Leonardo Network News

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

Leonardo Network News Coordinator: Kathleen Quillian E-mail: <kq@leonardo.info>

New Low-Cost Access Available for Mit Press Publications

The MIT Press journals division is now able to offer low-cost article rentals through Deep Dyve. Users can now rent articles published in Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal and other MIT Press journals for a 24-hour period for $3.99. Users may also choose to take out a membership to the Deep Dyve site for longer rental periods. This service is in addition to the other article access options currently provided by the MIT Press. Find out more about how to access Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal articles: <leonardo.info/order.html>.

Patricia Olynyk Steps up as Leaf Chair

Patricia Olynyk took over chair duties for the Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) from outgoing chair Ellen K. Levy after the College Art Association conference in February 2011.

Patricia Olynyk is an artist and educator whose work frequently employs microscopy, biomedical imaging technologies and other methodologies found in the life sciences to explore the nature of life at the micro and macro levels. She is also Director of the Graduate School of Art and the Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently developing new curricular initiatives for graduate education that will provide significant opportunities for cross-disciplinary creative work and research, which will engage the university’s Media and Machines Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Biotechnology and Medicine and the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values. Olynyk is also co-author of the College Art Association’s new Standards and Guidelines for MFA Programs, which were amended last year.

Prior to her appointment at Washington University in 2007, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she directed the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Program and the Roman J. Witt Visiting Faculty Program. In 2005, she became the first non-scientist appointed to the University of Michigan’s Life Sciences Institute.

Olynyk received her MFA degree with Distinction from the California College of the Arts and then studied in Japan for four years as a Monbusho Scholar and Tokyu Foundation Research Scholar at Kyoto Seika University. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum; the New York Hall of Science; the Museo del Corso in Rome; Galleria Grafica and the Saitama Modern Art Museum in Japan; the Universität der Künste, Berlin; the Denise Bibro Gallery in New York; and the Toby Moss Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2005, she created the installation Sensing Terrains for the rotunda of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Soon thereafter, she was awarded a Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine Fellowship at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; and recently, an Analogous Fields: Art + Science Residency from the Banff Center, where she has three times previously been in residence.

Find out more about LEAF and how to participate: <www.leonardo.info/isast/LEAF.html>.

Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) Call for Submissions

Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), consisting of the English-language database, Spanish-language database and French-language database, is a comprehensive collection of PhD, master’s and MFA thesis abstracts on topics in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. Individuals receiving advanced degrees in the arts (visual, sound, performance, text), computer sciences, the sciences and/or technology that in some way investigate philosophical, historical or critical applications of science or technology to the arts are invited to submit abstracts of their theses for consideration.

The LABS project does not seek to duplicate existing thesis databases but rather to give visibility to interdisciplinary work that is often hard to retrieve from existing databases. Abstracts will be reviewed for inclusion in their respective databases twice a year. The databases will include only approved and filed thesis abstracts. Abstracts of theses filed in prior years...