===================================================================== / / /\ / /-- /__\ /______/____ / \ ===================================================================== Leonardo Electronic Almanac VOLUME 9, NO. 12 December, 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, Nisar Keshvani ISSN #1071-4391 ===================================================================== ____________ | | | CONTENTS | |____________| ===================================================================== EDITORIAL < Passing the Cyberbaton > by Roger Malina LEONARDO JOURNAL < Abstracts: Leonardo issue 35:1 > LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS < Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid > Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens < Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life > Reviewed by Patricia Pisters < The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays > < The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays > Both reviewed by Sean Cubitt ANNOUNCEMENTS < EMF sale: Back Issues of Leonardo and LMJ > OPPORTUNITIES < Teaching positions available > ===================================================================== _______________ | | | EDITORIAL | |_______________| ===================================================================== < Passing the Cyberbaton > by Roger Malina, E-mail: With this issue I end my brief tenure as LEA Editor-in-Chief, Leonardo's on line and electronic journal. Leonardo began experimenting with on line publishing in 1988 when we began publishing fineArt forum which was founded by Ray Lauzzana. That baton was passed on to Paul Brown in Australia under the auspices of the Art, Science and Technology Network (ASTN); Paul subsequently passed it on to the current Editor-in-Chief of fineArt forum, Nisar Keshvani in Singapore. Leonardo's electronic journal became Leonardo Electronic News and Judy Malloy ran it until Leonardo Electronic Almanac was founded by Craig Harris with the extensive associated web site. Under Craig's Editorship LEA established itself, with the support of MIT Press as an important peer reviewed ejournal. I took over as Editor-in-Chief from Craig Harris while Steve Wilson and a search committee , searched and found a new Editor-in-Chief for LEA : I am pleased to announce that Nisar Keshvani will be taking over as Editor-in-Chief of LEA with the next issue, bringing to a full circle Leonardo's experiments with fineArt forum and Leonardo Electronic Almanac. In the next issue, Nisar Keshvani will explain his vision for the new LEA. The LEA ejournal will focus on original peer reviewed content, coupled to the LEA web site and the Leonardo On Line Archive (LOLA). LEA will no longer run any news and announcements but through an arrangement with the Art, Science Technology Inter- Network (ASTIN), fineArt forum will serve as the news outlet for Leonardo. The Leonardo publications belong to the community of artists, researchers and scholars who develop them, publish in them and use the publications for their research and teaching. As the baton is passed from one Editor to another, the underlying mission remains the same : to make visible the work of artists involved with contemporary science and technology and to promote collaboration between artists, scientists and engineers. Yet each Editor opens new avenues of thought, access to new ideas and directions. In spite of the multiple connections that new communication media afford us, the body of the Editor is crucial. In a recent speech at the Sorbonne, French philosopher Michel Serres asked "what is it that cannot be done without the presence of the body". One of those things is the "initiative" of the Editor. Without the Editor's initiative a journal is but a collection of texts cast adrift on a sea of other texts. As each deadline closes for an issue of a journal, colleagues are consulted, material is sifted, filtered, sequenced until some kind of sense emerges that can be transmitted in a journal issue. "Data Mining" can be left to machines, but "Data Meaning" is the prerogative of the Editor's body, through the coupling of inner thoughts and extensions to the world beyond the skin. We wish the best to Nisar Keshvani as he takes the baton as Editor-in-Chief of LEA. ===================================================================== _____________________ | | | LEONARDO JOURNAL | |_____________________| ===================================================================== < Abstracts from Leonardo Vol. 35, No. 1 (2002) > Following is a selection of abstracts of forthcoming articles to be published in issue 35:1 (2002) of the Leonardo journal. ******************************************************************* The Community Is Watching, and Replying: Art in Public Places and Spaces Anne Bray, 2151 Lake Shore Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039, U.S.A. freewaves@aol.com http://www.freewaves.org ABSTRACT The author describes her public-art projects and installations, in which she has employed various combinations of video, photography, audio, sculpture and performance, often in collaboration with artist Molly Cleator. The pieces spectacularize unresolved conflicts between the artists regarding what is personally truthful as compared to what society dictates, especially concerning the "three deviants": women, art and nature. The artists question who defines these related realities and how. The author has also offered hundreds of artists a forum called L.A. Freewaves, a media arts organization and festival working in traditional and non-traditional venues throughout Los Angeles, in an effort to disseminate community-empowering public art widely. ******************************************************************* Is One Eye Better Than Two When Viewing Pictorial Art? Kenneth J. Ciuffreda and Kimberly Engber Kenneth J. Ciuffreda (optometrist, educator), Department of Vision Sciences, SUNY/State College of Optometry, 33 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036, U.S.A. Kimberly Engber (educator, consultant), CUNY/Graduate Center, Department of English, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, U.S.A. ABSTRACT During viewing of most objects in one's everyday environment, the binocular and monocular relative depth cues interact in a harmonious, concordant and reinforcing manner to provide perceptual stability. However, when one views pictorial art, these binocular and monocular cues are discordant, and thus a perceptual "cue conflict" arises. This acts to reduce the relative apparent perceived distance of objects in a painting, thus producing overall perceptual depth "flattening." In this article, the author discusses the theory and physiology underlying this phenomenon. ******************************************************************* Ancient Images and New Technologies: The Semiotics of the Web Philippe Codognet, Laboratoire dÕInformatique de Paris 6, case 169, 4, place Jussieu, 75252 Paris, France. Philippe.Codognet@lip6.fr ABSTRACT In this article, the author develops an analysis of visual knowledge and the use of pictures in electronic communication. He 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. ******************************************************************* A Self-Defining Game for One Player: On the Nature of Creativity and the Possibility of Creative Computer Programs Harold Cohen, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093, U.S.A. hcohen@ucsd.edu ABSTRACT The AARON program has been generating original artworks for almost 30 years, but in this article, the author of the program denies that AARON is creative. The author characterizes creativity as a directed movement towards an ill-defined but strongly felt end-state for the individualÕs work as a whole, not as a characteristic of any single work. He further posits creativity as being profoundly knowledge-based in the sense of externalizing the individualÕs internal world-model and system of belief. He suggests that a creative program would be one that was able to modify the belief-based criteria that inform the rule-base in which expert knowledge is represented, not one that is able simply to modify the rule-base itself. ******************************************************************* A Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Computer Animation Course David S. Ebert and Dan Bailey David S. Ebert (teacher, researcher), School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 1285 EE Building, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, U.S.A. ebertd@purdue.edu Dan Bailey (teacher), Visual Arts Department, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, U.S.A. bailey@umbc.ed ABSTRACT Animation has always required a close collaboration between artists and scientists, poets and engineers. Current trends in computer animation have made successful and effective teamwork a necessity. To address these issues, the authors have developed an interdisciplinary computer animation course for artists and scientists, in which student teams produce a professional animation that extends the capabilities of a commercial animation package. A key component of this course is the use of collaborative teams that provide practical experience and cross-mixing of student expertise. Another key component is group-based education: the students learn from each other, as well as from the instructors. ******************************************************************* Structure in Art Practice: Technology as an Agent for Concept Development Ernest Edmonds, Creativity & Cognition Research Studios, Department of Computer Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough, U.K. ernest@ernestedmonds.org.uk ABSTRACT The exhibition "Constructs and Re-Constructions" provided a survey of the author's artwork and formed the basis for this article. It included four prints, consisting of notes based on early documentation, representing four different conceptual stages in using computer technology. As the author discusses each in turn, he shows that the computer significantly enhances our ability to handle and consider the underlying structures of artworks and art systems in their many forms. In the work discussed, while the conceptual developments are the key issues, the role of the technology in encouraging, enabling and inspiring them has also been central. ===================================================================== _________________________________ | | | | | LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS | | 2001.12 | |_________________________________| ===================================================================== It seems that one of the most enduring topics of art publishing (and in Leonardo Digital Reviews) is the work of Marcel Duchamp. This is not without good reason, certainly as far as the Leonardo community is concerned. At times Duchamp's life's work can seem like a trail of confusing signs that lead to a trail of equally confusing commentaries. Not to be left out of this critical paper chase, for a brief period this month's Leonardo Digital Reviews included a repeat of Kieran Lyon's review of the book by Juan Antonio Ramirez, "Duchamp: Love and Death, even." Fortunately, it was spotted by Robert Pepperell, our new web manager, and the error rectified quickly. Thanks also to Robert for posting the largest batch of reviews that we have had in a single month since I took over the editorship at Leonardo Digital Reviews - all listed below. And thanks to our panel, who have committed so much time and intellectual energy to this project. Not to be left out, in the traffic of e-mails that produce this monthly editorial and highlighted copy for Leonardo Electronic Almanac, the review of "Duchamp: Love and Death, even" was published under the title of David Grove Surman's excellent piece on "Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and the Surrealist Exhibitions," by Lewis Kachur. We are sorry about this and take no pleasure in further muddying the waters (albeit temporarily) of an already confused trail. This month, Sudhira Hay who has worked with us for nearly two years, left to go traveling for several months; we wish her well and extend our warmest gratitude for her help. Bryony Dalefield remains as managing editor and we look forward to another year of publishing a wide range of opinions on the emerging literature, exhibitions, conferences and internet interventions that are relevant to the agenda of Leonardo and the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. This month is exceptional not only for the "fatal attractor" of the Duchamp confusion machine, but for both the quantity and quality of review articles. To mention each of the 16 new additions would be too taxing a read for me to include in an editorial, and to mention a few would be insufficiently representative of the richness to be found at Leonardo Digital Reviews. Consequently, this month I have listed below what can be found new this month and invite you to share with me the pleasure of reading the work of our panel. Michael Punt Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Digital Reviews December 2001 New in this Month's Leonardo Digital Reviews: --------------------------------------------- * Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas about the Mind, by Douwe Draaisma Reviewed by Robert Pepperell * The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays and The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays By JŸrgen Habermas Reviewed by Sean Cubitt * Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life, by Gilles Deleuze Reviewed by Patricia Pisters * Beyond Our Control?, By Stuart Biegel Reviewed by Curtis E. A. Karnow * Music and Memory: An Introduction, by Bob Snyder Reviewed by Robert Pepperell * Practical WAP, by Chris Bennett Reviewed by Mike Mosher * Vincent Van Gogh: Chemicals, Crisis, and Creativity, by Wilfred N. Arnold Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid, by Mardges Bacon Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * The Furniture of Gustav Stickley, by Joseph J. Bavaro & Thomas L. Mossman Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Farms, by Mark Alan Hewitt Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * Blast: Vorticism 1914-1918, by Paul Edwards Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * Design Connoisseur, by Steven Heller and Louise Fili Texts on Type, by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs Both reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * George Nelson: The Design of Modern Design, by Stanley Abercrombie Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens * Utopian Entrepeneur, by Brenda Laurel Reviewed by Mike Mosher * The Postdigital Membrane, by Robert Pepperell and Michael Punt Reviewed by Robert Mitchell * Interaction'01 (event), Gifu Prefecture, Japan Reviewed by Michael Naimark * The Great Illusion (website), by Victor Kahn (with paintings by Jim Warren) Reviewed by Richard Kade ******************************************************************* Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid By Mardges Bacon, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, U.S.A., 2001. ISBN 0-262-02479-9. Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens. E-mail: . It goes without saying that American art and architecture were profoundly influenced by European modernism, most famously by the Armory Show of 1913. It is less evident that certain aspects of European modernism, architecture in particular, were inspired by American paradigms. Frank Lloyd WrightÕs City National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, for example, is said to have influenced the work of Bauhaus-founder Walter Gropius, while American grain elevators were of enormous interest to both Gropius and Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Gropius eventually emigrated to the U.S., but "Corbu" (as he was called) remained in Europe. He spoke little English, but did develop friendships with various Americans in Paris, among them Gertrude SteinÕs brother Michael, the African-American performer Josephine Baker and a wealthy American writer named Marguerite Tjader Harris, with whom he was later romantically linked. According to "Le Corbusier in America," such "enlightened" Americans convinced him to visit the U.S. for the first time in 1935 (later, he returned briefly to contribute to the United Nations Headquarters), with the expectation that, in so doing, he would be given avant-garde architectural commissions. As it turned out, the trip happened, but not the commissions. Sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, Corbu toured the country giving lectures, holding press conferences and meeting with architects and industrialists. His lectures, delivered in French, were illustrated by freehand pastel drawings, some of which are published here for the first time. The experience changed (for good and bad) his understanding and appreciation of the U.S. In the end, he left empty-handed, with the result that he wrote an unfavorable book, titled "When the Cathedrals Were White: Journey to the Country of Timid People," about the inability of most Americans to understand and support his ideas. All this is covered in great detail in this illustrated study, which is a dense academic treatise, but one that is often enlivened by surprising information from anecdotes, eyewitness reports, and contemporary news articles. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review 17, No. 1, Fall 2001.) ******************************************************************* Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life By Gilles Deleuze (translated by Anne Boyman, with an introduction by John Rajchman), Zone Books, New York, N.Y., 2001, 102 pp. Trade, $24.00. ISBN 1-890951-24-2. Reviewed by Patricia Pisters, E-mail: Trying to review Deleuze's three short essays that are collected and newly translated in "Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life," is almost impossible. All the essays are very rich and each sentence contains another step in Deleuze's argumentation of his ideas on immanence. Therefore, I can only try to give an impression of his thoughts. In the first essay, "Immanence: A Life," which Deleuze wrote just before his death and can be considered as his philosophical testament, he discusses his philosophical method, which he calls "transcendental empiricism." According to Deleuze, pure immanence is A LIFE, and nothing else. When a life is actualized in the particular life of somebody, it is transcended, but always as a product of immanence. Deleuze recalls Charles Dickens' description of a disreputable man, a rogue, who is abandoned by everyone and then found at the moment he is dying. Those who take care of him treat him with respect, trying to fight for his life. And "between his life and his death, there is a moment that is only that of a life playing with death." (p. 28) With this artistic example, Deleuze explains what he means by the indefiniteness of immanent life (the plane of immanence), an idea that is at the heart of his philosophy. According to Deleuze, immanence can only be thought through radical empiricism, and in the second essay of the book, he looks more deeply into the nature of empiricism through the work of Hume. According to Hume, human nature (subjectivity) is constituted of two principles: principles of association, from which relations derive, and principles of passion, from which "inclinations" follow. Fiction and imagination (and thus art, the sensible) play a big role in both principles. Deleuze explains how according to Hume, the constitution of an identity of the self requires the intervention of all sorts of fictive uses of associations and relations. The self is not given, but constituted in fiction and experience. In respect to the principle of passion, the imagination is necessary to make passion go beyond its natural partiality and presentness. Aesthetic and moral sentiments are formed in this way and are at the same time very important constitutive principles. The third essay in "Pure Immanence" is about Nietzsche. The aesthetic is also important for Nietzsche, to the point that the philosopher becomes a creator. Deleuze explains that Nietzsche's "will to power" consists not in taking, but in creating and giving. In discussing the stages of Nietzsche's nihilism, Deleuze explains how, at the moment of the completion of nihilism, everything is ready for a creative transmutation that consists of an active becoming of forces, a triumph of affirmation (instead of negation) in the will to power. And what is affirmed is the earth, life in its multiplicity and becomings. Although the three essays in this book discuss very different aspects of the affirmative and immanent implications of Deleuze's philosophy, the aesthetic dimension seems very important. As John Rajchman explains in the introduction: "Through affect and percept, artworks hit upon something singular yet impersonal in our bodies and brains, irreducible to any pre-existent 'we.'" (p. 10) Deleuze's transcendental empiricism implies a Kunstwollen or a "becoming-art" that, for instance, cinema can give. In his cinema books, Deleuze argues that cinema can contribute to giving us back reasons to believe in the world and the body. Cinema "affects the visible with a fundamental disturbance, and the world with a suspension, which contradicts all natural perception. What it produces in this way is the genesis of an 'unknown body' which we have in the back of our heads, like the unthought in thought, the birth of the visible which is still hidden from view." (From "The Time-Image," p. 201). Experimenting with the sensible is in this way essential to the plane of immanence of "a life." In "What is Philosophy?," Deleuze and Guattari assign a similar task of restoring our belief in the world to philosophy: "It may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task or a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today" (p. 75). This restoration of a belief in the world, which is the most important task of both art and philosophy, can only be understood in the definition of immanence as the virtualities that are contained (and not yet actualized or realized) in "a life." The essays in "Pure Immanence" emphasize once more the affirmative power of Deleuze's philosophy, and deserve to be re-read in relation to his work on aesthetic practices such as literature, painting and cinema. ******************************************************************* The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays by JŸrgen Habermas, trans. Peter Dews, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2001, 130 pp., paper, $17.95. ISBN: 0-262-58205-8. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays by JŸrgen Habermas, trans. and edited and with an introduction by Max Pensky, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001, 190 pp., paper, $21.95. ISBN: 0-262-58206-6. Both books reviewed by Sean Cubitt, The single most pressing question of the hour is this: is it possible for cultures founded on different philosophies to enter into dialogue? If you have worked in the social sciences, political studies, media or jurisprudence over the last several decades, the name of JŸrgen Habermas will be familiar. He is associated with theories of legitimation, of the public sphere, of communicative rationality and normative ethics. This pair of anthologies, collecting essays written between 1990 and 1998, reminds us that Habermas, already the father figure that more recent German intellectuals like Theweleit and Kittler target as figurehead of the establishment, is at heart a philosopher. At the end of a career focused on the possibilities for understanding and mutuality, he is brilliantly placed to pose the question of intercultural dialogue. The more specific question then arises: can European rationalism even try to dialogue with its theocratic others? "The Liberating Power of Symbols," the shorter volume here comprising the philosophical essays, is structured as a series of homages and debates by Habermas with his peers and forebears. Though the essays on Cassirer and the humanist legacy of Aby Warburg and on Jaspers and Apel are pretty much what you would expect, the intriguing twist here comes from Habermas' engagement with the theology of Theunissen, Wright and Gershom Scholem. In subtle and nuanced analyses, Habermas proposes that theology has yet to make its peace with the end of the Idealist tradition of Hegel, and to understand the twin challenges of the master-thinkers of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Habermas' own problem can be summed up in two of his quotations: on the one hand, Apel speaks of "intersubjective understanding as the mediation of tradition within an unlimited community" (p. 72), while Gershom Scholem is cited, equally approvingly it seems, to the effect that historicism is a smokescreen "which - in the form of the history of mystical traditions - conceals the space of the very thing itself" (p. 64). On the one hand, the theologians reckon with despair, and with the failure of divinity to guide the world to salvation, while on the other, reason denies fate but at the same time refuses to promise - anything. Placing the guarantor of existence and redemption beyond the world only means that there is no guarantee, despite the twistings of theological reason. And yet, as Scholem suggests, there is always that which escapes from the discourse, the utter strangeness of the mystical experience itself. These debates with the theologians, and with the Christian existentialist legacy of Schopenhauer, shape Habermas' philosophical commitment to reason as a relentlessly secular formation, and one which therefore is all the more challenged by the equally relentless theocracy of militant Islam, as well as by the Christian fundamentalism that chokes democratic practice and rational democracy in the U.S.A. "The Postnational Constellation," the second, political volume, begins from the specifics of German history in the twentieth century. In particular, the essays date from a period in which the fall of the Wall and the reunification of the nation altered everything in the old political landscape. This is the ground for Habermas' discussions of European union, its possibility and its desirability. It is also a period in which the recovery of Stasi files reopened the wounds of Nazi collaboration, pitching revisionist denials of the Holocaust (or at least of its continuing significance as a specifically German history with important implications for the present) against the politics of reconciliation in Germany (and equally in South Africa and other de-colonizing areas of the world). The political meaning of history and the possibility of dialogue as a means to understanding and overcoming the past are the seedbeds of Habermas' political analyses. But something even more profound is happening to the political landscape, something that threatens to end the received meaning of politics altogether. As Habermas writes in the title essay, "the image of a postnational constellation gives rise to alarmist feelings of enlightened helplessness widely observed in the political arena today" (p. 61). The anger, the moral disgust evoked so often in eco-protests and globalization resistance movements, confronts an even larger threat than the concentration of power beyond the reach of the nation-state. The supranational appears as the supernatural: a force, as of nature (which is the explanation given by apologists of the free market), over which no citizen, no citizen's movement, has any hold whatever. What then might be the grounds on which a global movement might demand some basic justice (human rights, labor legislation, welfare, education) over against the power of greed? The nation can no longer be defined by shared monocultural values and geographical boundaries. Nor can it claim the right to tax, since states no longer regulate welfare in the wake of IMF and World Bank policy-making, and have to offer permanent tax holidays for the wealthy to attract inward investment. At the same time, there is no supra-national organization to take on the burden of justice. Neo-liberalism says it will drip through wealth, but the evidence that it has, does or ever will is non-existent. Habermas calls for a new political party, of a kind that will operate in the residual forum of the state, but with an eye to European Union, with innovative visions of transcultural, trans-border equality, justice and welfare that will carry it beyond even the European scale toward the cosmopolitan. An essay on human rights attempts to add detail, but in some ways demonstrates a weakness in Habermas' argument. The question he addresses is the source of human rights. Are they the political achievement of a community of citizens, or the essential, inherent and ideal properties of any human being? Habermas argues that the two modes are in fact dialectically unified as the social and individual faces of a single process - we must have the right to reasoned debate if we are to construct rational rights. Seeking a way beyond the export of human rights discourse as a colonizing ideology, Habermas rightly condemns the "deception that leads to the false conclusion that the meaning of human rights is exhausted by their misuse" (p. 129). Yet the cosmopolitanism he seeks is belied by the gap left in the absence of the converse to a small phrase: "the shared willingness to consider one's own tradition with the eyes of the stranger" (p. 129). What is missing here is the willingness to learn the stranger's tradition with the stranger's eyes: the still embedded Eurocentrism of the "post-colonial" cosmopolitan, ready to critique her own culture, but unwilling to acquire familiarity with that of others. In "Conceptions of Modernity," the philosopher turns to a critique of the linguistic turn in postmodernism. In a radical move (derived from Apel), he sees Wittgenstein and Heidegger united in their rejection of metaphysics' failure to understand the linguistic dimension of world-construction, their distrust of the concept of "mind" as grounding entity of existence and thought, and their "hermeneutics of suspicion, which seeks to reveal the Other of reason behind reason's own back" (p. 145). In the division of labor between sociology on the one hand and philosophy turned towards language on the other, Habermas sees the roots of a postmodernism that, for all its virtues, has deprived itself of social theory's tools, mistaking discourse for social actuality, and so rejecting "the very criteria by which we can distinguish between the universalizing achievements of modernity and its colonizing features" (p. 138). What a critical review like this cannot communicate is the subtlety of Habermas' thought, the pleasure to be had in disagreeing with one of the century's most significant thinkers. It was too much to hope for that one man might bring the tools for that cross-cultural dialogue that we so desperately need. For my part, and in the context of Leonardo, I would suggest that the problem lies specifically in the centrality of language to both postmodernism and Habermas' communicative rationality. Instead, the shared praxis of making that unites artists of every culture might form a richer grounds for understanding than the sealed worlds of words. ===================================================================== ______________________________ | | | ANNOUNCEMENTS | |______________________________| ===================================================================== < EMF sale: Back Issues of Leonardo and LMJ > Dear EMF subscribers, friends, Leonardo members and authors: in collaboration with Leonardo and MIT Press, EMF is very pleased to offer you certain past issues of the Leonardo Journal, Leonardo Music Journal and LMJ CDs at highly discounted prices. These issues document the beginnings of digital art and music, and will likely become valuable as collectors' items. We have substantial numbers of some issues and relatively few of others. We are offering these now on a first-come, first-served basis, only to EMF subscribers, EMF friends, Leonardo members and the authors of articles in the journals. In the middle of January, we will expand this offer to other organizations and groups; in February, we will dispose of any remainders. LEONARDO Leonardo past issues go back as far as the special Siggraph issue in 1989, with beautiful imagery and articles by Benoit B. Mandelbrojt, Gene Youngblood, Roger Malina, Tom Dewitt, etc. These Leonardo issues are $7 each. Go to: keywords = leonardospecial LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL The LMJ issues, each of which includes a CD, contain articles by Larry Austin, Marc Battier, Warren Burt, Larry Polansky, Peter Beyls, Nicolas Collins, Nick Didkovsky, Ricardo Dal Farra, Takehito Shimazu, Axel Mulder, Joel Chadabe, Andre Smirnow, etc. These LMJ issues are $11 each, including a CD. Go to: keywords = lmjspecial * CD OFFER Beginning with LMJ Volume 8, the CD normally included with the journal has also been made available separately on the EMF Media label. For every $50 you spend on journals take, as a gift, either the "Ghosts and Monsters" CD or the "Power and Responsibility" CD. If you purchase these CDs without journals, take them for $7 each. Take "Southern Cones" for $11 for the duration of the Leonardo offer. Go to: keywords = lmjcds Electronic Music Foundation: 116 North Lake Avenue, Albany, NY 12206, U.S.A. Ph. (888) 749-9998 or (518) 434-4110. emf@emf.org http://www.emf.org ===================================================================== ____________________________ | | | OPPORTUNITIES | |____________________________| ===================================================================== < Position available - Assistant Professor of Photography > College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus The Department of Art, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities seeks a full-time, 9-month, tenure track assistant professor in the area of photography to begin in the 2002 Fall semester. The successful candidate will demonstrate interest and ability in the areas of research, teaching and service - engaging in outstanding creative activity, dedicated teaching and multifaceted service in the photography area of an interdisciplinary fine arts department. For a complete position description and application procedures, visit the Department of Art website at: , call (1) 612-625-8096, or fax your request to (1) 612-625-7881. The application deadline is 1 March, 2002. The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity employer and educator. ******************************************************************* < Position available - Tenured Faculty Position in Signal Processing and Programming for Arts/Media at Arizona State University > Arizona State University has an opportunity for a leadership role spanning engineering and fine arts. This is a tenured, academic year position and is a joint appointment between the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) and the Herberger College of Fine Arts (HCFA). The tenured home will be a unit in one of these colleges, depending on the qualifications and background of the successful candidate. Arizona State University, a Research One Institution, is the fourth largest U.S. University, with approximately 34,000 undergraduate and 10,000 graduate students. The CEAS at ASU is established among the leading engineering graduate schools in the country, with research expenditures in excess of $30M. The successful candidate will benefit from active research programs, such as the Center for Ubiquitous Computing and the Telecommunications Research Center. The Partnership for Research in Stereo Modeling (PRISM) and the Arts Technology Development Studio (TDS) already serve as a bridge between CEAS and HCFA research activities. The HCFA at ASU is one of the nation's leading places for the study, practice and development of the arts. The college's academic programs, housed in the Schools of Art and Music and the Departments of Dance and Theatre, are complemented by two distinguished specialized units - the ASU Art Museum and the Institute for Studies in the Arts (ISA). The internationally known ISA is the interdisciplinary digital arts unit of the college and will be the home-unit of the appointee within the HCFA. Within the CEAS, the home-unit of the appointee is one of the departments of Electrical Engineering or Computer Science and Engineering. The appointee will have the opportunity to forge important links between these two distinguished colleges, resulting in the development of groundbreaking tools and practices in digital arts and digital media. This includes developing and delivering of appropriate curricula, interdisciplinary research and community outreach activities. The instructional and research facilities of both colleges will be available to the successful candidate. The appointee will also have the opportunity to reach students throughout the university through signal-processing and programming courses for non-science majors, initiated by the Information Technology Across the Curriculum (ITATC) program of the State of Arizona. In their leadership role, the appointee will serve to represent this unique arts-technology synergy across campus, within the state and nationally. For more information about this position, please write to . Please send a letter of interest, CV, representative publications or other multimedia material and names/contact information for three references to: Professor W. T. Trotter, Chair of SPP-Arts Search Committee, Vice Provost and Regents' Professor, Office of the Provost, Arizona State University, PO Box 872803, Tempe, AZ 85287. Applications received by 15 February, 2002 will receive full consideration. Thereafter, applications will be reviewed monthly until the position is filled. The anticipated start date is 16 August, 2002. Minimum qualifications: doctorate degree in related field; record of teaching and research excellence appropriate to rank. Desired Qualifications: Interdisciplinary experience in teaching and research spanning engineering and fine arts, demonstrated leadership skills, evidence of funded research spanning the sciences and the arts, demonstrated communication skills. ASU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. ===================================================================== ___________________ | | | 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. 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