Leonardo Network News: The Newsletter of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology and of l’Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences

SONYA RAPOPORT: 6 OCTOBER 1923–1 JUNE 2015

Artist Sonya Rapoport died at her home in Berkeley, California, 1 June 2015, following a short illness. Rapo-port is widely recognized as a pioneering digital artist whose 65-year career bridged the gap between painting and interactive conceptual art. Her prolific interdisciplinary practice combined her extensive research in the sciences and humanities with highly personal subject matter.

Rapoport received a BA in labor economics from New York University in 1946 and an MA in art from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1949. Her early career as a painter of figurative and abstract-expressionist work culminated in a prestigious solo exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor in 1963. In 1976 she began creating drawings on computer printouts, eventually leading to her reinvention as a digital artist. She became an integral part of a small community of artists experimenting with early computer technology, often creating interactive installations that involved the gathering, processing and representing of data by computer output.

Rapoport was much loved and respected in the Leonardo community. She served on the Leonardo/ISAST Board of Directors for a number of years, providing guidance to the organization and staff with wisdom and good humor. She published on her work several times in the journal Leonardo, and in 2012 Pairing of Polarities: The Life and Art of Sonya Rapoport, edited by Terri Cohn, was published by Heyday. A prolific artist, Rapoport had over 50 national and international solo and retrospective exhibitions of her work, including recent retrospectives at the Kala Art Institute and Mills College. In 2014, the Bancroft Library of Western Americana at UC Berkeley acquired the archives of her life’s work. The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust was founded in 2015 to preserve her art and promote appreciation of her work. An exhibition of her final works will open at Krowswork in Oakland on 14 November 2015. An announcement about the exhibition will be posted in e-LNN (Leonardo Network e-News). See <www.leonardo.info> and click on the newsletterlink.

ANNOUNCING: THE LEONARDO ART, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LECTURE SERIES IN CHINA

We are thrilled to announce the latest addition to the Leonardo family of Art/Science programs and events: The Leonardo Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series in China. Under the direction of Zhang Ga, and co-organized by Chronus Art Center (CAC) and Leonardo/ISAST in collaboration with leading Chinese art institutions, each installment of the series will feature renowned guest speakers from around the world on topics within the ever-expanding scope of Art/Science. CAC and its partner institutions will provide the venues for the events. The inaugural lecture took place on Wednesday, 5 August 2015, at CAC in Shanghai, with David Joselit (Distinguished Professor/The Graduate Center, City University of New York, Art History) speaking on “Dark Cloud.” Sean Cubitt (Professor/Goldsmiths and Leonardo Book Series Editor in Chief) and Rudolf Frieling (SFMOMA Curator of Media Arts) are scheduled in the coming months at CAC and the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing—stay tuned!

AFFILIATE MEMBER HIGHLIGHT

Beyond merely a “multidisciplinary” or “interdisciplinary” scope, the Art & Technology program (ATEC) at University of Texas, Dallas, encourages the productive convergence of disparate fields and modes of thinking. It joins science with the humanities, creativity with technology, theory with practice, and learning with research. There are no maps showing the way, just students with diverse interests and talents and a skewed way of looking at the ever-changing world. Students master emerging tools, form unexpected relationships, collaborate and create the future. See <www.utdallas.edu/atec/>.

THE GLASS VEIL: SEVEN ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Leonardo congratulates Leonardo Education and Art Forum Chair Suzanne Anker on the publication of The Glass Veil: Seven Adventures in Wonderland. In this collaborative work by artist/theorist Anker and art historian Sabine Flach, the study of image production unveils the reality of pictures beyond their function as mere representations of the world. The visuals range from firsthand accounts of specimen collections in historical medical museums...