Leonardo Network News

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

LABS Introduces New Peer Review Panel for 2007-2008

Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS), consisting of the English LABS database and Spanish LABS database, is a comprehensive collection of Ph.D., master's and MFA thesis abstracts on topics in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. All abstracts submitted to the databases are reviewed by an international peer review panel for inclusion in their respective databases. The new peer review panel for 2007-2008 includes Frieder Nake, Adriene Jenik, Stephen Petersen, Yiannis Colakides, Pau Alsina, Kenneth Fields and Sheila Pinkel.

Frieder Nake is a professor of computer science at the University of Bremen, where his focus is in computer graphics, interactivity and digital media. He has been a thesis advisor for hundreds of Ph.D. and master's theses and has taught in Canada, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Norway and Switzerland. While his educational background is in mathematics, he has been a pioneer in the area of computer art via his investigations of the intersection of computability and beauty. His secret love is Peircean semiotics.

Adriene Jenik is a telecommunications media artist who lives in Southern California. Her works, including El Naftazteca (with Guillermo Gomez-Pena), Mauve Desert: A CD-ROM Translation and Desktop Theater (with Lisa Brenneis and the DT troupe), use the collision of "high" technology and human desire to propose new forms of literature, cinema and performance. Jenik is currently serving as associate professor of Computer & Media Arts in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California at San Diego. Her recent works (ActiveCampus Explorientation and SPECFLIC) instigate large-scale public art events over community-wide wireless networks.

Stephen Petersen has taught modern and contemporary art history at the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania. His book, Space-Age Aesthetics: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and the European Avant-Garde, 1946-1968 (forthcoming from Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007-2008), examines intersections of art, technology and mass culture in postwar society. He also researches and writes on the history of photography and recently contributed several essays to the new Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography (Routledge 2006).

Yiannis Colakides is a practicing architect in Cyprus. He is also a founding member and current president of NeMe (New Media <www.neme.org>), an organization devoted to the promotion and exhibition of new media and technologies. He is a member of the fine arts advisory committee for Limassol Municipality, Cyprus, lectures frequently on the subject of new media and technologies, and curates exhibitions on these themes.

Pau Alsina is a philosopher and the coordinator of the Aesthetics knowledge area in Humanities Studies at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in Barcelona. He is also a researcher in Digital Aesthetics at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and Director of ArtNodes, a space for Art, Science and Technology intersections <http://artnodes.uoc.edu/>.

Kenneth Fields is a professor at the China Electronic Music Center of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and associate professor at the Department of Digital Art and Design, Peking University, Beijing. His new musical compositions have been performed at major festivals and theatrical productions in China and Germany. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Electronic Music Association of China and the Advisory Board of EARS (Electroacoustal Resource Site), and is Regional Editor of Organized Sound, published by Cambridge University Press, U.K.

Sheila Pinkel is a professor of art at Pomona College, where she teaches photography, computer graphics and media studies. Her artworks, which in recent years have focused on the aftermath of war, have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been an international editor of Leonardo since 1983 and coordinator of the English-language version of Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) since 2004.

Leonardo Welcomes New Intern Marie-Douce St-Jacques

Leonardo welcomes Marie-Douce St-Jacques as an intern. The new Concordia/Leonardo internship brings together graduate students from Concordia's Department of French and the Leonardo community, so that Concordia's students may explore both the world of art...