Leonardo/ISAST NEWS

LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 239–242, 1999 239© 1999 ISAST Leonardo/ISAST NEWS The Newsletter of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology Section Editor: Andrea Blum E-mail: Leonardo Music Journal Celebration On the evening of Saturday, February 13, 1999, Leonardo/ ISAST celebrated the publication of Volume 8 of Leonardo Music Journal with an exceptional concert and reception at the historic Berkeley Piano Club. Baritone Thomas Buckner, accompanied by pianist Joseph Kubera, presented “Ghosts and Monsters—Songs from 1680 to the Cusp of the Millennium .” The program included: “Music for Two” by John Cage; “An Evening Hymn” by Henry Purcell; “General William Booth Enters into Heaven” by Charles Ives; “What if Some Little Pain” by Ned Rorem; “Ode Machine” by Cornelius Cardew; “Music for Baritone and Slow Sweep Pure Wave Oscillators” by Alvin Lucier; and “Somewhere in Arizona 1970” by “Blue” Gene Tyranny. The concert focused on the themes and authors of Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 8, which is also entitled Ghosts and Monsters, the theme of which originated in Cornelius Cardew’s infamous 1972 essay “John Cage—Ghost or Monster ?” Inspired by Mao Tse-tung, Cardew surveyed in this text the state of new music for signs of what Mao called “ghosts” (myth, madness, magic and mysticism) and “monsters” (antipeople ideas having to do with technological futurism and political fascism). The avant-garde did not fare well under Cardew’s hand, but if his histrionics seem quaintly dated today , those two nightmarish pillars—slightly adjusted—still have relevance: ghosts and monsters still play critical, if often covert, roles in the creation of an individual composition, in the evolution of the body of a composer’s work, or in the development of musical “schools” and scenes. Thomas Buckner has achieved notable success as an innovative performer of some of the most adventurous music of the twentieth century. Buckner continues to be a pioneer in a wide range of musical contexts, mixing genres and breaking barriers in his continuing pursuit of the yet-to-be imagined. Joseph Kubera, pianist, has gained international recognition as a major interpreter of contemporary music. A leading proponent of the music of John Cage, he has performed and recorded many of the composer’s works. For more information about this and the next volume of Leonardo Music Journal, contact the editorial office at Leonardo/ISAST, 425 Market Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco , CA 94105, U.S.A. E-mail: or visit . To order or subscribe to Leonardo Music Journal Volume 8, contact the MIT Press at or visit the MIT Web site at . —Nicolas Collins Donna Cox joins Leonardo Editorial Board Leonardo is pleased to announce that Donna Cox has joined the Leonardo Editorial Board. Cox is a pioneer of the second wave of computer graphics and scientific visualization. She is an author, lecturer, artist and producer, and is devoted to promoting collaboration among artists and scientists. Her quest is one shared by artists and scientists alike—to make visible the invisible structures of the universe. Cox is one of two recipients of the 1989 Leonardo Award for Excellence for her article “Using the Supercomputer to Visualize Higher Dimensions : An Artist’s Contribution to Scientific Visualization” (Leonardo 21, No. 3, 1988). In this article, Cox recounts her role as a member of an interdisciplinary supercomputing “Renaissance Team” discovering visual representations of multidimensional computations. Cox wrote again for Leonardo in an article in the Visual Mathematics special issue (1992) and the Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics (1994) book, both edited by Michele Emmer. OLATS News Leonardo Observatoire des Arts et Technosciences (OLATS) is a Web site primarily in French dedicated to topics relating to art, science and technology. OLATS’ activity is structured around four main areas: Special Projects (e.g. “Virtual Africa” and “Rencontres du 13 avril” on the cultural perspectives on space); Multimedia Resource Center, including CD-ROM and Web site reviews, as well as bibliographies and other lists of resources; Texts and Studies; and the Pioneers and Pathbreakers project, which documents the works of key artists working in technologyand science-related media. In addition to the Web site, OLATS is now producing a newsletter outlining new developments on the site...