Leonardo Network News

The Newsletter of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology and of L'Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences

In Memory: Rich Gold (1950-2003)

Leonardo/ISAST Board member Rich Gold (Richard Goldstein) died in his sleep on 9 January 2003. Born on 24 June 1950, he was a digital artist, inventor, cartoonist, composer, lecturer and inter-disciplinary researcher. He received a B.A. from SUNY-Albany and an M.F.A. from Mills College.

In the 1970s, Rich Gold co-founded the League of Automatic Music Composers, the first network computer band. Gold invented the field of Algorithmic Symbolism. In the 1980s he was director of the sound and music department of Sega USA's Coin-op Video game division and invented the award-winning Little Computer People (Activision), the first fully autonomous, computerized AI game (which would eventually provide inspiration for the Sims). From 1985 to 1990 he headed an electronic- and computer-toy research group at Mattel.

Gold joined Xerox PARC in 1991, where he was a scientific researcher in Ubiquitous Computing, the study of invisible, embedded and tacit computation. He was a co-designer of the PARC Tab (the precursor of the PalmPilot), helped launch the successful educational tool LiveBoard and was the co-inventor on 11 patents. In 1993 he founded the influential PARC Artist-in-Residence program (PAIR), in which artists and scientists collaborated using shared technologies. Later that year, he created the multidisciplinary Laboratory RED (Research in Experimental Documents), which investigated the creation of new document genres by merging art, design, science and engineering and then creating exemplars of those genres.

Rich Gold was a provocative speaker who lectured throughout the world on the future of the book, the nature of engineering, creativity, innovation and Evocative Knowledge Objects (EKOs). After leaving Xerox PARC in 2001, he became a principal at the product-design company Polaris Road. During 2002 he finished a book called The Plenitude for the Present Press. See <http://www.richgold.org> for a list of his writings and talks.

Gold is survived by his wife, Marina LaPalma; his son, Henry Chase Goldstein; his parents, Herbert and Phyllis Goldstein; his sisters, Patti, Judy and Anne (Peter) Goergen; his brother Andrew (Patty); and four nieces and nephews. For donation information see <http://RichGoldMemorial.onomy.com/HenryFund.html>.

2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence

Bill Seaman has won the 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence for his article "OULIPO / VS / Recombinant Poetics" (Leonardo 34, No. 5, 2001, Digital Salon Special Issue). In his article, Seaman explores alternative avenues of creativity and redefines them through visual and sonic digital media. Seaman describes how the principles of OULIPO, recombinant poetics and remixed music have influenced his work in machinic genetics. These practices led him to attempt creation of a Hybrid Invention Generator, in which a viewer/user (vuser) could choose multiple 3D objects and fuse them to create a new invention.

Seaman is head of the Graduate Digital Media Program at Rhode Island School of Design and is exploring issues related to the continuum between physical and virtual/media space. A self-taught composer and musician, he frequently collaborates with dancers and choreographers to create evocative multimedia performance pieces.

The 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence is co-sponsored by the Technoculture Studies Department and the Art Department at the University of California, Davis. For further information visit <http://technoculture.ucdavis.edu>.

The other nominees for the 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence were: Jean-Louis Lhermitte, "Sculpting Ionized Plasma" (Leonardo34, No. 3); Sheila Pinkel, "Thermonuclear Gardens: Information Artworks about the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex" (Leonardo34, No. 4); Ando Arike, "What Are Humans For? Art in the Age of Post-Human Development" (Leonardo34, No. 5, Digital Salon Special Issue); David Toop, "Not Necessarily Captured, Except as a Fleeting Glance" (Leonardo Music Journal11). Jurors for the award included Lynn Hershman, chair; Lisa Bornstein, Nina Czegledy, Fran Dyson and Edward Shanken. Download Bill Seaman's article at <http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/awards.html>.

Leonardo/OLATS: Annual Report 2002

In 2002, Leonardo/OLATS conducted two main projects: the Space and the Arts project and Pioneers & Pathbreakers. The Sixth...