Search

This paper analyzes Italian artist Auro Lecci's contribution to pioneering media art, beginning with his paintings and ending with his computer artworks (1969–1972). As the author suggests, Lecci's paintings were already characterized by an algorithmic method that the artist went on to develop in his computer-generated works. The paper first discusses the plotter drawings Lecci created at the Computing Center of the University of Pisa (CNUCE), and then focuses on his last computer art project, made at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, to suggest connections between Lecci's work and artificial intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metabolism holds potential as both a crucial topic and an analytical tool for our current biopolitical moment, for understanding the agency and significance of material forces as they move into and through bodies. From this vantage point, this article suggests practicing a metabolic gaze by reading together metabolism and contemporary art. It discusses ways of defining metabolism that might be productive in helping to produce tools and touchstones for metabolic readings, before presenting examples of artworks that might be interestingly illuminated by light of this sign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how artists and scientists use emotion as a methodological tool to study participants and cocreate projects. It uses a science and technology studies approach to identify a typology of five emotion assemblages and the material, social, and cultural components that make them operate. These assemblages include or eliminate cultural and environmental context, the role of participants, and artist/researcher reflexivity The paper argues that there is an imperative for artists, designers, and researchers to make deliberate choices as to who or what to include and exclude when working with emotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the value of using formal models within the (digital media) artwork. Eschewing the antiformalism common to much of postmodernism, it argues for a more active engagement with formal concerns. Without embracing the totalizing theories of late modernist formalism, or discarding the idea of "the concept," the author argues for a more formal approach to the making of the (digital media) artwork. The goal is to point to models that can be used to intimately connect form and concept rather than treat them as separate or warring entities. The article critically explores three very specific digital media artworks that endeavor to bridge the gap between formalism and conceptualism, each pointing to indicative (but not exhaustive) methods for reuniting form and concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slow looking is an increasingly prevalent strategy for enhancing visitor engagement in the gallery, yet there is little research to show why looking at artworks for longer should be beneficial. The curator of a recent exhibition of Pierre Bonnard at the Tate Gallery in London encouraged viewers to look slowly in order to enrich their experience of Bonnard's paintings. This article explores some of the reasons why Bonnard's work, in particular, rewards the viewer who spends more time studying it. The authors draw on various scientific studies of the ways in which observers process color contrasts, spatial configuration and figure-ground segregation in artworks and in everyday vision. They propose that prolonged interactions with works of art can facilitate perceptual learning, and they suggest ways in which these effects could be empirically studied using psychological methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the value of using formal models within the (digital media) artwork. Eschewing the antiformalism common to much of postmodernism, it argues for a more active engagement with formal concerns. Without embracing the totalizing theories of late modernist formalism, or discarding the idea of "the concept," the author argues for a more formal approach to the making of the (digital media) artwork. The goal is to point to models that can be used to intimately connect form and concept rather than treat them as separate or warring entities. The article critically explores three very specific digital media artworks that endeavor to bridge the gap between formalism and conceptualism, each pointing to indicative (but not exhaustive) methods for reuniting form and concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1950s, a range of artists have used artificial agents in their work, in parallel with scientific research in cybernetics, artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial life (AL). In particular, an increasing number of artists work with machine learning and other adaptive systems. Through the author's own engagement with such systems, an analysis of adaptive agents is provided within the broader context of behavior aesthetics. As a result, the author proposes an aesthetic framework for understanding behaviors that accounts for the observer as an adaptive perceiving agent, the unfathomable character of machine learning systems and the morphology of behaviors as a time-based phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s, Richard Lowenberg embarked upon the first in a series of experimental artworks that were conceptualized as part of a lifelong body of works addressing aspects of our information environment as ecosystem. Creative works during this period were influenced by information theory and cybernetics, the electromagnetic spectrum, the nature of signal, feedback, sensing-communicating, language and emerging media technologies. Artistic milestones included video-audio synthesis, NASA arts collaborations, interactions with Koko the gorilla, creation of sequences for the Secret Life of Plants film and EEG-EMGEKG biotelemetric performances ("Bio-Dis-Plays"). Real life offered a number of unexpected opportunities and distractions that enriched this work and helped set a course for development and realization of subsequent projects along an intended ecocultural path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new conception of art and presents a form of painting that exemplifies that concept. Considering the developments in twentieth- and 21st-century art, the author notes that art created after the conceptual period has failed so far to take account of the profound transformation that occurred within it in the twentieth century. This change consisted in the identification of art with reality, achieved by incorporating into art all significant spheres/objects of reality. One result has been the dominance of referential art following the conceptualist period. Referential artworks are split into object and reference. This impedes untrammeled creativity, which would otherwise promote the integration of diverse formal elements. This article proposes painting that exemplifies such artistic creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors have collaborated on a project visualizing heart rate variability with the assistance of a pen plotter. The authors present artworks produced at the interface between biofeedback techniques and visual art. This biofeedback project created a new process of drawing and painting driven by participants' heart activity, which itself is influenced by their mental, physical and emotional states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open prototyping is presented as a conceptual and methodological framework for artistic practice and public participation that bridges the space between technology and society and contributes to city and technology innovation. Such practices can make ideas about the future tangible and realize different configurations of infrastructures, data, situations and people. Many works here are boundary objects, taking place in grey zones between disciplines and sectors. The article may thus deepen understanding at the fault lines between art and innovation and ways in which art can shape the direction of technology development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the viewing behavior of museum spectators during three eye-tracking experiments, the participants in which included wheelchair and non--chair users. The study pays particular attention to the spatial biases of spectators, such as the tendency to scan artworks from left to right or top to bottom. These spatial biases, the authors suggest, enhance our understanding of "normative spectatorship," both by demonstrating how normative ideas about spectators' bodies shape exhibition display practices and by revealing how display practices contribute to fostering normative viewing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several artworks of the artists. Topics include examines that Algotecton is a site-specific generative sculpture inspired by the Weaire-Phelan structure, a mathematical construct that approximates the geometry of foam; reports that it comprises several interlocking polyhedra fabricated using advanced parametric modeling and computer numerical control (CNC) technologies; and considered that Cacophonic Choir is an interactive sound installation aimed at bringing attention to the firsthand stories of sexual assault survivors and the way such stories may be distorted by the media and in online discourse.

Heritage visualizations are works of the cultural imaginary and this paper examines the artwork Artistic License: VR Sydney Cove circa 1800, which foregrounds the interpretive nature of heritage visualization. It is a reimagining in VR of A View of Sydney Cove, New South Wales, 1804, a contemporaneous print of Sydney Cove. Existing in the liminal space between accuracy and authenticity it is both art object and heritage visualization. The dual nature of this work supports engagement with wider audiences, fostering and broadening debate at individual, institutional, academic and societal levels about the nature and role of heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Project Description; Contemporary Computational Art; Methods/Techniques of Creative Practice; and an artwork to the Art Gallery.

Inhabitat is a mixed-reality artwork in which participants become part of an imaginary ecology through three simultaneous perspectives of scale and agency; three distinct ways to see with other eyes. This imaginary world was exhibited at a children's science museum for five months, using an interactive projection-augmented sculpture, a large screen and speaker array, and a virtual reality head-mounted display. This paper documents the work's motivations and design contributions, along with accounts of visitors' playful engagements and reflections within the complex interconnectivity of an artificial nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the development of art systems from 1968 to 2018 and use of computers and computational processes in art. Topics discussed include assisting in the specification of art systems and subsequent real-time management by computer; exploring networks as art by building electronic communication systems, made with logic circuits; and providing a significant enhancement to the ability for handling and considering the underlying structures of artworks and art systems by computers.

The author discusses the origin and meaning of his Light Dance artwork. The simple approach—placing a source of light on the body and thereby manipulating the illumination of the surrounding space through body movements—alters the viewer's perception of space and time. Architecture appears malleable as the performer affects the size, shape and speed of light forms that reach from the body to the boundaries of the room. Light, in this perceptual environment, is not a mere transmitter of information between the invariant material surroundings and the eye of the viewer; light is a space-defining extension of the performer's body that transposes movement expression from the individual body to the shared space. An inversion of subjective and objective "spaces" is realized in the experience of Light Dance wherein the prevailing conceptual hierarchy of light and vision is overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can technology and digitalization be used to challenge and develop an analog idea? What happens in the translation from the analog to the digital? Can technology reveal previously hidden aspects of an art object? What happens to the relationship between art and viewer in the process of digitalization? The Layer Project, still in progress, originated in analog mode: cutting paper photographs into strips as layers. Digital filming became important for documenting the objects, as photographing them did not capture the changeability of their three-dimensional aspects. What happens at these borders of 2D and 3D, analog and digital? What defines them and what explains them? How can we compare them, relate them to each other? How are they different? Does media transform or simply transmit imagery? This statement also discusses how technology can be a tool for reflecting on an artwork—a tool to evaluate, develop and challenge an artistic concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss their contributions to the 2015 Balance-Unbalance conference goals, bringing together McMullen_Winkler's Soybots artwork and Zuiker's Connected Gardening partnership with a local Phoenix elementary school. This collaborative effort balanced art, plants and technology for alternative learning experiences about future natures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]