Digital Creativity (review)

Digital Creativity edited by Colin Beardon and Lone Malmborg. Published four times a year by Swets & Zeitlinger, The Netherlands. 142,00, US $79.00 (individuals); 383,00, US $213.00 (institutions). ISSN: 1462-6268.

The journal Digital Creativity aims to cross disciplines, starting with art, design and new media, which are then linked with computer sciences and information technologies and with architecture and education. The journal grew out of the merger with the Computers in Art & Design Education (CADE) organization in the early 1990s. Since 1998 it has been published by Swets & Zeitlinger and the format has changed to large-size. The ambitious approach of convergence is intended to overcome the old divisions in the history of discourse and replace traditional disciplines by opening spaces for new fusions. Consequently the journal not only focuses on text-based contributions but also encourages artists and designers to present their visual works: high goals to achieve in a print journal that appears in black and white only. Moreover, any critical reader and researcher will have reservations in respect to an announcement in which the editors enthusiastically declare that "the journal aims to cover new developments in all of these fields."

Despite the impression of presumption at first sight, the careful reader will find thoroughly edited issues addressing topics that are not much discussed elsewhere, for example "Digital Technologies for Theatre and Performance" (1999), which covers questions of introducing technologies of virtuality into theater scenes. Also of interest is Mike Tuomola's research into the Commedia dell'Arte, in particular where he finds conceptualizations of characters that "can provide us with a formula for sets of varieties that have the potential to create dramatic action in 'Multi-user Virtual World'" (Vol 10, No. 3, p. 171). In the same issue Steve Dixon refers to Brenda Laurel's interactive statement of "computers as theatres" and expands her ideas into a "digital proscenium" on a multi-media screen where the theatrical mise-en-scène undergoes processes of transposition and transformation, more precisely remediation. Another issue features Osmose by Char Davies, in which the author of this well-known project gives a comprehensive description of the potential of "medium" in "immersive virtual space" and explains its paradox that "the immersant feels embodied and disembodied at the same time" (Vol. 9, No. 2, p. 71). The key aspect lies in a body experience where time and space dissolve in parallel to diving, as Davies outlines.

Body and technology certainly become major topics to be addressed in many different aspects, such as Victoria Vesna's approach towards avatar technology that sheds light on the discussion of personal/impersonal relations in virtual reality. One step further into mediation, Roy Ascott compiles a selection of presentations given at the Consciousness Reframed conference around questions of self and reality. Thinking of the body in terms of extensions describes Johanna Drucker's concern with hybridity and prosthetics and Ted Krueger's projects for the amalgamation of organism and architecture, whereas Ebon Fisher imagines a more playful future of "wiggling" that is a kind of combinatory and risky game model "revealing the tension of being part animal and part environment" (Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 27). In contrast, Niranjan Rajah seriously examines the history of modern philosophy in cross-reading with Buddhist metaphysics in order to evaluate ontological problems of the "post-biological era" defined by multi-user environments. In connecting computer language and poetic language, Bill Seaman explores theoretical/conceptual models for use in an aesthetic practice. The idea is to create a "new form of poetic construction and navigation that I call 'Recombinant Poetics'" (Vol. 9. No. 3, p. 154). A "purely" poetic "answer" to theoretical considerations is provided by the Interactive Poem by Nako Tosa and Ryohei Nakatsu. As the artists describe the piece (which was presented at ISEA'97) in the journal: "A computer-generated poet, MUSE, conveys short poetic words and emotions to a person. . . . By hearing these words, the person is able to enter the world of that poem, and at the...