Leonardo Network News

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

LEAF: Developing Cloud Curricula in Art and Science

Through a series of community workshops, the Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) is developing the Leonardo Art Science Cloud Curriculum, an online art/science wiki that will serve as a resource for educators and students in the field of art/science. Two 2012 workshops contributed to the development of an actual sample curriculum—one during Re-New: The Interactive Media Arts Conference (IMAC), 19-22 November 2012; the second, during MutaMorphosis: Tribute to Uncertainty, CIANT, Prague, 6-8 December 2012.

The workshops encouraged contemporary scholars, artists, scientists and theorists in the area of art and science to discuss, suggest and formulate aims, attributes, readers and coursework that will enable students to engage the world of art and science.

The workshops utilized contemporary networked technologies to build in real time a curriculum that will become the foundation for the wiki. The project aims to use the wiki to effect a shift in the perception of art/science students and staff toward new paradigms of research and learning that challenge and transcend disciplinary boundaries.

See <http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/tiic/leaf-developing-cloud-curricula-in-art-and-science-2012/>.

Amalia Ecoli Finzi Named Recipient of 2012 Frank J. Malina Astronautics Medal

The International Astronautical Federation has awarded the 2012 Frank J. Malina Astronautics Medal to Amalia Ecoli Finzi, a professor at Politecnico di Milano. Finzi has held leading positions on several ASI (Italian Space Agency) and European Space Agency boards and committees, including the Mars Exploration Task Force, the Human Spaceflight Vision Group and the Exploration Advisory Committee, and has provided valuable contributions on a large number of projects dealing with space exploration. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the SD2 Instrument of the Rosetta Spacecraft designed to perforate the Martian soil and collect samples to return to Earth. Frank Malina, founder of Leonardo journal, was an artist as well as a scientist who was integral in the early development of rocket science.

See <www.iafastro.org/index.html?title=Amalia_Ercoli-Finzi>.

Touch and Go: Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Volume 18 Issue 3

Volume 18, Issue 3 of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has been published online as a free PDF; it is also available as a printed issue on Amazon and will be available through other e-publishing outlets.

Touch and Go was published in collaboration with Watermans and Goldsmiths College for the occasion of Watermans' International Festival of Digital Art, 2012, which coincided with the Olympics and Paralympics in London. The issue explores the impact of technology in art as well as the meaning, possibilities and issues around human interaction and engagement. Touch and Go investigates interactivity and participation, as well as light art and new media approaches to the public space as tools that foster engagement and shared forms of participation.

Volume Editors: Lanfranco Aceti, Janis Jefferies, Irini Papadimitriou. Editors: Jonathan Munro, Özden Şahin.

See <http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol18-no3-touch-and-go/>.

Art and Atoms Leonardo e-Book

Edited by Tami I. Spector, Art and Atoms explores the cutting edge of the chemical sciences, art and aesthetics. Bringing together 25 articles and 36 authors from the Leonardo archives, it focuses on contemporary chemistry in its interconnections with art and technology.

The texts include a number published in the special sections "Nanotechnology, Nanoscale Science and Art" (edited by Spector) and "The Images and Art of Nanotechnologies" (edited by Kathryn D. de Ridder-Vignone). Tracking chemistry through the 40 years of Leonardo's archives reveals a chronological transformation in the manifestations of "chemistry and art." In general, the earliest papers, from the 1960s and 1970s, concern themselves with the development of new chemicals and chemically based methods for creating art—for example, "Liquid Crystals: A New Material for Artists," by Rein Lemberg (1969). Many more recent papers, such as Mark A. Cheetham, "The Crystal Interface in Contemporary Art: Metaphors of the Organic and Inorganic" (2010), have a theoretical slant, with the most recent emphasizing nanoscience. Based on this trend, the articles in this e-book fall...