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 Initiatives at UT Dallas

Leonardo Executive Editor and Leonardo/ISAST Board Chair Emeritus Roger F. Malina has been named distinguished professor of arts and technology in the School of Arts and Humanities and professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Texas (UT), Dallas.

Malina is a former director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence (OAMP) in Marseille and a member of its observational cosmology group, which performs investigations on the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

He is also a member of the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Study (Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées, IMERA), an institute he helped to organize. IMERA seeks to contribute to transdisciplinarity between the sciences and the arts, placing emphasis on the human dimensions of the sciences.

Malina was also a member of the jury for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2011, which awards a prize to those who create strategies with potential to “solve humanity’s most pressing problems.”

Malina’s specialty is space instrumentation. He was the principal investigator for the NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite at the University of California at Berkeley. The satellite was the first orbiting observatory to map the sky in the extreme ultraviolet band. The team at UC Berkeley had to invent new cameras, telescopes and data analysis techniques to accomplish the task. The team was one of the first university groups to take over operation of a NASA satellite and operate it from a university with teams of students.

For over 25 years, Malina has been Executive Editor of the Leonardo journal, which his father founded in 1967. He was the founding board member of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST), which took over publication of Leonardo in 1982. Malina earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 and his doctorate in astronomy from U.C. Berkeley in 1979.

An anonymous gift in February 2010 created the Arts and Technology Distinguished Chair he holds at UT Dallas.

Leonardo Initiative: Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks

In partnership with Leonardo/ISAST and under the direction of Roger Malina, UT Dallas’s Arts and Technology program (ATEC) has started a project on campus entitled “Leonardo Initiatives.” The first Leonardo Initiative at UT Dallas is currently under way with the publication of the e-book Arts, Humanities and Complex Networks. This project documents the work of 25 researchers whose work explores the meaning and application of the science of complex networks as it relates to art history, archeology, visual arts, the art market and other areas of cultural importance.

The texts in the publication come from researchers, information designers and artists whose work has been presented at the Leonardo Days at the Network Science conferences, the High Throughput Humanities conference and in Leonardo.

The e-book is augmented by an ATEC web companion, which includes papers, presentations and reader commentary and discussion.

The publication editors are art historian Max Schich, designer Isabel Meirelles and Leonardo Executive Editor Roger Malina. They have assembled a collection of texts from leading researchers, information designers and artists whose work has been presented at the Leonardo Days at the Network Science Conferences and the High Throughput Humanities Conference and in Leonardo. The Leonardo e-book managing editor is Amy Ione.

This e-book is augmented via the web companion with the papers and presentations that were delivered at the Leonardo Day on 19 June 2012 at NETSCI 2012 at Northwestern University, as well as with reader commentary and discussion. The web companion has been produced under the direction of Cassini Nazir, professor in the Emerging Media and Communication Program at UT Dallas, and web companion editor Max Mechanic.

The publication is a project of the ATEC Experimental Publishing and Curating initiative. The publication is part of the Leonardo/OLATS participation in the STUDIOLABS project, which brings together leading European scientific and cultural groups around the topics of complex networks, the future of water and synthetic biology.

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