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Leonardo Electronic Almanac                 VOLUME 9, NO. 9
                                            September, 2001

Roger Malina,  LEA Executive Editor and acting Editor in Chief
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
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                          |            |
                          |  CONTENTS  |
                          |____________|

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EDITORIAL

by Roger Malina

< Artists and Scientists in Times of War >

FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

< In the E-box >

LEONARDO JOURNAL

< Art Computer: Emphasizing Aesthetics in Computing >
by Paul A. Fishwick
< The Planetary Collegium Charter >
by Roy Ascott

FEATURED TEXTS

< Statements from the Burning Man Festival > 

LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS

< How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination >
reviewed by Robert Pepperell and Curtis E.A. Karnow

ISAST NEWS

< The Spirit and Power of Water: Seminar and Concert >
< Call for Research Materials and Interview Subjects for Leonardo/OLATS 
Pioneers and Pathbreakers Project on E.A.T. >
< Stephen Wilson Book-Release Party >
< Leonardo Co-Sponsors Workshop on Aesthetic Computing in July 2002 >

ANNOUNCEMENTS

< Harold Cohen's AARON Now Available as Shareware >

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                          |   EDITORIAL   |
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< Artists and Scientists in Times of War >

by Roger Malina, <rmalina@alum.mit.edu>

Some time ago, I was contacted by Leonardo co-editor Michele Emmer, who 
proposed a Leonardo editorial project on "The Role of Artists and 
Scientists in Times of War." At that time Michele found himself under 
the flight paths of bombers headed for Kosovo. As a result of Michele's 
initiative, Leonardo has published a number of articles by artists and 
scientists documenting their work that seeks to grapple with the 
continuing conflicts in our world. Contributions have come from members 
of the Leonardo network, from Colombia to Los Angeles, from Italy to 
Russia.

Today, I am writing this from my office in Marseille, and overhead I 
hear the bombers readying for action and warships are steaming for the 
Mediterranean. Marseille is a port city and has been for at least 2,600 
years. This city has witnessed the warriors of innumerable cultures 
pass through, from Hannibal's elephants to the Third Reich's enforcers, 
from the Crusaders to Napoleon, from Roman centurions to Arab 
stallions. Now Americans and their allies are in a new war for minds 
and hearts, for bodies and resources.

I am the American Director of a French astrophysics laboratory. Last 
week we held our three minutes of silence and, like many of you, I felt 
emotionally reassured by the spontaneous outpouring of support and the 
cry "We are all Americans," echoing the rallying cry of "We are all 
Berliners" at the peak of the Cold War. Today I feel less sure of the 
reassurance. Are we all Americans? Or is this the wrong kind of 
categorization? I have no doubt the phrase "We are all Romans" was 
heard two millennia ago on these very streets of Marseille. And only 50 
years ago, my father Frank Malina, founder of Leonardo, was one of the 
founding staff of UNESCO--a generation dedicated to building world 
organizations that would prevent the occurrence of a new world war. At 
that time we were all Europeans.

During the week of the atrocities in New York and Washington, we were 
meeting here in Marseille with American colleagues, discussing our 
dreams to build a new space telescope that would study supernovae, the 
largest of cosmic explosions, in order to understand the very forces 
that structure our universe. Nervously, we joked that the same 
telescopes we were imagining to unravel the mysteries of the newly 
discovered repulsive force (ironically called Dark Energy) could also 
be pointed down at the earth, and with sufficient resolution and 
sensitivity, track warm bodies moving around the surface of the earth.

We live in a highly linked system that has particular vulnerabilities. 
The crimes in New York and Washington resulted in thousands of victims 
and tens of thousands of displaced people. This is far less than the 
human losses in recent years in floods in Bangladesh or earthquakes in 
Turkey or China. Yet the attack in the U.S. triggered almost instant 
global reaction. The largest industry on the planet, the tourist 
industry, has seen a drop in business by a factor of several. Already 
layoffs and increased unemployment numbers in the hundreds of thousands 
in the U.S. alone within 1 week of the event. We live in a highly 
linked world. The same Internet that promotes diversity of opinion and 
of analysis can also show global oscillations that manifest themselves 
as group-think and group instabilities. Whether in the bunkers of Camp 
David or the new Arab quarters of Marseille, each one of us is forced 
to analyze, to try to understand and decide what is an appropriate 
response. And in a highly linked network, a well-mobilized minority of 
the world population can lead to large-scale system response. And as we 
all know, inaction, lurking or listening in the network, is also part 
of the system behavior that will determine the course of future 
outcomes.

Since the attacks, the Leonardo editors, like all of you, have been in 
touch making sure that each is well, and bringing friendship to those 
who have experienced deep loss in the attacks. We thank all those who 
have contacted us and the Leonardo community, and we send our support 
to all those hurt and displaced.

Now the Leonardo network must decide an appropriate course of action. 
Michele Emmer is preparing a new editorial, updating "The Role of 
Artists and Scientists in Times of War" project. The Leonardo 
publications and projects belong to the Leonardo community. We are open 
to your ideas and thoughts on how we can all contribute to a saner and 
safer world that respects the rights and dignity of every person.


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                     ____________________________
                    |                            |
                    |   FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK   |
                    |____________________________|

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< In the E-box >

In the previous issue of LEA (Vol. 9, No. 8), we announced that 
Leonardo/ISAST had secured a U.S. trademark on the use of the word 
"Leonardo" in our areas of activity. However, we mused whether there 
was a way to open-source or "copyleft" the term Leonardo while 
protecting our copyright, since one aim was to help spread the ideas 
behind the metaphoric use of the word Leonardo. here is one response:


Dear Roger Malina and Leonardo staff:

Congratulations on establishing your trademark in the U.S. As a writer 
on the issue of saving "public goods" (see Not for Sale: In Defense of 
Public Goods, Westview Press, Boulder CO, 2000, Chapter 15, "Language 
as a Public Good under Threat: The Private Ownership of Brand  Names"), 
I followed your case with interest. Roger Malina asks for suggestions 
in "copyleft" re: your new trademark rights. I suspect an answer within 
current law is that you may selectively issue licenses for use of the 
mark with whatever restrictions you choose. There might be a way to 
have a registration form on your website that would more or less 
automate the task of issuing licenses that would bind the licensees not 
to ever claim primary rights, nor to infringe the other holders of the 
Leonardo mark.

Best, 
Michael H. Goldhaber
E-mail: <mgoldh@well.com>, <http://www.well.com/user/mgoldh/>.

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

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

< Statements from the Burning Man Festival > 

[Following are statements by artists who have participated in the 
Burning Man Festival, an annual arts/cyberculture festival in the Black 
Rock Desert of Nevada. See LEA Vol. 9, Nos. 4, 6 and 8 for additional 
statements.]

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

The Ribcage 
by Jenne Giles and Philip Bonham 

The Ribcage is an evocation of childhood. Standing 17 feet high, it 
evokes  the physical structures of both a ribcage and a birdcage. Like 
both, a pendulum swings in its core: the swing of a birdcage, the heart 
of a ribcage. This was intended as a project for the heart: as a 
participant swings in the chest, s/he literally IS the heart of Burning 
Man, the force that makes the living body of the event go. Therefore, 
context was extremely important to the conceptual force of this 
project. 

Since Burning Man is about interactive art, we chose a difficult task: 
to construct a jungle gym that 26,400 people could climb on 
continuously over the course of the week. But for each participant, we 
wished to provide the following experience: The participant had to be 
able to climb entirely over and around the piece, walk through the 
belly region (under the sternum) and out through the spine, and up the 
ribs to sit in the swing, suspended high above the ground. Participants 
would feel small when  incorporated into the body, with a 1:3 ratio of 
person to the piece. The swinging motion would simulate the beating of 
the heart, with a slow palpitation and breeze. 

We hoped that in doing this, the participant would feel as if actually 
transformed into the heart. The project has a darker side too: instead 
of the exuberant, unrestricted movement of playground swings, which we 
all are familiar with from childhood, the swing of the ribcage is 
restricted by the size of the chest cavity, creating a sense of being 
incorporated within the body, a feeling of restriction as an embodied 
being. As participants look out through the ribs/sternum, the piece 
also conveys hope, just as a bird swinging and singing in his cage is a 
powerful symbol of eternal hope despite limitations. 

The Ribcage was conceived as an autobiographical metaphor, growing, as 
it did, from the heart of true existence artists' relationship. It 
expresses the sense of nesting that we were building at the time. 
Conversely, it also became a metaphor for the cage of love from which 
we both needed to escape. It is rich, in retrospect, with the human 
drama played through its construction. But that is my experience of its 
birth and growth as the artist, of the life it took on in my eyes, and 
not of the carefree jungle-gym that most participants experienced. 

The Ribcage is currently being reconstructed on private property with a 
sweeping hill before it, so that when one swings on it, s/he will feel 
that sense of suspension and flight. A garden will be planted around it 
and the structure itself will become a grape arbor, eventually bearing 
fruit from its bones. 

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

Firefall 
by Cynthia "Kiki" Pettit, E-mail: <kiki@kiki.org>, www: 
<http://burningideas.com/~firefall>. 

The Cauldron is a two-tiered fountain, like one in an Italian villa, 
but on fire. This "firefall" was inspired on a camping trip with my 
friend Leslie. He brought the camping gear and I brought the food and 
fuel for his camping stove. We filled the stove, but it would not 
light. We discovered that the new bottle of fuel I had bought was full 
of water---someone had used it up and returned it, filled with water. 
This was a blessing in disguise. We emptied the fuel from the stove 
into a paper cup and---having nothing to do and no way to prepare our 
food---my friend lit the fuel. It burned for a while, down to the level 
of the water, then went out. This was the summer of 1998. I then 
started doing experiments to see if I could maintain a flame on flowing 
water by continually injecting fuel under the water, and the firefall 
was born. After I had done this, I knew I had to build something larger 
for Burning Man. 

Firefall water flows mirror-calm in a thin sheet over the lip of a 
bowl, with yellow flames swirling across the top and sheets of soft, 
blue flames chasing up and down over the edge. The top bowl is at an 
easy height for people to scoop up the flaming water in their bare 
hands. A small amount of fuel is added just beneath the water, rising 
and spreading, like a drop of oil, very thinly across the surface. Once 
the fuel is lit, the water itself appears to be on fire. Fuel is 
continuously pumped to the top to maintain the flames, and the 
remainder of the fuel is burned up at the bottom so that none is 
recirculated with the water. One can hold the flaming water in one's 
bare hands, because the water comes between oneself and the fuel, 
giving protection. 

The Cauldron is the largest firefall I have built. It is 6 ft wide at 
the bottom and stands just over 3 ft tall. It holds approximately 450 
gallons of water, all told, and has a gas-powered water pump that 
recirculates at 15,600 gph (gallons per hour)---nearly 4 gallons a 
second---through massive, 3-in diameter hoses and pipes. It burns five 
gallons of camping fuel, or naphtha, in a couple of hours, and can heat 
the water to the point of its being too hot to hold in about three 
hours. 

Using found items both to realize my vision and to drive it, I scoured 
such diverse sources as industrial salvage yards, agricultural 
equipment distributors, petroleum wholesalers and residential 
landscapers. The Cauldron was built for Burning Man 1999 and has 
returned to Burning Man every year since. 

For safety reasons, I light the Cauldron only at night---the small blue 
flames are too difficult to see in the day in case of an emergency. 
Once lit, the fuel is adjusted so that the flame stays lit at the top 
(for aesthetic reasons) and below (to continually burn off all extra 
fuel). Because people interact with the firefall, at least two spotters 
make sure that people's hair and costumes are tucked away, although 
there have been no incidents in over two years and over 30 hours of 
run-time at Burning Man and elsewhere. 

Though The Cauldron may seem big, it is dwarfed by the vast playa at 
Burning Man. When lit, the crowd around it is close and quiet. People 
are drawn in and often do not leave until the fuel and water pump are 
shut off for the night. Unlike other large, explosive, in-your-face 
fire art at Burning Man, The Cauldron firefall invites people to touch 
the flames in an intimate and personal way. 


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                          | LEONARDO JOURNAL    |
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< Art Computer: Emphasizing Aesthetics in Computing >

by Paul A. Fishwick, University of Florida, E-mail: 
<fishwick@cise.ufl.edu> 

I recently finished teaching a class on *aesthetic computing*, with the 
express purpose of exploring the use of artistic methods and processes 
within common representations found in computing. Computer science 
employs a wide variety of modeling types for portraying information and 
algorithms. For example, finite state machines (FSM) represent discrete 
phases for a natural or artificial process and entity-relationship (ER) 
diagrams represent how information is connected via entities, 
attributes and relations among these. 

There are many motivations behind aesthetic computing, with the primary 
one being the ever-increasing trend toward personalization in all 
products, including human-computer interfaces. Mass customization is 
affecting not only the array of individualized products afforded by 
rapid prototyping fabrication and other advances in manufacturing, but 
also re-presentations of media. Since representations for computing are 
forms of media, there is ample opportunity to investigate how 
personalized interfaces and model structures can be used to build 
alternative views of phenomena and software. If the economy of labor 
and production permits us to construct both virtual and augmented 
constructs as easily as typographically oriented, flat media, then we 
are on the brink of a revolution in how we think about models for 
computing and, ultimately, representation in mathematics. We did not 
choose flat artifacts such as paper because they served as ideal 
repositories for conveying knowledge. Instead, they were chosen out of 
purely economic reasons, and with the introduction of the computer, the 
economies have shifted significantly to permit us to return to ancient 
forms of representation (albeit in virtual or augmented forms), as well 
as to generate new ones.
 
The aesthetic computing class had 10 students, all of whom are enrolled 
in the relatively new Digital Arts and Sciences (DAS) curricula. DAS 
students can be enrolled either in the College of Fine Arts or the 
College of Engineering. While my students happen to come from 
engineering, all students take a common pool of courses from both 
colleges, and in their junior and senior years, they take digital world 
production studio classes to facilitate work in teams. A good deal of 
what transpired in the 15-week class is stored on the web. I lectured 
for several weeks, and students each gave talks. Invited lecturers from 
art, music, English (new media) and information technology provided 
needed injections of fresh ideas. Students were required to take 
specific computing models and translate them into aesthetic, 
personalized, expressions. The two primary end products of their labor 
were physical and virtual models. The physical model was, as it sounds, 
a multimedia sculpture or architecturally oriented piece, and the 
virtual model was built in software using tools such as VRML, 3D Studio 
MAX and Flash. The physical model serves the following purposes: 1) an 
artwork capturing the semantics of a computing model, 2) a tutorial 
device for teaching modeling, 3) an architectural model for future 
actualization and 4) a prototype for a future tangible user interface 
with physical components being used to construct the computing model, 
which is *sensed*, identified, and automatically input to a computer. 
The virtual model had similar purposes to the physical, but emphasized 
attributes hard to achieve with physical materials: interaction, 
dynamics and world navigation.
 
With such a new subject, the students and I discovered new ideas and 
incrementally forged a methodology for aesthetic computing. Since the 
students are hybrid artists/engineers, I found it easy to talk about 
the philosophy and principles underlying semiotics, analogy and 
metaphor; however, we ran into a snag in the application of the 
metaphor. The use of metaphor plays a crucial role in taking existing 
computing model representations and extending these into a more 
exploratory, aesthetic medium. Ideally, some time in the future, one 
might imagine building computing models, directly from scratch, using 
artificial buildings, landscapes, people, and off-the-web-shelf 
objects. But, we must begin with what we know and extend ourselves into 
the new domain. Thus, metaphor was carefully applied with clearly 
enunciated source and target structures to allow students to begin with 
known model representations in order to generate target aesthetic ones. 
For example, one might begin with a flowchart (a type of source 
computing model, representing control flow), invent a target metaphor 
style (say, landscape architecture) and then specify the formal mapping 
from source to target. 

The snag was one where many students applied the metaphor but without 
any rules. An example of this would be mapping a specific software 
flowchart to a particular scene from ShakespeareÕs Hamlet. While this 
is a valid mapping, and fascinating as a project, there are no rules 
that allow for a more general engineering framework. An example of a 
rule might be "Decision Blocks in the flowchart shall be mapped to 
stage locations in a Play." This rule allows people to more easily 
understand the semantics of the flowchart in the target theater domain 
without specifically knowing Hamlet. It may be that these rules assist 
in communication and facilitate faster modeling, whereas a dearth of 
rules promotes a more secure, encrypted, model. So, both mapping 
approaches may see their uses.
 
Overall, the class was a great success and a lot of material was 
presented and absorbed on both sides of the pedagogical fence. There 
are a number of issues remaining, and many valid, mind-probing 
questions such as 1) How do we tackle the cultural dilemma of going 
from flat typographical representations to more aesthetic ones?, 2) 
Will communication suffer as we promote a personalized Tower of Babel?, 
and 3) When will the tools catch up to where it will be practical to 
use these sorts of aesthetically-inspired models over todayÕs 
Platonically oriented, aesthetically-challenged representations? Still, 
if we ask ourselves how we might have evolved language, mathematics, 
and computing 4000 years ago had we owned a Holodeck, I very much doubt 
that weÕd be representing our world using compressed, dead plant 
matter. We have a long way to go, and it is now time to pay more 
attention to aesthetic computing---using art to remake technology at 
its very roots.

EditorÕs note: Leonardo is co-sponsoring the workshop on
Aesthetic computing being organised by Paul Fishwick. See
Below for further details and at 
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~fishwick/cap6836/ac.pdf

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

< The Planetary Collegium Charter >

We are pleased to republish here the Planetary Collegium Charter by Roy 
Ascott as part of the Planetary Collegium project he leads for 
Leonardo. In this project Leonardo seeks to  document and stimulate new 
thinking on educational structures and approaches that re imagine how 
we learn and teach. Just as in the middle ages the University emerged 
as an institutional construct given certain social and technological 
constraints, so the Planetary Collegium seeks to image new 
possibilities within todayÕs social and technological context.

The Planetary Collegium Charter

by Roy Ascott, E-mail: <roy@caiia-star.net> 

The conceptual scheme of the Planetary Collegium starts with the 
recognition of its trans-disciplinary nature, at once poetic and 
pragmatic, located beyond the limitations of the university where, in 
general, only multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary projects can be 
achieved. 

This trans-disciplinary perspective brings into a holistic field of 
inquiry the parameters of art, science, technology and consciousness 
research. 

The Collegium is concerned with advanced research, generally undertaken 
by mature practitioners and theorists whose work (as a prior condition 
of fellowship in the Collegium) constitutes a significant contribution 
to the advancement of the field. 

Applications of the research are found in those areas of the arts and 
technology, media, cultural policy and education that are user-
centered, participatory and open-ended.

The Collegium constitutes a community of researchers linked in a 
planetary network but grouped in regional hubs. The network affords 
global interaction at the cutting edge of communications technology, 
while the hubs provide focused meeting places for research activity.

Collegium researchers typically work in a constructive and interactive 
mixed reality environment, addressing issues of the post-biological 
culture, challenging the orthodoxies of mind and body, space and time, 
along with their social and metaphysical paradigms, and building new 
systems and structures for the future. 

The Collegium is dedicated to researching the means by which new 
meaning, perception and experience can be created from human 
interaction and collaboration within innovative systems and creative 
contexts.

The Collegium finds its transdisciplinary practice and theory at the 
confluence of a wide diversity of research streams where, for example, 
digital systems, molecular biology, neuroscience or nano-technology 
meet with media arts, ethnobotany, linguistics, cultural anthropology, 
urban design or astrophysics.

Research work requiring for its realization capital-intensive 
technologies is undertaken at sites external to the Hub, for which the 
Collegium is not liable, and with which an individual researcher is 
personally contracted.

The CollegiumÕs research community develops discourse, behaviors, 
attitudes, relationships and values that reflect and in turn affect the 
processes of transdisciplinarity and environmental hybridization. 

To maintain the rigor and quality of research at the highest level, and 
to ensure cogent, critical and creative dialogue, the community of 
researchers in any one region will be necessarily small and compact.

Building on the model and research methodologies developed at CAiiA-
STAR (http://www.caiia-star.net) each hub-group of researchers will 
meet at a succession of other hub locations around the world, thereby 
exchanging and generating a wide range of strategies, outcomes and 
values.

The Collegium research is pursued typically at the doctoral and post-
doctoral level. Where outcomes are recognized by the award of a Ph.D., 
the appropriate university will have validated, and financially 
invested in, the Collegium program. Outcomes can similarly be 
recognized, in tandem with the University Ph.D. or separately, by a 
self-standing Collegium award.

The Collegium anticipates that its own award will equate with, or 
eventually  supersede, the university Ph.D. as the recognized 
qualification in its field of transdisciplinary inquiry and practice.

Whilst each hub will reflect architecturally and culturally the 
particularity of the region in which it is situated, the size of 
membership, organizing principles and operating procedure remain the 
same throughout the Collegium as a whole. In every case, a diversity of 
persons, practices and objectives will be maintained.

The Planetary Collegium thus seeks to address contemporary issues with 
future visions while building on insights of the past, however distant 
or exotic, and to discover and develop new approaches to creative work 
in ways that traditional institutions are unable to accommodate or 
support.

The Collegium will be the advocate for change and transformation at 
many personal, social, cultural and environmental levels, and will seek 
support, through direct funding or collaboration, from those agencies, 
local and global, dedicated to similar ends.

© Roy Ascott 2001 

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            |                                 |                             
            |    LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS     |
            |            2001.09              |
            |_________________________________|

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We are pleased this month to welcome to the LDR reviews panel a new 
reviewer---Elisa Giaccardi, from the Fitzcaraldo Foundation. Her review 
of Arnold Pacey's book, Meaning in Technology, touches on the main 
themes of the material that we are covering this month: the collision 
of technological and visual culture. This seems to be symptomatic of an 
important focus at the moment and we are pleased to be able to offer 
two substantial accounts of the book How to Build a Mind: Toward 
Machines with Imagination, by Igor Aleksander, alongside a reflection 
on the state of the methodologies and claims of visual culture by Sean 
Cubbit. David Topper's review of The Science of Illusion reiterates the 
theme as he evaluates the book relative to our constituency and also 
points us to another text, Robert L. Solso's Cognition and the Visual 
Arts (MIT Press, 1996), which he values highly. Wilfred Niels Arnold's 
assessment of Martin Kemp's Visualizations: the Nature Book of Art and 
Science points out some lack of depth in an otherwise refreshing 
collection of material on the shared perspectives of scientists and 
artists that addresses the topic more generically. According to Curtis 
E. A. Karnow, The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution, by 
Pierre Baldi, tends to veil the cultural construction of the 
relationship between science and its impact in an otherwise 
comprehensive argument concerning the future of molecular biology. 

Elsewhere, Nicola Triscott has given us a walk-through of some of the 
events currently included in the Venice Biennale while reviews of 
films, CDs and other events (listed below) can all be explored at the 
LDR website. As ever, LDR is grateful to the panel of reviewers, whose 
biographies are listed on the site, and to Sudhira Hay, Bryony 
Dalefield and Kathleen Quillian who make it all work in their 
respective ways.

Michael Punt 
Editor-in-chief, Leonardo Digital Reviews: ldr@leonardo.org

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

New this month at Leonardo Digital Reviews, September 2001 
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/ldr.html>:

The Science of Illusions, by Jacques Ninio
Reviewed by David Topper

Material Legacies: Bamboo, edited by Enrique Martinez and Marco 
Steinberg 
Reviewed by Kevin Murray

Visualizations: the Nature Book of Art and Science, by Martin Kemp 
Reviewed by Wilfred Niels Arnold

How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination, by Igor 
Aleksander 
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell

Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, by Marita 
Sturken and Lisa Cartwright 
Reviewed by Sean Cubitt

How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination, by Igor 
Aleksander 
Reviewed by Curtis Karnow

The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution, by Pierre Baldi 
Reviewed by Curtis Karnow

Meaning in Technology, by Arnold Pacey 
Reviewed by Elisa Giaccardi

Constructivism Laboratory, by A. Lavretiev 
Reviewed by Ekaterina Lavrentieva

An Aesthetics from Below and Aesthetics from Above - Quantitative Way 
of Rapprochement, by Y.N. Rags 
Reviewed by Alexander P. Mentyukov

Playtime by National Health and Barcode Music, by GŸnter Schroth
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell.

The Plateau: View from the High Plains of Art, Venice Biennale 2001, 10 
June - 4 November 2001 
Reviewed by Nicola Triscott.

Prometheus-2000: On the destiny of Light-Music at the Threshold of New 
Century International Conference, 2-6 October 2000, Institute 
"Prometheus," Kazan, Russia
Reviewed by V. Basov.

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

How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination 

by Igor Aleksander (Uncorrected proof). Columbia University Press, NY. 
U.S.A. 2001. 192 pp., illus. b/w. $24.95 ISBN: 0-231-12014-1. 

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell. E-mail: <pepperell@cwcom.net>.

[For a comparative review of the same book, see Curtis Karnow's review 
following this one.]

It was fortunate that I was offered an uncorrected proof copy of How to 
Build a Mind to review just prior to attending the "Toward a Science of 
Consciousness" conference where both Igor Aleksander and I were to 
speak. It gave me the opportunity to discuss many issues arising from 
the book directly with its author in an atmosphere charged with debates 
about the very nature of consciousness. In reviewing this book I have 
tried to give the reader a sense of that atmosphere as well as a flavor 
of some of the debates themselves.

"Could a machine think?" pondered Ludwig Wittgenstein, just at the 
point in the mid-1940s when the construction of an "electronic brain" 
seemed theoretically possible. The broad implications of this question 
have fueled one of the most heated debates in contemporary thought - 
the nature of consciousness and how it might be mechanized. Igor 
Aleksander is no newcomer to the field or the debate. As this partly 
autobiographical book makes clear, he has been actively concerned with 
modeling the mind in machines since the early 1960s and is probably 
best known today for his work with neural networks at Imperial College, 
London. Since then, he has been writing prodigiously on the subject of 
artificial intelligence, with many books and respected papers to his 
name. How to Build a Mind is clearly an attempt to popularize a subject 
that, to many outsiders, is technically and philosophically complex. 
But the book is also intended as a serious intervention in the debate 
from someone who, despite the technical focus of his work, seems to 
want to frame the "hard" problem of engineering a mind in the 
"squidgier" problems of human experience, philosophy and, in 
particular, the imagination.

First we discussed my concern that the main title could be regarded as, 
at best, over-optimistic or, at worst, misleading with its echoes of 
some unfortunately titled books such as Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness 
Explained." One senses the pressures that commercial publishers exert 
in the interests of stoking controversy and gaining attention. It seems 
that Aleksander would be more comfortable with the less emphatic 
subtitle "Toward Machines with Imagination," a title that certainly 
summarizes the aim of his current research, although some may argue 
even the claim implicit in this phrase is premature.

Aleksander makes the point early in the book that he wishes to shift 
the locus of the discussion away from the concept of consciousness 
towards the idea of imagination. He is looking for the "force of 
consciousness in the power of the imagination. I need to understand how 
my brain, an evolved machine of awesome complexity, can provide me with 
not only pleasurable reverie but also all the other elements of my 
mental life." (p. 2). This extract characterizes what perhaps is unique 
about Aleksander's approach. He offers a combination of pragmatic 
mechanism, derived from his background in engineering, with a profound 
respect for, and curiosity about, the more ephemeral aspects of human 
existence such as art, philosophy and mind. He is critically aware of 
the pitfalls and blind-alleys into which discussions about artificial 
intelligence can stumble and his own position, evolved over years of 
research and contemplation, is lucid whilst not overly prescriptive. 
For example, he agreed with me that cognitive science has led some 
researchers to confuse the thing being modeled (the brain) with the 
model itself (the computer). But he is also clear about the advantages 
of the methodology of modeling the neural functions of the brain in 
software: "We use computers to get to grips with the complexities of 
neural structures in much the same way that a weather forecaster uses 
computers to get to grips with the complexities of the weather. Nobody 
complains about the latter on the grounds that Ôcomputers cannot be the 
weather;Õ they only complain if it rains when fair weather is 
forecast." (p. 172). In the same way that meteorological models might 
be able to predict hurricanes and save human lives, he argues neural 
models may have medical applications that help to relieve human 
suffering. Much of the work he currently does is funded by the Wellcome 
Trust medical foundation with a view to potential treatment of 
neurological disorders.

I pressed him on some of the more ethically troubling questions that 
have been implicated in AI research over the years, particularly the 
involvement of the military and the extent to which we are willing to 
hand over responsibility to machines for their own conduct. He offers 
an entirely practical constraint on the "out of control" scenario in 
which researchers might design machines that are no longer accountable 
to human operators: "I think that would be thoroughly irresponsible 
and, in fact, it would be against standard industrial engineering 
legislature. Anything that has the ability to interact with humanity 
has to be certified. This is the argument I always have with Kevin 
Warwick. He says things can get out of hand. Maybe you don't want to 
relinquish responsibility but they [the military] will take it away 
from you, they'll build these things that will go around killing 
everybody. Now, the military do have a mandate to build things that 
kill people, but that has its own legislature. If they wanted to 
destroy Moscow it would be far more difficult to build a conscious 
robot to do it than just drop a missile."

One of the most contentious questions addressed during the conference 
was the location of consciousness - more specifically whether or not it 
was located in the brain, or the degree to which it might be so. Many 
of the eminent invited speakers who addressed the question were 
emphatic that consciousness is specifically a product of the brain and 
were swift to dismiss alternative views. However, there was a 
significant minority that resisted this dominant position and the 
consequent arguments were, for me, amongst the most stimulating of the 
conference. The question seems to turn on the extent to which one 
recognizes anything other than the brain as necessary to consciousness, 
in particular the body (with all its sensory feedback) and the 
environment (with all its active stimuli). In other words, the brain is 
obviously a necessary condition of consciousness, but is it sufficient? 
Again Aleksander treads a pragmatic path between the two extremes of 
this debate. Although he does not address the question directly in How 
to Build a Mind, the book does contain a summary of his previous book, 
Impossible Minds, in which he is fairly explicit about the minimum 
conditions required for a conscious entity: "One of the pillars of 
Impossible Minds is that anything that is conscious must have some 
connection with world events or juxtapositions of world events." (p. 
154). He is also aware of the flaws in the so-called "brain in a vat" 
model, which downplays or ignores the feedback between the brain and 
the body. Thus, in his current research aimed at building a realistic 
model of consciousness he is using programmed neural nets in active 
robots in order to simulate the ongoing experience of an agent that is 
conscious of, and responsive to, a dynamic world. To my mind, such an 
approach puts Aleksander firmly on the "extensionist" side of the 
argument (although I doubt he would use the term). What's more, his 
emphasis on imagination also implies some sort of emotional or visceral 
constituent to consciousness, which in turn implies the co-operation of 
a functioning body. I suggested to Aleksander that his views were 
sympathetic to those who saw consciousness as a distributed rather than 
localized phenomenon: "I wouldn't have started talking about that by 
saying 'where is consciousness located?' but more like what does 
consciousness involve, or need, to exist. I see it as something that 
does emanate from the brain and to us our consciousness feels like a 
single point event in our head and then everything we experience out 
there, other people, political systems, whatever, is a way in which 
this thinking we do, which is just the firing of neurons, reaches out 
way beyond the confines of our brain. It's this 'out-thereness' that I 
find totally fascinating. I don't believe in brains in vats."

Perhaps Aleksander's most original contribution to current ideas about 
machines and consciousness is his foregrounding of imagination, which 
provides the main thesis of this book. Thus he restates Wittgenstein's 
question "could a machine think?" as "can a machine imagine?" (p.3). He 
goes on: "The answer will not be revealed in the next paragraph or two 
but, hopefully, will begin to emerge by the end of the book." Whilst 
much of the book is concerned with sketching the historical, 
philosophical and technical context from which the AI debate emerges, 
the last few chapters attempt to attack the problem of consciousness 
directly with a theory of mind based on "ego-centeredness". For 
Aleksander this means a neural area in a brain simulation that 
"coherently represents the world from the point of view of the 
observer. This receives signals both through visual channels and from 
the muscular activities of the system, giving it the capacity to 
reconstruct objects as they exist in the world but as seen from the 
point of view of the observer. The ego-centered area represents the 
world as it appears to be as an extension of oneself" (p. 158). Without 
giving a technical explanation he goes on to claim that such an area is 
also capable of imaginative manipulation: "Indeed this system is 
capable of imagining Ôa blue banana with red spots,Õ even if such an 
object has never been part of its learning experience. The way in which 
this happens is that the words stimulate specialist sensor-centered 
areas that represent blueness, red spottedness, and banananess, while 
the ego-centered world area does the rest." (p. 159). Hence the ability 
that some of Aleksander's research machines apparently share with 
humans of being able to "see things that are not there" or "things they 
have never seen". I asked him about the relationship between 
imagination and consciousness: "I see imagination as a major ingredient 
of consciousness. It's the most beautiful part of consciousness and 
it's the thing that I wanted to write the book about." Those outside 
the closed world of cognitive science should surely welcome this 
interest in the more aesthetic tendencies of human thought from such a 
prominent mechanist. Aleksander's machines (dubbed with names such as 
WISARD and MAGNUS) offer compelling evidence of the power of computer 
systems to mimic human behavior, even that which seems most un-
computer-like. Perhaps what is less obvious to Aleksander's overall 
case as it is presented here is the role of language in this whole 
system and how words can give rise to pictures. He distances himself 
from Wittgenstein's early "picture theory of the mind" in which mental 
images might be seen as merely illustrating words (p. 169). Instead he 
offers a more comprehensive view of conscious experience, which might 
include all the other sensory qualities pertaining to a thing such as, 
for example, a "cup." But I for one am not convinced that the 
correlation between a verbal description and a mental image is as 
straightforward as the "blue banana" example might suggest. Contrary to 
what several speakers at the conference claimed, I am not able to close 
my eyes and conjure up an image of a blue banana or a red lemon in 
anything but the foggiest way. I can certainly conceive of such objects 
but I do not perceive them as sharp, bright pictures in the sense 
implied by Aleksander and others. In order to experience a dream-like 
pictorial lucidity, it seems to me, one must be either asleep or in 
such as deep state of relaxation as to be almost oblivious to verbal 
stimuli. The obvious exception is waking hallucination, which is not 
directly addressed in this book but which might actually be closer to 
what is happening in the computer simulations described. As I raised 
this problem Aleksander mentioned the common example given by visual 
working memory psychologists that demonstrates that one can count the 
windows of one's house whilst attending to some other task, e.g. 
listening to a lecture. To do this one does not have to have a perfect 
depiction of the house since the fact of attending to the windows 
distorts the "picture" entirely. Yet I remain unconvinced that such 
"visualization" (which I'd prefer to call conception) is primarily a 
"visual process" in the sense implied at the end of Chapter 11, where 
Chris Koch and Francis Crick's work on the anatomy of the visual system 
is cited. It may be that such "visualizations" are as much linguistic 
constructions as they are apparitions in the visual apparatus. In 
neurobiological terms it would be interesting to look at any data 
pertaining to the quality of imagination of individuals who have 
impaired visual function and to determine whether or not, for example, 
they could complete a similar counting task based on experience of the 
sense of touch.

"How to Build a Mind" raised a number of other points that stimulated 
our discussion such as the limitations of digital systems for modeling 
reality, Zen theories of mind, feedback loops and internal states of 
networks, mathematical recursion and drug induced hallucinations. This 
is some indication of the fact that, although quite short, the book 
holds a great range of ideas and offers a rich set of possible 
connections to be explored. It is also reflective of the multi-
disciplinary approach to the problem of consciousness that the 
conference itself was seeking to foster. Yet the book has structural 
weaknesses that, in my view, could have been minimized with more 
careful editing. In particular the regular insertion of imagined 
dialogues with philosophical figures is sometimes illuminating, as when 
discussing Kant (p. 81), whilst at other times strange, as when 
discussing Thales (p. 17). The last couple of chapters, which contain 
the bulk of Aleksander's current thesis, seem more compacted and opaque 
than the rest of the book, perhaps not surprising as he tries to 
present a complex set of ideas within a few pages. Setting aside these 
deficiencies, I felt that How to Build a Mind strongly reflected the 
author's mixture of pragmatism and inquisitiveness. This is not a book 
of philosophy yet it has, I believe, worthwhile philosophical 
implications. It is not really even a book about computers since, for 
Aleksander, the computer simulation is just a means to an end. Rather 
it is about purposeful inquiry into the nature of the human mind. As 
such it indicates the extent to which our thought is currently 
understood, and more importantly the much greater extent to which it 
remains unknown. 

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

How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination 

by Igor Aleksander (Uncorrected proof). Columbia University Press, NY, 
U.S.A. 2001. 192 pp., illus. b/w. $24.95 ISBN: 0-231-12014-1. 

Reviewed by Curtis E.A. Karnow, E-mail: <cek@sonnenschein.com>.

There are some books that tell us more than we want to know about the 
author and his or her investigations. How to Build a Mind is one of 
them. It is irritating to be told, quite literally (p.9), that the 
message of the book is not comprehensible without tracing the author's 
"journey," including a rough and ready review of 2000 years of Western 
philosophy (in just under 90 pages---whew!), his various jobs, job 
interviews and people he has met along the way.

One excuse for this is that the subject of the book---whether machines 
could be said to have consciousness, or imagination---is more a 
question of losing our prejudices than advances in technology. 
Professor Aleksander (Imperial College, London) takes almost half the 
book to trace some thinking about consciousness from Aristotle to 
Wittgenstein to reveal these prejudices. He does so with ginned-up 
conversations with these folks, and later with a ginned-up radio 
interview with some of our contemporary experts on consciousness, such 
as Daniel Dennett and Roger Penrose. The conceit could be enough to 
waken an interest in these authors, but is too sketchy to be useful 
here.

Aleksander has an underlying pedagogical interest. His unremittingly 
self-centered meanderings are in aide of the thesis---revealed at the 
end of the book, a "denouement" to a "detective story"---that 
consciousness is nothing more than ego-centered world representation. 
This is exemplified by the emergent properties of neural nets that code 
the relationship of the perceiving thing to the world around it: a cup 
is not just a cup, but also what I might do with the cup, where it is 
in relationship to my physical body, what I might drink from it, and so 
on. In this sense, imagination and consciousness are two sides of the 
same coin. Consciousness is simply the representation of facts about 
the entity itself in the context of its physical world.

This is not much a detective story, and the spoiler here will not 
reduce the already most moderate impact of the book. There is no 
sustained discussion of "emergent" properties and how those differ from 
ordinary abstraction and short-hand (a "triangular" cloud, a 
"dangerous" crowd, a "valuable" collection of stamps). Aleksander gives 
examples of visually ego-oriented representations (machine input here: 
other things over there), but it is not a compelling argument that 
other aspects of mental processes that contribute to the sense of self 
could be handled in the same way. This is because Aleksander never 
argues his assumption that the (1) relationship between visual (or 
other sensory) perceivers and the objects of perception are similar in 
the relevant ways to the (2) relationship between mental entities and 
the objects of their desire, fantasy, fear, memory, fibbing and other 
story-tellings, and so on. Aleksander might be right in his assumptions 
that these latter relationships, tokens of consciousness, are not 
materially different than visual relationships, but we do not know that 
yet. This is a frustrating book, because the author has in fact done a 
lot of work with neural nets and artificial intelligence, but with the 
exception of a brief, very general description of an experiment some 
decades ago, little of his work appears here.

Nothing much works in this book: the conceit of its structure is 
tedious, and will convince no one that the author has hit on the 
relevant definition of consciousness. The discussion of past and 
present thinkers is thin gruel, not enough for readers who have read 
them, and irritating to those with some background. There is no "how 
to" in this, at all, despite the title, just gently vague ruminations. 
Sum, ergo sum. It is a book without an audience, save the reviewer.

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            |          ISAST NEWS             |
            |_________________________________|

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< The Spirit and Power of Water: Seminar and Concert >

Leonardo/OLATS, The River Festival and The Concerts of the MIM 
(Laboratoire Musique Et Informatique De Marseille) are pleased to 
present The Spirit and Power of Water at the Confluence of Arts and 
Sciences - a seminar and two concerts dedicated to the theme of water 
in the context of the arts and sciences. These events will take place 8 
and 9 November, 2001, in Marseilles, France.

The seminar will feature:
Roger Malina - Camel Zekri and the River Festival - Jacky Bouju - Iba 
Ndiaye  - Iba Ndiaye Diadji - Camille Talkeu Tounounga - Irit Batsri - 
Liliane Lijn - Nodoka Ui - Jocelyne Rotily.

The concerts and multimedia performances will include:
The River Festival - Lucie Prodhomme - Marcel Fremiot and Jacques 
Mandelbrojt

8 November: Seminar organized at the Vieille CharitŽ, in the
Center of  the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of 
Marseilles: from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Admission free.     

8 and 9 November, 2001 at 8:30 pm: Concerts performed by the River 
Festival and the MIM, at Auditorium de la CitŽ de la Musique, 
Marseilles. Admission: 30 or 50 francs.

For more information on The Spirit and Power of Water, see  
<http://www.olats.org/africa/avva.shtml>

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

< Call for Research Materials and Interview Subjects for Leonardo/OLATS 
Pioneers and Pathbreakers Project on E.A.T. >

Annick Bureaud, director of Leonardo/OLATS, is asking for research help 
in work for the Leonardo Pioneers and Pathbreakers project on E.A.T. 
She is particularly looking for people involved who would be willing to 
be interviewed.

Dear Colleagues,

The French Leonardo/OLATS project "Pioneers & Pathbreakers" 
<http://www.olats.org> is making significant progress. Sylvie Lacerte, 
a French-Canadian Researcher and Ph.D. Student 
of Louise Poissant, is going to write the Leonardo Pioneers and 
Pathbreakers notices for E.A.T, KlŸver and
Rauschenberg. Sylvie will check the archive in Montreal (Fondation 
Langlois), in New York (E.A.T.) and the Getty
Foundation. But we are all aware that archives, documents, etc. exist 
"somewhere else." If you have such documents or if you know anyone who 
has some, could you help Sylvie by giving her the contacts and, if 
possible, photocopies of the documents?

Also, Sylvie intends to do "video interviews" of people who 
participated in the E.A.T. adventure. If you were part of it, or if you 
know anybody who took part, please get in touch with her.

Sylvie's e-mail address is: <sylvielacerte@videotron.ca>

We thank you for your help. 

Best regards,
Annick Bureaud
Pioneers and Pathbreakers coordinator
<annickb@altern.org>

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

< Information Arts: Stephen Wilson Book-Release Party >

In early December, LEONARDO will host the release celebration of the 
highly anticipated book by Stephen Wilson, Information Arts: 
Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology. The event will take 
place in Mountain View, CA. The book offers the first comprehensive 
survey of international artists who incorporate concepts and research 
from mathematics, the physical sciences, biology, kinetics, 
telecommunications and experimental digital systems such as artificial 
intelligence and ubiquitous computing. In addition to visual 
documentation and statements by the artists, Wilson examines relevant 
art-theoretical writings and explores emerging scientific and 
technological research likely to be culturally significant in the 
future. He also provides lists of resources, including organizations, 
publications, conferences, museums, research centers and Web sites.

For information on Leonardo, visit our web site: 
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/Leonardo/>. 
For information on GroundZero, visit <http://www.GroundZero.org>. 
For more information, reviews and to pre-order this book, go to 
<http://www.amazon.com>.

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

< Leonardo Co-Sponsors Workshop on Aesthetic Computing in July 2002 >

Leonardo/ISAST is co-sponsoring a workshop on aesthetic computing 
(artist-driven computer science) to be held at Dagstuhl, Germany, from 
15-20 July, 2002 and being led by Paul Fishwick of the University of 
Florida (see his article earlier in this issue). Go to 
<http://www.dagstuhl.de>. Information on the workshop can be found at: 
<http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~fishwick/cap6836/ac.pdf>.

Dagstuhl seminars have from 25 to 60 participants, with roughly 20% in 
attendance being young researchers. Participation at the workshop is by 
invitation only. Leonardo associate members who may be interested in 
attending should send e-mail to <leo@mitpress.mit.edu> with the URL of 
your CV. There is a waiting list for participants; attendance will be 
on a space available basis.

A permanent mailing list on the topic can be accessed at 
<http://www.yahoogroups.com>, under the group "aestheticcomputing" (no 
spaces). Please feel free to subscribe, should this suit your 
interests.

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            |        ANNOUNCEMENTS         |
            |______________________________|

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< Harold Cohen's AARON Now Available as Shareware >

As you may know, we have an innovative program available called AARON, 
which is a cybernetic art Program. We are pleased to let you know that 
AARON is now shareware and no longer times out. You are welcome to 
download the free non-time-out shareware version of AARON (at 
<http://www.KurzweilCyberArt.com/ac>). If you have already downloaded 
it, un-install your current version first.

If you decide to keep the AARON software, we ask you to register it. 
However, the product will not time out, and the payment requirement is 
based on trust.

AARON is not your ordinary screensaver. Developed by Harold Cohen over 
a period of nearly 30 years, and productized by Kurzweil CyberArt 
Technologies, Inc., AARON is the first fine-art screensaver to utilize 
artificial intelligence to continuously create original paintings on 
your PC.

To provide more background on this innovative software, here is my 
original letter announcing AARON:

I have been deeply involved in Artificial Intelligence research for 
nearly 40 years, and for most of that time I've watched Harold Cohen 
create the most sophisticated 'cybernetic' art program that I am aware 
of. Harold's AI-based program, which is called "AARON," actually 
creates original paintings on your computer's screen, each one 
completely different. If a human created paintings like AARON, we would 
regard him or her as an acclaimed artist. Indeed hard copies of AARON 
paintings have hung in museums around the world (London's Tate Modern 
Galley, Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern 
Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Washington Capital Children's Museum, to name 
a few).

I have had a copy of AARON running on a large panel display in my lobby 
for the last two years, and it never fails to elicit enormous interest. 
It's often hard to get people to leave the lobby to start our meetings. 
So I have exclusively licensed Harold's remarkable art software, and my 
software team has created a polished product. You can download a free 
trial copy at <http://www.KurzweilCyberArt.com/ac>, or view an AARON 
painting (rendered stroke by stroke) that I just created at 
<http://www.kurzweilcyberart.com/ac/sample>.

Once downloaded, your screen saver will create an endless sequence of 
original art. Every unique painting that appears on your screen will be 
different from those that appear on the many copies of AARON running on 
computers around the world. It's a lot more interesting than screen 
savers that always look the same. You actually see each line being 
drawn and each color being applied stroke by stroke. Already an artist 
with an international reputation when he started working on AARON in 
the early 1970s, Harold has spent nearly 30 years teaching the AARON 
software how to draw, his theory of color and the secrets of 
composition. It is an outstanding example of artificial intelligence in 
action.

You can save and print out the artworks, and even send them as creative 
greetings to your friends. When your friends receive them, they are 
rendered stroke by stroke just as they were originally created.

If you like the program as I do, then use the "send to a friend" 
feature to let them know about it as well. After all, I liked it so 
much that I bought the exclusive license.

Enjoy your original AARON paintings,

Ray Kurzweil
<http://www.KurzweilCyberArt.com/ac>
E-mail: <art@kurzweilcyberart.com> 

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

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<  Ordering Information  >

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< End of Leonardo Electronic Almanac 9 (09) >
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