/      ____
   /      /     /\
  /      /--   /__\
 /______/____ /    \
=============================================================
Leonardo Electronic Almanac                 VOLUME 9, NO. 5
 								2001

Roger Malina,  LEA Executive Editor
Michael Punt, LDR Editor-in-Chief
Craig Harris, LEA Guest Editor
Patrick Lambelet, LEA Managing Editor

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

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

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

INTRODUCTION

< Lawsuit against Leonardo Dismissed >
by Roger Malina

LEONARDO JOURNAL

< LEONARDO Vol. 34, No. 4 (2001): Selected Abstracts >
< About Victor Magari–os (1924--1993) >
by Dolores Rubio
< Virtual Reality Today >
by Michael Naimark

FEATURED TEXTS

< Statements from the Burning Man Festival >

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS

< The Autobiographical Lectures of Some Prominent Art Educators >
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens. 
< Graphic Design Timeline: A Century of Design Milestones >
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens. 

ISAST NEWS

< Carl Eugene Loeffler, 1946--2001 >
obituary by Judy Malloy

ENDNOTE

by Piero Scaruffi

ANNOUNCEMENTS

< ISEA 2002: Eleventh International Symposium on Electronic Art
Nagoya, Japan >
statement by Kiyofumi Motoyama
< 2001: Building for Space Travel >
< Signatures of the Invisible---An Art Exhibition Inspired by 
Particle Physics >

=====================================================================
                           _______________
                          |               |
                          | INTRODUCTION  |
                          |_______________|

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

< Good News - Lawsuit against Leonardo Dismissed >

Roger Malina  
E-mail: <leo@mitpress.mit.edu>

On 29 May, 2001 a 3-judge panel in Nanterre, France dismissed the 
lawsuit against Association Leonardo filed by Transasia and Leonardo 
Finance. Each party has 30 days to appeal. This could bring to an end 
a two-year and very expensive legal battle. We take this opportunity 
to thank all the members of the community who have lent energy and 
resources to help Leonardo fight this legal battle for its survival. 
We look forward to announcing next month the definitive ruling. For 
more information, see <http://mitpress.mit.edu/Leonardo>.

=====================================================================
                           _____________________
                          |                     |
                          | LEONARDO JOURNAL    |
                          |_____________________|

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

< LEONARDO Vol. 34, No. 4 (2001): Selected Abstracts >

MACHIKO KUSAHARA: The Art of Creating Subjective Reality: An Analysis 
of Japanese Digital Pets

ABSTRACT
A variety of digital pets can be found in Japan, from virtual pets on 
palm-top game screens to physical entertainment robots. They are 
successful because they succeed in promoting a sense of reality in 
users' minds. While visual reality is a familiar element of realism, 
a subjective sense of reality can also prove effective. By designing 
interaction in a mode that takes users' psychology into account, such 
a sense of reality can be enhanced, especially when a user perceives 
an independent personality in his/her digital pet. Japanese 
traditional culture, which allows treating animals on an equal basis 
with human beings is behind this psychology.


LAURENT MIGNONNEAU and CHRISTA SOMMERER: Creating Artificial Life for 
Interactive Art and Entertainment

ABSTRACT
This article consists of two sections: the first provides a brief 
overview of artificial-life art and entertainment software, some of 
the main products and their peculiarities; and the second describes 
one of our artificial-life software products, called Life Spacies II, 
which was created between 1997 and 1999. This system consists of a 
web page that allows users to create artificial-life creatures by 
simply typing in text characters using a web page "editor." Written 
text is used as genetic code to model the creature's body. The body 
shape subsequently influences the creature's ability to move, which 
in turn determines the creature's behavior, survival and reproduction 
within the Life Spacies II environment. In addition, users of the 
system can feed the creatures with text characters and thus even more 
actively influence the creatures' survival and reproduction in their 
environment.


JANE PROPHET: TechnoSphere: "Real" Time, "Artificial" Life

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on the real-time 3D version of the artificial-
life art piece TechnoSphere, a collaborative project by the author, 
Mark Hurry and Gordon Selley. It begins by positioning 
TechnoSphereÕs simulated landscapes in relationship to the English 
landscape and its tradition in painting and problematizes ideas of 
"the natural." The TechnoSphere creatures are evaluated as both 
artificial wildlife and domesticated animals before the authors 
consider the relationship between creature and environment. This is 
followed by a comparison of the Internet and real-time versions of 
TechnoSphere and concludes by outlining the work-in-progress---a 
merging of the two systems.


THOMAS S. RAY: Aesthetically Evolved Virtual Pets

ABSTRACT
The author applies aesthetic, emotional and empathetic selection to a 
derivative of Karl Sims's Evolved Virtual Creatures. The resulting 
Creatures can be beautiful or strange and provoke strong reactions in 
human observers. The author posits that it may therefore be possible 
to evolve virtual pets to which humans can form strong emotional 
bonds.


SHEILA PINKEL: Thermonuclear Gardens: Information Artworks About the 
U.S. Military-Industrial Complex

ABSTRACT
The author traces the evolution of her installations about the 
military-industrial complex during the 1980s and early 1990s and 
artworks that emerged as a result of her research. In addition to 
national and international data, maps, graphs and statistics about 
the industry, the author over time progressively added regional, 
site-specific information in order to empower viewers. The process of 
creating these works revealed the place of the nuclear industry in 
the authorÕs own family, which ultimately facilitated the design of 
later installations.


UBIRATAN DÕAMBROSIO: Mathematics and Peace: A Reflection on the Basis 
of Western Civilization

ABSTRACT
This essay considers the relationship between science and mathematics 
and the social order that they both rely upon and reinforce. A 
peaceful and egalitarian world, the author argues, will require 
instilling a sense of responsibility in those who work with 
mathematics for the uses society makes of their efforts. Such an 
understanding of their social responsibilities would also require 
mathematicians to become more sensitive to history and to the social 
and psychological dynamics of the presentation of knowledge.


ALEJANDRO DUQUE: New Media as Resistance: Colombia

ABSTRACT
The author proposes possible ways for artists and cultural activists 
to use the Internet and other new media to help counter the currently 
devastating situation in Colombia.


PAUL BROWN: Breaking the Art and Science Standoff

ABSTRACT
This review of the First Iteration Conference held in Melbourne in 
December 1999 discusses several of the presentations made and 
includes brief summaries of the keynotes. Related issues like the 
problems of gender representation as well as shortcomings in the 
education of artists are also mentioned.


ALISTAIR RIDDELL: Data Culture Generation: After Content, Process as 
Aesthetic

ABSTRACT
This article considers the extent to which the concepts of process 
and data, inherent in the technology of contemporary music, are 
contributing to a new musical practice and aesthetic. The role of 
technology in musical production has cast music into data (a tangible 
entity, commodity or product) and thus made data a kind of cultural 
object itself in certain contexts (LPs, CDs, MP3 files). This 
condition, under an impetus fostered by the abundance and social 
dimension of music, suggests that a rethinking/transformation of 
contemporary audio arts based on process (the concept, design or 
actual systems that produces musical data) is taking place. 
Increasingly, musicians are becoming involved in alternative contexts 
in which sound is only one of several simultaneous and expressive 
components constituting a cultural experience. Here, process 
permeates the proceedings as a kind of a priori theory of 
contemporary art because it can suggest and define a set of 
possibilities as an artistic statement irrespective of whether 
something or anything is manifest by any artist. With the environment 
saturated with music, it appears that the creative design of musical 
processes might become an art in itself.


MITCHELL WHITELAW: The Abstract Organism: Towards a Prehistory for A-
Life Art

ABSTRACT
The author examines historical precedents for contemporary art 
practice using artificial life, in particular in the work of Paul 
Klee and Kasimir Malevich. Similarities are identified between 
artificial life and the philosophical tradition of organicism; 
specific examples from Klee and Malevich indicate that those artists 
were engaged in a form of creative organicist thought that imagined 
the realization of living structures in artificial media.


VARGAS-SUAREZ UNIVERSAL, with SCOTT WILCOX and ELIOT HAYNES: 
Blueprints: Sound Recordings of Experimental Drawings

ABSTRACT
In this note, the artist and his collaborators describe the process 
behind Blueprints, an ongoing body of work composed of abstract, blue 
ballpoint-pen ink drawings on found plotter paper, accompanied by a 
digitally manipulated, ambient-style soundtrack. The soundtrack is 
created from the sounds of the ballpoint pen's strokes marking the 
surface of the plotter paper. The artist also reflects on his 
concerns regarding the practice and meaning of blending the two 
mediums within his own conceptual processes.


B.M. GALEYEV and I.L. VANECHKINA: Was Scriabin a Synesthete?

ABSTRACT
This survey and summary of documentary material on Scriabin's "color 
hearing" is being presented for consideration by researchers studying 
his ideas of light-music synthesis. On the basis of their analysis, 
the authors conclude that the nature of ScriabinÕs "color-tonal" 
analogies was associative, i.e. psychological; accordingly, the 
existing belief that Scriabin was a distinctive, unique "synesthete" 
who really saw the sounds of music---that is, literally had an 
ability for "co-sensations"---is placed in doubt.


PHILIPPE CODOGNET: Ancient Images and New Technologies: The Semiotics 
of the Web

ABSTRACT
The article develops an analysis of visual knowledge and the use of 
pictures in electronic communication. The author focuses in 
particular on indexical images, which we use in navigating multimedia 
documents and the Web. For this purpose, the author bases his study 
on the one hand on semiotics, the core concepts of which were 
introduced by C.S. Peirce at the beginning of the last century; and 
on the other hand on a more classical historical analysis, in order 
to point out the deep roots of the concepts used in contemporary 
computer-based communication.


MOOSON KWAUK: Holistic Polyhedrons: A New Concept of Making Mobile 
Members

ABSTRACT
This note illustrates how to utilize the geometric interiors and 
exteriors of the ridges, corners and surfaces of polyhedrons in 
creating unique configurations of mobile members.

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

< About Victor Magari–os (1924--1993) >
by Dolores Rubio

Following are some brief biographical and historical notes on the 
artist Victor Magari–os, submitted by Magari–os' widow, Dolores 
Rubio. 

< Biography >

1924 - Born 1 September 1924, in Lanus, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1942 - Graduated from the National Fine Arts School.

1947 - Awarded the First Prize by the National Academy of Fine Arts.

1951 - First one-man exhibition at the San Cristobal Art Gallery, 
Modern Art Institute, in Buenos Aires.
- Received a scholarship from the French government to further his 
art studies in France.
- While living in Paris, established a relationship with Fernand 
Leger, Georges Vantongerloo and Max Bill.

1964 - Participated in the exhibition "New Art of Argentina", 
organized by the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
- Obtained a scholarship from the U.S. Government.
- Participated in the Di Tella Institute's group exhibition, Buenos 
Aires.

1967 - Based on his own design, built his art studio alongside the 
seashore in Pinamar, Argentina, where he lived and worked.

1974 - Solo exhibition: Magari–os, at the Venezuela-Argentina Center, 
in Caracas, Venezuela.

1984 - Solo exhibition: Magari–os---Paintings, at the Art and 
Communication Center, Buenos Aires.

1986 - Solo Exhibition: Finito-Infinito---Homage to Georges 
Vantongerloo, at the Museum of Modern Art, Brussels, Belgium.

1991 - Solo exhibition: Victor Magari–os---Obras 1950--1990, at the 
Banco Patricios Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1993 - Died 5 September in Pinamar, Buenos Aires.

Following are excerpts from "Cosmologies for the Next Millenium," in 
the book Magari–os D, by Andrea Giunta (published 1999; see below). 
English translation by Florence Battiti and Marcia M. Means. 

"Magari–os is considered unique in the history of Argentine art, as 
he is an artist who is beyond classification. He does not fit into 
the reconstruction that can be made of any group strategy or into the 
dominant styles of a period, and it is impossible to understand his 
development from the dynamics of artistic institutions.

"From the start, Magari–os intended to tackle this complex 
relationship in his work, and in this sense, he considered some facts 
as being essential to the understanding of the contemporary world. 
1945 was a key year for him, as nuclear fission signaled the advent 
of a new era. [Magari–os wrote that] 'From that moment onwards, human 
beings have become part of a world where ENERGY has become one of the 
vital elements of their life in society.' Like other artists of his 
generation, Magari–os was interested in establishing a conscious 
relationship between his work and the new universe of science.

"In his conception of the history of art, Magari–os introduced, as an 
explicative tool, the transformations of science. Thus, in his essay 
about Vantongerloo, he expounded on the evolution of art since the 
Renaissance, when artistic concepts redirected their search from 
religious and historical grounds to the "real" world. He then 
explained how, with impressionism, the scientific spirit appeared in 
painting and, with cubism, the concept of structure. Einstein's 
theory of relativity brought a new dimension into the scene---time---
and was then incorporated as a contribution from science to art. 
'Einstein,' wrote Magari–os, 'is in my opinion the prototype of the 
creative man of this century. It is in EinsteinÕs ideas---published 
in his books Theory of Relativity (1905) and General Theory of 
Relativity (1915)---rather than in the cubist paintings, where the 
Euclidian three-dimensional space loses the importance it had had 
since the Renaissance. From then on, the concept of "space-time 
continuum" would be paramount.'" 

After Victor Magari–os' passing, his closest colleagues and 
supporters formed the "Magari–os' Friends Association" (MFA), whose 
main objective is the upkeep of the artist's vast legacy of work. The 
MFA has coordinated and provided curatorial support for several solo 
and group exhibitions, including the 1999 exhibition, Magari–os---
Retrospective Works (National Museum of Fine Arts, Argentina).

Some of Magari–osÕ works are found in the following collections: 
National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires; Museum of Modern Art, 
Buenos Aires (in the Pirovano collection); Museum of Modern Art, New 
York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Museum of Contemporary 
Art, Caracas, Venezuela; Museum of Modern Art, Paraguay; Museum of 
Modern Art, Brussels, Belgium; and several other private collections.

Suggested material for further reading:
- V. Magari–os, "Vantongerloo and Cosmological Art: Beyond Last 
Tendencies," in Georges Vantongerloo«s Writings, Fundaci—n Pirovano, 
1982.
- Andrea Giunta, Magari–os D. Published by Dolores Rubio, 1999.
- V. Magari–os, ÒDesintegrarse para Ser,Ó in Personal Writings.

For further information on the work and life of Victor Magari–os, 
contact the Magari–os Friends Association (Asociaci—n Amigos de 
V’ctor Magari–os D.), Dra. Dolores Rubio, president. Constituci—n 
1458 d.7 CP 1151, Capital, Argentina. 
E-mail : <lolita@lvd.com.ar>

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

< Virtual Reality Today >
by Michael Naimark. E-mail: <michael@naimark.net>

I never liked the phrase "virtual reality." For one thing, it 
immediately spawned the phrase "really real." (Jaron: "Look! This new 
graphics engine makes these virtual worlds look really real." Me: 
"What? It's a friggin' cartoon.") To Jaron Lanier's credit, it was 
the promotion of VR's "realness" that provoked community 
consciousness to imagine what immersive virtual environments could 
be. The down side, of course, was that such promotion---some would 
say hype---led to grossly mismatched expectations between the dream 
of VR and the actuality of what was technically possible. For those 
of us working in the trenches, it was a mixed blessing.

Ten years ago, VR rocked. It was everywhere. Jaron Lanier, who coined 
the phrase "virtual reality," was on the front page of the Wall 
Street Journal. Marvin Minsky, co-founder of MIT's Artificial 
Intelligence Lab, spoke at Ars Electronica on the topic. Timothy 
Leary came back (actually, he was sort of adopted by the VR community 
and, bless him, added a brilliant mix of insight and outrageousness). 
Corporations, particularly Japanese ones, announced major VR 
initiatives. VR goggles and gloves became a fashion statement. 
"Cyber-sex" (a phrase even more oxymoronic than virtual reality to my 
ilk) was seen in supermarket tabloids and discussed at art openings.

Then what happened? It seems as if VR bit the dust as fast as it rose 
to fame. Corporate VR labs, particularly at Sony and Fujitsu, shifted 
focus. Many of the first VR companies, including Lanier's VPL, 
folded. The great orators moved on. The spotlight had shifted. This 
was around 1992, and---no surprise here---the spotlight had shifted 
to the Internet and the Web.

This is significant, and I would like to offer some observations and 
speculations. First, VR is not dead and, with the spotlight off it, 
more serious and focused work has been able to proceed unhampered. 
Head-mounted displays---the goggles---have become higher resolution 
and lighter weight, with promising work on "virtual retinal displays" 
led by the HIT Lab at the University of Washington. Fake Space Labs, 
a first-wave VR company, is doing well building innovative immersive 
viewers and screens. Tracking technology---the gloves---has 
miniaturized and diversified, with tracking devices integrated into 
every human appendage, prosthetic and tool imaginable (a development 
often led by artists). There is some excellent work in this area 
continuing at the University of North Carolina. "Image-based 
modeling" and "light fields," recent sub-disciplines of computer 
vision, have transformed the range of 3-D computer models from built-
from-scratch to camera-based, led by landmark work at Stanford, UC 
Berkeley and MIT. And, in a most-forward thinking way, the artists 
and scientists at the Electronic Visualization Lab of the University 
of Chicago invented the "CAVE," an immersive projection space for 
group viewing capable of live networked applications.

The much-quoted decree of Ivan Sutherland in 1965 articulated the 
original dream of VR: "The screen is a window through which one sees 
a virtual world. The challenge is to make that world look real, act 
real, sound real, feel real." Ten years ago, this was the world of 
eyephones and datagloves; of SGI Reality Engines and high-level 
modeling languages; and of flight simulators and location-based theme 
park attractions. Today, it is postage-stamp-sized silent images of 
Jenni-cam and the Western Wall, updating (on a good day) at one frame 
per minute. But wait, you may say, it is even more real because it is 
live and interactive. Clearly, realness means different things to 
different people.

Let's look at the numbers, using moving images as a frame of 
reference. I believe there are five distinct levels, each with its 
own distinct industry. The hottest one right now is the lowest-
resolution one, the "streaming video" level, since everyone wants 
video over the thin pipe of the current Internet. Streaming video 
often has to pass through a 56 kilabit per second modem, and is 
rarely more than 1 megabit per second (mb/sec). But streaming video 
never looks as good as the movies we rent on VHS.

VHS quality, and home video in general, is the next level. VHS 
resolution is approximately what the MPEG-1 standard is, with a 
bandwidth or bitstream of 1.5 mb/sec (originally for CD video). It's 
noteworthy that moving from streaming video to home video crosses an 
industry line from computing and networks (Apple and Akamai) to 
consumer video (Sony and Blockbuster). These people drink in 
different bars.

The next level is broadcast-quality video. MPEG-2 was made for this, 
with a bitstream range from 4 to 9 mb/sec. Everyone agrees that 
broadcast video looks much better than VHS, and high-end broadcast 
equipment typically costs ten times more than consumer video 
equipment. Uncompressed broadcast video often travels around 
production studios at 45 mb/sec.

Then there is cinema. The silver screen of the local movie theater 
appears much bigger than the television in the home, and requires 
that much more bandwidth. We just crossed another industry line from 
video to filmmaking, from CNN to Panavision. Typically, movies are 
shot with 35mm motion picture film, but the quest to replace film 
with high-definition digital video has roots beginning almost 20 
years ago. Today, various digital HDTV bitstreams range from 20 
mb/sec for highly compressed HDTV to as high as 1,000 mb/sec, or 1 
gigabit/sec!

But we are not done. "Special venue" cinema, the sort of immersive 
movies seen in theme parks and world's fairs, are typically 10 times 
the bandwidth of theatrical 35mm film. This is yet another industry, 
with formats like Imax (wide 70mm film), Showscan (70mm film at 60 
frames per second rather than 24), Stereo-70 (twin 70mm film for 3D), 
and CircleVision (nine 35mm screens in a panorama), each presenting 
different offerings of what is "really real."

So, the range of current versions of moving images is from roughly 
0.1 mb/sec to 10,000 mb/sec. It is both true and ironic that the 
Reel.com folks and the Imax folks, or the QuickTime VR folks and the 
CircleVision folks, have very little to talk about.

But when one looks at the continuum, the drive at each end becomes 
clear. At one end is sensory verisimilitude. Some might say "looking 
real," but others might say "dead," in that it is never live and, at 
best, barely interactive. At the other end is "live," telematic, 
participatory and interactive, even if the cost is sacrificing a 
four-storey high 3-D screen for a postage stamp screen. Again, 
realness means different things to different people.

There is another noteworthy phenomenon, dealing with the politics of 
access, best summarized by French art theorist and UNESCO Webworld 
Director Philippe Queau: "Maximum hits per bits." Its extreme 
interpretation is that there is something unfair about concentrating 
a large number of bits for a small number of people. Immersive 
theaters and art installations are out, websites accessible to all 
are in. The reason is beyond theory: 53% of the world still has not 
made a phone call.

Incredibly, this polarized situation is temporary. Add Moore's Law 
and optical fiber, easily capable of over a million mb/sec (!), and 
the conflict disappears. It is inevitable, with the only questions 
being "When" and "How?" The lever is large because the status is 
embryonic.

Here are some examples of interim strategies doable today. One 
strategy is simply to continue doing what we can with the narrow pipe 
of the Internet. It is relatively cheap, easy and uncharted 
(particularly when one ponders the World Wide part of the Web). And 
the pipe is quickly getting wider via DSL, cable modems and 
broadband. Another strategy involves hybrid investigation. For 
example, there are lots of stereoscopic and panoramic images on the 
Web, even if they are small. "Interactive films" have existed since 
1967 and have managed to present at least the illusion of control. 
For example, the world's first interactive movie, at Expo '67, 
involved red/green pushbuttons for everyone and two projectors 
running in sync, where the operator swapped the lens cap depending on 
the vote. Its director, Raduz Cincerra, alive and living in Prague, 
told me "I did it as a joke, but everyone believed it." A related 
strategy is based on simulation: for example, making web video more 
cinematic in style and making motion pictures more webcam-like. There 
is evidence of this happening today. Another hybrid strategy exploits 
high-octane cheap computers at each end of the narrow pipe. We are 
beginning to see examples of the Sony Playstation II, whose power is 
similar to the SGI Reality Engines that drove first-wave VR, being 
used for live networked gaming and beyond.

A most intriguing strategy turns the access argument into a feature. 
One can use democratization ideology to justify piping 100 times the 
bandwidth available for one person into a collective space designed 
for 100 people (whatever the scale). Public space as public research 
as public spectacle as community experience. Such media-rich public 
experiments have a lively history, most notably 100 years ago around 
the birth of cinema. An enormous opportunity exists for museums, 
libraries, alternative art spaces and other public places to 
collaborate with scientists and researchers.  

Republished with permission from Emergency, the newsletter of the 
Creative Disturbance network  <http://www.creativedisturbance.com>.

=====================================================================
                           _______________
                          |               |
                          | FEATURED      |
                          | TEXTS         |
                          |_______________|

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

< Statements from the Burning Man Festival >

The Beaming Man
Russell Wilcox 
E-mail: <rwilcox@jps.net>

Beaming Man, a laser installation at the Burning Man Festival 2000, 
was the largest human figure ever created. The Beaming Man was 4000 
feet long and 2000 feet wide, made of laser beams suspended 30 feet 
over the desert floor. To create this, we used three lasers, ten 30-
foot antenna towers and an array of laser optics and mechanical 
hardware.

The human figure with his arms raised above his head was a linearized 
form of the Burning Man logo. This formed a body within which other 
artworks were organs. The concept was originated by Larry Harvey and 
city architect Rod Garrett and I turned it into reality while 
maintaining aesthetic quality and content. I had built a 25-foot 
laser installation at Burning Man 1999 called The Tetrahedron, where 
I developed the technical and artistic approach that informed Beaming 
Man.

Three solid-state green lasers (two 5-watt and one 3-watt) and optics 
assemblies on the ground emitted beams that were sent up to the top 
of three "source towers". Mirrors at the tops of these towers 
directed some of the beams to "target towers" 2000 feet away where 
they were stopped by white, four-foot square panels. Other beams hit 
secondary mirrors on distant towers before being directed to a 
target. Aligning the beams to these widely separated mirrors and 
targets required very stable structures, precise adjustments of the 
mirrors and special procedures that had to be developed during 
installation.

We hoped some sensitive people would fully explore the figure on foot 
or by vehicle, since this was the only way its true shape could be 
appreciated from the ground. This appreciation exercise emphasized 
the importance of memory in imparting a sense of scale. Due to a 
laser beam's ethereality, it's impossible to judge one's distance 
from it, making estimation of Beaming Man's size delightfully 
difficult. Near the Burning Man there were two laser towers which 
glowed green from the ascending beams, adding complementary forms and 
colors to the area.

Beaming Man showed that an otherwise delicate and precise laser 
installation could withstand the rigors of the Black Rock City 
environment, and that the medium of stationary laser beams is an 
impressive and expressive one, worthy of continued exploration. 

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

The Futura Deluxe Bubble Fountain and Porta-Temple 
Steven Raspa
E-mail: <stevenraspa@hotmail.com>

The Futura Deluxe was a bubble fountain, a portable temple, 
compatible with all major belief systems, a public park for future-
minded conversationalists and a catalyst for personal change. The 
product of a seven-month commitment to an absurd vision, it was many 
things to many people and was as much a state of mind as a tangible 
object and installation.

In 1999, the Burning Man theme was "The Wheel of Time." I thought 
there should be some kind of grand public monument and gathering 
place that stimulated thought about the future and how people wished 
to shape it. I liked the idea of a fountain because it suggests life 
and eternity; and I wanted to incorporate bubbles because they are 
inherently optimistic, but also fleeting---not to be taken for 
granted. 

Thus began a preposterous saga to bring bubbles to the Black Rock 
desert. I teamed up with sound artist and physicist, Dr. Aaron Wolf 
Baum, and found volunteers through the Burning Man website. After 
testing different bubble fluid recipes and overcoming numerous 
technical challenges, the Futura Deluxe was completed on schedule,  
and the associated performance was as much an affirmation and 
invocation of the future we all wanted, as it was theater.

Physically, the Futura Deluxe was a two-story, three-tiered, white 
acrylic, automated reinterpretation of a traditional Italianate water 
fountain. The words "HOPE," "WISH," "PRAY," and "DREAM" illuminated 
the four sides of the base and supported the fountain. It created 
hundreds of thousands of bubbles while emitting intermittent 
laughter, birdsong, and sonic tones that spelled out the words on the 
base. It also periodically broadcast predictions about the future 
that were variously amusing, unsettling, and suspect. 

The Futura Deluxe sat at the center of a 150-foot diameter circle of 
thirty white pole lamps, four public bubble-blowing stations and 30 
bubble seats. Participants sat around the fountain, socialized and 
blew bubbles at the bubble stations. By night, the levels of the 
fountain and words were illuminated to create a beacon of inspiration 
for those who wanted to consider the future by "bubble light."

The fountain was fully mobile and functioned independently from its 
installation site. It was guided along the promenade and through 
Center Camp on several occasions. It also functioned as a performance 
platform near the end of the event, when it was the centerpiece of a 
30-minute performance incorporating sound, narrative and 
choreographed movement. 

Together, the fountain, installation and performance melded 
technology, mythology, classical design, science fiction and a sense 
of humor to create a place and experience that was both civic and 
sacred in nature. It was exactly the kind of work Burning Man 
inspires: a preposterous flight of the imagination that must be made 
real and shared with others in order to become significant. 

=====================================================================
             _________________________________
            |                                 |                             
            |                                 |                             
            |    LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS     |
            |            2001.05              |
            |_________________________________|

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

This month in LDR, we are pleased to include three reviews from 
Russia by colleagues of one of LDR's regular contributors and an 
international co-editor of Leonardo, Bulat Galeyev. Although LDR does 
not usually publish unsolicited reviews, we are delighted to do so in 
this instance since they provide an insight into an intellectual life 
that for many of us is unfortunately still at some linguistic 
distance. In addition, David Topper reviews a survey of what we might 
know of the night sky without the use of instruments. This both 
fascinates and frustrates as it draws attention to the tragedy of the 
human encounter with the infinity of the universe, something Wilfred 
Niels Arnold does not perceive as a problem in his review of Karen 
Jacob's The Mind's Eye. Annick Bureaud expresses regret that Randall 
Packer and Ken Jordan's otherwise excellent collection, From Wagner 
To Virtual Reality, has a universe with only one woman. In addition 
we are, as ever, fortunate to be given permission to republish Roy 
Behrens' reviews from Ballast, which are always a pleasure to read, 
regardless of the topic, as a display of tact and brevity. Finally, 
we are grateful to be able to republish a review of an important 
conference concerning aspects open source code that I am certain we 
are going to hear more about. Jane Szita, managing editor of Doors of 
Perception, the design futures think tank and conference 
organization, (www.doorsofperception.com) reports on the proceedings 
presented by the Arts Council of England, Academia Europaea, the 
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and Cambridge University 
Law Faculty Intellectual Property Unit. This can be read both in the 
LDR website and, of course, at their own website: 
<http://www.doorsofperception.com/MAGAZINE/codemag.html>.

With such an eclectic mix this month, it seems perhaps most 
appropriate to reprint some of Roy BehrensÕ pieces below as a trailer 
to the main LDR site where all these and earlier reviews can be 
accessed, thanks to our managing editor Bryony Dalefield, our web 
administrator Sudhira Hay, and of course, our panel of reviewers.

Michael Punt  
Editor in Chief 
Leonardo Digital Reviews

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

New this month at Leonardo Digital Reviews 
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/ldr.html>:

Stargazing: Astronomy without a Telescope, by Patrick Moore 
Reviewed by David Topper

The Eye's Mind: Literary Modernism and Visual Culture, by Karen 
Jacobs 
Reviewed by Wilfred Niels Arnold

Multimedia: From Wagner To Virtual Reality, Edited by Randall Packer 
and Ken Jordan 
Reviewed by Annick Bureaud

Morphes by Vyacheslav Koleichuk, by Linnik Yu
Reviewed by E.V. Sintzov

The Mystery of Theatre Space: Lectures on Scenography, by J. Svoboda 
Reviewed by E.V. Sintzov

Semiotics of Culture and Art: A Trial of Encyclopedia (Parts 1 and 
2), by S.T. Machlina 
Reviewed by S.V.Sintzova

The Autobiographical Lectures of Some Prominent Art Educators, edited 
by Ralph Raunft 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

Graphic Design Timeline: A Century of Design Milestones, by Steven 
Heller and Elinor Pettit 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

Art Is Work: Graphic Design, Interiors, Objects, and Illustrations, 
by Milton Glaser 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

Sullivan's City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan, by David 
Van Zanten 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

The Hole in My Vision: An Artist's View of His Own Macular 
Degeneration, by Lee Allen 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

1001 Curious Things: Ye Olde Curiosity Shop and Native American Art, 
by Kate C. Duncan 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

Genius Moves: 100 Icons of Graphic Design, by Steven Heller and Mirko 
Illic 
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

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

The Autobiographical Lectures of Some Prominent Art Educators 

Edited by Ralph Raunft. National Art Education Association, Reston, 
VA, U.S.A., 2001. 370 pp., paper.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens. E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>

During the past quarter century, an interesting series of books was 
produced, entitled The History of Psychology in Autobiography, in 
which prominent psychologists were invited to provide accounts of 
their own training and influences to describe how they came to 
achieve what they did. This book contains similar statements about 
the lives and motivations of 27 leading art educators, among them 
such familiar names as Victor Lowenfeld, Rudolf Arnheim and Edmund 
Burke Feldman. With the exception of essays on Arnheim and Henry 
Schaefer-Simmern, all the selections are autobiographical and came 
from a series of lectures, called "Autobiographical Lectures of 
Outstanding Art Educators," that began in 1972 at Miami University in 
Oxford, Ohio. As with most anthologies, the chief virtue of this one 
is the rich variety of its entries, combined with the feeling of 
presence that comes from hearing a first-hand account of the past. 
Arnheim, for example, recalls a stray bullet (which he still has on 
his writing desk) that crashed through the window of his parents' 
home in Berlin in 1918. Eugene Grisby, Jr., remembers dancing the 
jitterbug at the Savoy Club (where he also sketched the dancers) to 
the music of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington. 
Lowenfeld was a musical prodigy, and a student of Oskar Kokoschka. 
June King McFee was influenced by Alexander Archipenko and the New 
Bauhaus. Nearly all the authors have vivid memories of specific 
moments in childhood when adults encouraged (or discouraged) their 
artistic appetites. When Feldman's mother, for example, took him with 
his drawings to a local artist and asked for advice, the artist 
replied, "Mrs. Feldman, your boy wants to be an artist. He doesn't 
want to be a doctor or a lawyer or a businessman." And he then did 
his best to persuade her "that being an artist was not the worst 
thing in the world." 

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review 16, No. 2, 
Winter 2000-2001.) 

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

Graphic Design Timeline: A Century of Design Milestones 

By Steven Heller and Elinor Pettit. Allworth Press, New York, NY, 
U.S.A., 2000. ISBN: 1-58115-064-4. 

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens. E-mail: <ballast@netins.net>.

History is necessarily an abstraction. It is not what happened in the 
past, but rather the selective interpretation of what happened in the 
past. No wonder then that, as John W. Gardner said, "history never 
looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks 
confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable." It is 
interesting that one of the effects of a timeline (a sequential 
listing of events) is a partial return to the messiness of the 
original time period. At the very least, timelines complicate the 
chain of cause and effect that historians carefully work to unearth. 
In this chronology---which consists of a double-page annual list, 
from 1890 to 2000, of births, deaths and the major developments in 
such categories as graphic arts, advertising, education, consumables, 
arts and culture, industrial design, technology, typography and so 
on---it feels like a ludicrous dadaist trick to find that occurring 
together in 1957, for example, were such incompatibles as the 
invention of Velcro, the launching of Sputnik, the publications of 
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss and On the Road by Jack Kerouac, the 
release of Adrian Frutiger's typeface Univers, and (twice listed) the 
death of the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde. Or that Xerography, 
nylon, the ballpoint pen, and Elsie the Cow were all invented in 
1938. Despite or because of the jolts that result from such "radical 
juxtapositions," this account of the year-to-year growth of design 
(illustrated throughout) could serve as a rich and invaluable text 
for college-level courses in design history. 

(Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review 16, No. 2, 
Winter 2000-2001.) 

=====================================================================
             _________________________________
            |                                 |                              
            |          ISAST NEWS             |
            |_________________________________|

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

< Carl Eugene Loeffler, 1946--2001 >
obituary by Judy Malloy

Carl Eugene Loeffler, 54, visionary founder of La Mamelle, ART COM 
MAGAZINE, and Art Com Electronic Network, died in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania on 5 February, 2001 of complications from an intestinal 
illness.

Loeffler founded the alternative arts space La Mamelle in San 
Francisco in 1975 and began publishing of LA MAMELLE MAGAZINE. In 
1976, La Mamelle Arts Center, a space for conceptual, performance and 
video art, opened at 70 12th St in San Francisco with an exhibition 
of Xerox art. In the ensuing years, other events at the center 
included a woman's performance series organized by Judith Barry; the 
exhibition WEST COAST CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHERS; and the performance 
art series PERFORMING/PERFORMANCE. In 1977, with AVALANCHE MAGAZINE 
in New York, La Mamelle co-coordinated the SEND/RECEIVE PROJECT---an 
early two way satellite transmission between New York and San 
Francisco, with simultaneous broadcast on New York and San Francisco 
cable TV channels.

La Mamelle, later Art Com, was a leading distributor of video art and 
actively organized international exhibitions of video artists, 
including the cable TV series PRODUCED FOR TELEVISION: PERFORMANCE 
ART IN A LIVE BROADCAST SITUATION. In 1986, Art Com Electronic 
Network (ACEN) began operations as the ACEN conference on the Whole 
Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL).

"Well over a decade ago, Canadian seminal telecomputing artist Bill 
Bartlett came into Art Com, wild-eyed and carrying a terminal, 
printer and acoustic modem combo," Loeffler wrote in 1991 to 
introduce "Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications," a 
LEONARDO special issue. "He lifted up my telephone headset, dialed 
out and pushed the headset into the coupler. The printer started 
streaming out text onto paper. He said something like 'This is a 
network for art' and went on to talk about connectivity and 
telecomputing. I became a convert at that moment." 

Initiated by Loeffler with Fred Truck as systems designer, ACEN 
hosted interactive art works, international art networking events, a 
BBS system and ART COM MAGAZINE, which moved online with a series of 
issues on the interface of art and electronic technologies. "We got 
instant feedback," Carl wrote in REFLEX Magazine; "and discovered 
that our 'community' in the online environment was actually diverse, 
a pleasant surprise for an art organization interested in expanding 
the audience for contemporary art." 

In the mid-1990s, Loeffler moved to Pittsburgh, where he was a 
Carnegie fellow at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Project Director 
of Telecommunications and Virtual Reality at the CMU STUDIO for 
Creative Inquiry, and Research Director of SIMLAB, National Robotics 
Engineering Consortium. Focusing on networked virtual reality, his 
work included investigating existence within networked simulation 
environments, in the area of tele-existence, where multiple users 
share or co-inhabit a common distributed space; as well as the 
networked virtual reality environment VIRTUAL POMPEII. 

"Producing VR is very intermedial, and requires an intense systems 
integration of hardware and software," Loeffler told Mark J. Jones in 
an online interview for CYBERSTAGE. "Same is true for the production 
team, a mix of highly specialized persons. It is near impossible to 
produce VR alone, as [compared to] painting for example. To produce 
VR, there is someone like me, the concept and content person, who 
understands the phases of production from start to finish. It is also 
important to understand the field of VR, and produce work that 
addresses and investigates key developments. Then you need CAD 
(computer assisted design) modelers, visual artists doing texture 
maps, many C-language programmers, telecommunication specialists, and 
sound artists. CMU is blessed with extremely talented graduate and 
undergraduate students. It is a very good situation for someone like 
me . . . I'm able to produce my best work to date here." 

Carl Loeffler's books include Performance Anthology: Source Book for 
a Decade of California Performance Art and The Virtual Reality 
Casebook. 

He is survived by his wife Polly, to whom he was married a year and a 
half, and a son, Karl, who lives in Denmark.

Japanese artist Mano Tohei has developed a memorial page at 
<http://www.chabashira.co.jp/~tmano/cel/carl01.html>.

=====================================================================
             __________________________________
            |                                  |
            |               ENDNOTE            |
            |__________________________________|

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

< Endnote >
by Piero Scaruffi. E-mail: <Scaruffi@slip.net>.

There is an interesting story being told these days by a multitude of 
biologists (Humberto Maturana, J.J. Gibson, Ulric Neisser, Richard 
Dawkins), linguists (Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Merlin Donald), 
psychologists (Richard Gregory, Allan Hobson, Stephen Porges), 
physicists (Ilya Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, Roger Penrose, Henry 
Stapp), neurologists (Gerald Edelman, Antonio Damasio, Rodolfo Llina, 
Michael Gazzaniga, Paul MacLean), philosophers (Daniel Dennett), 
archaeologists (Steve Mithen), chemists (Martin Eigen, Graham Cairns-
Smith), mathematicians, computer scientists---you name it. It is the 
story of how our mind came to be, of how "we were born," 
evolutionarily speaking.

It is a story that involves pretty much all the characteristics that 
define what a human being is: language, tools, ideas, emotions and, 
of course, the brain itself. After all, these things had to happen 
for us to be what we are.

The story that we are being told (although it is likely to change 
monthly and, of course, each researcher would give it her/his own 
spin) starts way back when life was created, whether by accident or 
by divine intervention, and primitive cells started moving about 
their environment desperately seeking food.

The story goes on to describe how those cells evolved into more and 
more complex organisms, which developed nervous systems to coordinate 
their movements and, eventually, brains to control their nervous 
systems. This is Darwin's part of the story.

The story also describes how life-forms started using the 
environment. As "ecological" biologists like Neisser and Gibson 
showed us, we are not the only tool-making species. Tools are used 
by, and indispensable to the survival of, spiders (the spider web) 
and most birds (the nest), just to name two. In our hands, tools took 
on a life (evolutionarily speaking) of their own: they started 
evolving and getting more and more complex and more and more useful. 
This was a by-product of our having a better brain. At the same time, 
tools shaped what the brain does, i.e. our mind. As Gregory argued, 
tools are an extension of our mind. Our mind has always been 
conditioned by the tools we use (and certainly is today).

The story (according to, for example, Cairns-Smith) also lets us 
guess that emotions evolved along with brains and tools. Emotions of 
pleasure and pain are present in every living organism we have 
observed (outside of mental institutions). It is just that our 
emotions are, again, more complex. It is likely that the availability 
of tools "freed" our mind of its daily duties. Emotions that were 
meant to help us survive in the wild started flowing through our 
"inactive" mind and evolved into what we call "thought." They, again, 
took on a life of their own. Mind shaped emotions, emotions shaped 
mind; mind shaped tools, tools shaped mind.

As Dawkins and Dennett take over, the story then shifts focus and 
deals with "memes" (the ideas that started populating our minds, and 
spreading from mind to mind, such as religions and ideologies). They 
also evolved and are still evolving (communism just became extinct 
and capitalism is splitting into new "species").

Finally, the story delves into language, as communication underwent a 
similar evolution, mutating from primitive forms of communication to 
William Shakespeare's sonnets to rock music's lyrics and TV 
commercials (as biologists like to point out, evolution is not always 
progress). Donald, Mithen and Pinker have analyzed the transition 
from prehistory of mind to modern mind.

That is the story we are hearing these days. Hidden in this story is 
the secret of art, which is part tool, part meme, part language and 
part emotion. Contrary to what artists fear, art is far from being 
useless and impractical: art embodies all parameters of human 
evolution, the process that has allowed us to survive.

Creativity (science, art, tool-making, technology, whatever form it 
takes) is something we do because we have to do it. Our mind is 
continuously reshaped by the tools we invent and continuously 
explores them. We tend to separate the direct, rational, explicit 
form of communication (which has no name) and the indirect, 
"irrational", implicit form of communication (which we call "art"). 
We can use any tool in either way: we can scream "tiger" to warn our 
peers that a tiger is about to attack the village or we can paint a 
tiger on a rock to signify our fear of tigers. That division is 
artificial. They are both ways of expressing our emotions and/or our 
memes, and either way we are using one of the tools that we have 
invented. We are always creative or we are never creative, as we 
prefer: there is no difference between the two processes. Our mind 
has no choice but to create meaning all the time out of the flow of 
emotions using the tools it has invented.

Technology and creativity are the same thing. And we are both the 
creators and the products of our technology.

=====================================================================
             ______________________________
            |                              |
            |                              |
            |     ANNOUNCEMENTS            |
            |______________________________|

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

< ISEA 2002: Eleventh International Symposium on Electronic Art
Nagoya, Japan >
27-31 October, 2002 

Kiyofumi Motoyama
E-mail: <motoyama@info.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp>

Theme: "Ourai"

"Ourai" is a Japanese word meaning people's comings and goings, 
traffic, association and so on. About 200 years ago, a book titled 
"Nagoya Ourai" was compiled and published in Nagoya and was used as a 
kind of textbook for teaching and writing. ISEA 2002 Nagoya will 
function as a field of "Ourai" (transmission) between art and 
sciences. With this purpose in mind, we are planning several concrete 
sub-themes. For example, how to realize the interface, which concerns 
Ourai (interaction), between the environment and the human body. 
Traffic between cyberspace and real space is also important: urban 
space is the space of Ourai where myriad forms of information 
including i-mode service (Internet access by mobile phone), GIS, ITS, 
etc., interlink. 

Media Art is a field where many problematics brought on by electronic 
society appear, giving rise to alternative approaches and solutions. 
Media art events around the world have presented themes such as "life 
science," "creative sense" and "artificial life" and have had a huge 
impact on the progress of society. 

The Nagoya area is one of the largest industrial areas in Japan. The 
areas around Nagoya Port, which will be the main site of ISEA 2002, 
are rich in traditional culture. With 10 years of experience with 
ARTEC Biennale, Nagoya has a proven reputation in a related field. 
The Nagoya event will also mark a new milestone for ISEA, the first 
time the conference is being held in Asia.

ISEA 2002 will be the arena for three different kinds of Ourai: the 
search for relations with industry, a place where participants from 
Asia and all over the world can communicate and share ideas and where 
citizens can enjoy events. Like the book "Nagoya Ourai," we hope that 
ISEA 2002 will create a new text of alternative literacy in the 
electronic age.

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

< 2001: Building for Space Travel >
Art Institute of Chicago 
Chicago, IL, U.S.A.

With the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the Department of Architecture 
at The Art Institute of Chicago is co-organizing an exhibition 
exploring the evolution and projected visions of architecture and 
design for space travel. 2001: Building for Space Travel will examine 
perceptions of the space age beyond the millennium mark. The 
exhibition will educate the general public about the work that 
architects, civil engineers and industrial and graphic designers have 
done for the space program, as seen through structures from the 
launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, 
Florida, to the new International Space Station, a monumental 17-
country effort.

For more information and exact dates: <http://absolutearts.com/cgi-
bin/news/elaborate.cgi?find=2856>

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

< Signatures of the Invisible---An Art Exhibition Inspired by 
Particle Physics >

Made by artists inspired by their experiences of a particle physics 
laboratory. A collaboration between artists and physicists "that has 
the potential to help redefine the relationship between science and 
art."

WWW: <http://straddle3.net/context/>

=====================================================================
  ___________________
 |                   |
 |      LEA          |
 | WORLD WIDE WEB    |
 |     ACCESS        |
 |___________________|

The LEA Word Wide Web site contains the LEA archives, including all 
back issues, the LEA Gallery, the Profiles, Feature Articles, 
Publications, Opportunities and Announcements. It is accessible using 
the following URL: <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/>
____________________________________________________________
   _________________
  |      LEA        |
  |  PUBLISHING &   |
  |  SUBSCRIPTION   |
  |  INFORMATION    |
  |_________________|

Editorial Address:
Leonardo
425 Market St, Second Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
USA
E-mail: <leo@mitpress.mit.edu>
_____________________________________________________________

Copyright (2001), Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts,
Sciences and Technology

All Rights Reserved.

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by:

The MIT Press Journals
Five Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142 U.S.A.

Reposting of the content of this journal is prohibited without 
permission of Leonardo/ISAST, except for the posting of news and 
events listings which have been independently received. 
Leonardo/ISAST and the MIT Press give institutions permission to 
offer access to LEA within the organization through such resources as 
restricted local gopher and mosaic services. Open access to other 
individuals and organizations is not permitted.
_____________________________________________________________

<  Ordering Information  >

Leonardo Electronic Almanac is free to Leonardo/ISAST members and to 
subscribers to the journal Leonardo for the 2001 subscription year. 
The rate for Non-Leonardo individual subscribers is $35.00, and for 
Non-Leonardo institutional subscribers the rate is $75.00. All 
subscriptions are entered for the calendar year only.

Send orders to: <journals-orders@mit.edu>

Please include full mailing address or MIT Press account number, 
telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address. Please send 
VISA/MasterCard information as well.
_____________________________________________________________
  ________________
 |                |
 |  ADVERTISING   |
 |________________|

Individuals and institutions interested in advertising in Leonardo 
Electronic Almanac, either in the distributed text version or on the 
World Wide Web site should contact  <journals-info@mit.edu> at MIT 
Press for details.
===================================================================
< End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 9 (05) >
===================================================================