Visualization, Cultural Mediation and Dual Creativity

O The Extended Abstracts section of Leonardo provides summaries offull articles that appear in the Leonardo World Wide Web Site (http://wwwmitpress . mit. edu/Leonardo/home. html). Articles are published at the Leonardo WWW Site upon the recommendation of members of the Leonardo Editorial Board or the Leonardo Editorial Staff. To submit articles for Leonardo WWW Site publication consideration, contact . VISUALIZATION, CULTURAL MEDIATION AND DUAL CREATIVITY Frank Popper, 6, rue du Marche SaintHonore , 75001 Paris, France. In this text, the author demonstrates through concrete examples the artistic treatment, aided by information technology , of the visualization of unseen phenomena , of telecommunications events and of dual creativity in education. French-Hungarian artist Vera Molnar utilizes the computer for its technical promise as well as for its ability to aid artistic innovation and encourage new ways of thinking while measuring the physiological reactions of the audience. Artist-scientistJean Francois Colonna believes that scientific visualization is not only a technique but is itself an art form. It is in the area of virtual reality that the artistic challenge to information technology becomes particularly apparent. Jeffrey Shaw's interactive installation of synthesized images, Virtual Museum, Lynn Hershman's Deep Contact, Nicole Stenger's Angelic Meetings, Myron Krueger's Videoplace, and Matt Mullican's Five into One are the most telling illustrations of artistic response to technology, as are Scott Fisher's binocular vision interface device Boom and Karl Sims's artistic research into genetic problems. Fig. 1. Edmond Couchot, Michel Bret and Marie-Helene Tramus, I Sow to the Four Winds, virtual image, 1995. The technical inventiveness and the artistic imagination of three collaborating creators resulted in this subtle interactive demonstration of a large dandelion head moving slowly on a computer screen, under the influence of a "virtual breeze." Clumps of seeds scatter and softly fall as the viewer breathes on the dandelion. The viewer can continue to blow until nothing remains; then a new flower appears for the next viewer to interact with. Creators, such as Roy Ascott in the telematic area, have been practicing cultural mediation for a number of years. Jean-Marc Phillippe, with his Celestial Wheel, and Pierre Comte, with his satellite projects, have provided major contributions and challenges to information technology in the field of telecommunications . Still in this area but without using computers, Fred Forest and other artists of the Aesthetics of Communication group have also achieved new ways of relating space and time while permitting interactivity and creative communication to take place. Dual creativity-i.e. combined scientific and artistic invention and creation -can be approached from a pedagogical angle. Higher education departments such as the Art and Technology of the Image unit at the University of Paris VIII at Saint-Denis; MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Media Center in Cologne; and the Zentrum fiur Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe are the outstanding examples in this area. The key for the assessment of the value of dual creativity can be found in the mixture of scientific invention and artistic creative power in individual teachers or teams of educators, researchers and artists (Fig. 1). The author concludes that, although the artistic contribution and challenge to information technology is considered in the public eye as a minor event, in fact, recent developments prove that we are in the presence of not only a technical and aesthetic event of importance but also one with certain social impact. LEONARDO, Vol. 29, No. 4 pp. 311, 1996 311 ? 1996 ISAST ^^^ffiS^ffl^^^^l^J~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ...