
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