Leonardo Network News

Leonardo Reviews Quarterly

Leonardo Reviews is the work of an international panel of scholars and professionals invited from a wide range of disciplines to review books, exhibitions, CD-ROMs, Web sites and conferences. Leonardo Reviews publishes all reviews received from the panel monthly on the Leonardo Reviews web site. In addition, four times a year a selection of reviews is printed in Leonardo print journal, and now the Leonardo Reviews Quarterly publishes an even larger selection of reviews as a printable PDF together with introductory material and overview essays. To download the Quarterly or to sign up to the email list, visit: <www.leonardo.info/ldr.php>.

LABS Top-Rated Abstracts

Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce the top-rated abstracts published in the English-language Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) Databases during the first half of 2010.

Leonardo Abstracts Service, consisting of the English-language, Spanish-language, Chinese-language and French-language LABS databases, is a comprehensive collection of Ph.D., Masters and M.F.A. 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.

Top-rated abstracts in the English language database were chosen by a peer-review panel including Yiannis Colakides, Andrea Poli, Tom Lesser, Christo Doherty, and Sheila Pinkel and will be published in Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

The top-rated LABS abstracts of the first half of 2010 are:

• • "The Implicit Body: Understanding Interactive Art through Embodiment, and Embodiment through Interactive Art," by Nathaniel Stern

• • "Fieldwork/Fieldwalking: Art, Sauntering and Science in the Walking Country," by Perdita Phillips

• • "The Ear of the Beholder: Ecology, Embodiment and Complexity in Sound Installation," by Tom Davis

To read the full abstracts in the English-language database or to post an abstract, please visit: <leonardolabs.pomona.edu/>.

Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous

The LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) series is a local forum for presenting art and science projects underway in the San Francisco Bay Area that are creative, original and interdisciplinary in nature. Each LASER features four artists, scientists, philosophers, historians, inventors and scholars working on paradigm shifts. LASERs are held every month and alternate between San Francisco (at the University of San Francisco) and Mountain View (at the SETI Institute).

They are currently chaired by author Piero Scaruffi jointly with Tami Spector at USF and Doug Vakoch at the SETI Institute. The series is now in its third year and has presented more than 100 speakers to date. LASERs reflect the eclectic and idiosyncratic environment of the Bay Area, where the borders between disciplines have been blurred for decades, and enable the searching for new meaning at the convergence among academic research (speakers have come from Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, The University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State University and California College of the Arts), independent research institutes (Diatrope Institute, San Francisco Dump, Green Museum, Zero Gravity Art Consortium), high-tech labs (IBM, Google, NASA AMES), museums (DeYoung Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco Exploratorium) and the countless independent photographers, architects, composers and artists that operate in the region. LASERs have also hosted distinguished visitors from other regions and countries (CNRS Marseille, MIT, UCLA, INA Paris).

The events provide a venue for the audience to socialize, connect and, of course, interact with the presenters. LASERs allow participants to explore new concepts directly from the sources, in ways that reach beyond reading literature and visiting galleries.

LASER speakers to date include: Dor Abrahamson, Joaquin Alvarado, Jesse Austin, Ruzena Bajcsy, Marty Banks, Sam Bower, Jim Campbell, Helena Carmena, Chris Chafe, Irene Chien, Lynette Cook, Beatriz da Costa, Bruce Damer, Sharon Daniel, Joe Davis, Terrence Deacon, Bonnie DeVarco, Robert Edgar, John Edmark, Rachel Beth Egenhoefer, Ken Eklund, Hassan Elahi, Mona El Khafif, Peter Foucault, Linda Gass, Evelyne Gayou, Zann Gill, Ken Goldberg, Laura Granka, Kathelin Gray, Daniel Grupp, Taraneh Hemami, Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison, Matt...