Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology is what you might call a serious publication. Since 1968 it has been a forum for professional artists to describe and discuss their work, a brief that makes it something of a rarity. Usually artists such as musicians, filmmakers, and fiction writers are condemned to having their ideas interpreted by that populist, deadline-driven creature: the journalist. The results often don't do justice to the work they're describing. Leonardo redresses the balance, printing papers on a mind boggling range of technology-related art.
If you thought tech art just meant computer graphics, think again. The issue I've got in front of me includes essays on holography, database design, a solar energy installation, the use of cellular automata in sound synthesis, VR, hypertext and, er, witches. There's also theoretical work on the semiotics of the digital image and something forbiddingly titled "Qualitative, Dialectical, and Experiential Domains of Electronic Art." Some pieces are substantially better than others, and several of the theoretical pronouncements groan with ill-digested gobbets of cultural theory.
Bad writing is, needless to say, a problem with academic journals. Freed from the need to engage a commercial audience, contributors tend to inflate their prose to hot air balloon proportions. Leonardo is no exception, but buried among the more pompous ruminations are gems like Keisuke Oki's description of the Brainwave Rider, an interface-design experiment in which a computer game is controlled by the player's mind.
Just as wonderful, and very different, is the piece on Armenian color fountain installations. Did you know that color fountains were an important form of public art in the former Soviet Union? Or that the Armenian Erebuni group was regularly commissioned to produce color music installations for "restaurants, bars, hotels, campsites, etcetera"? No? Well, that's cultural difference for you.
Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology: US$55 for five issues. MIT Press:+1 (617) 253 2889, email: isast@mercury.sfsu.edu.
STREET CRED
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Art and Invention
