Leonardo Electronic Almanac

LEONARDO GALLERY© 1999 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 249–253, 1999 249 Leonardo Electronic Almanac Mutability, experimentation, virtuality: the Leonardo Electronic Almanac Gallery presents an everchanging investigation into new media–based projects exploring the boundaries between art, science and technology. This statement acts both as introduction to and as a mission statement for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) web site gallery (http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals /LEA/). The aim of the gallery is to provide not only an exhibition space, but a place, a location—albeit virtual—in which the intersection of art, science and technology can be explored. The nature and the scope of the exhibition pieces are often worked out between the curator and artist, with the resulting work taking a variety of forms, sometimes expressive, sometimes documentary, always explorative. The gallery provides a kind of watering hole on the Web, where artists and scientists can come together to experience works that fall between disciplines, the edges and the space between them. Recent pieces include works by Tina LaPorta, Eugene Thacker, Natalie Bookchin and Carl DiSalvo. Artists interested in creating work for LEA Gallery should send a project description, curriculum vitae and web addresses of past works to me at . PATRICK MAUN Leonardo Electronic Almanac Gallery Curator A L M A N A C L E O N A R D O E L E C T R O N I C 250 Leonardo Gallery L E O N A R D O E L E C T R O N I C A L M A N A C Leonardo Gallery 250 TRANSLATE { } EXPRESSION by Tina LaPorta Translate { } Expression explores the relationships between technology, the body and female subjectivity. The alienation experienced when a subject comes into direct contact with computer screen, interface and computer code results from the displacement of the body resonating within the symbolic realm of cyberspace. Although the corporeal body disappears, it is replaced by an immaterial outline of its passing presence. The code, then, refers to the body’s DNA structure: that which is generally hidden becomes visible to the eye. As we shift toward a state of immaterial existence, technology increasingly eliminates all traces of material reality . (See also Color Plate A No. 3.) (Tina LaPorta, 400 East 89th Street, 10J, New York, NY 10128, U.S.A. E-mail: .) Leonardo Gallery 251 A L M A N A C L E O N A R D O E L E C T R O N I C EMBODY_DISSOLVE 2.0 by Eugene Thacker embody_dissolve is an experiment of Internet art, web programming and cultural theory. It is a hypermedia essay about and inquiry into two types of bodies currently being produced and reproduced on the Web: the body found in contemporary technoscience, specifically in the “digital anatomy” of the Visual Human Project, and the body found in the virtual sex industry, particularly in web pornography. Embody_dissolve uses text and images to investigate how these two seemingly disparate discourses may reconfigure what will become recognized as a “body” in a new medium such as the Web. Much of the visual material of this piece has been appropriated from the Visual Human Project and pornography sites, using a range of computer and web technologies (from animated GIF [Graphic Interchange Format] files to DHTML [Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language] and streaming media) to produce new types of virtual bodies. (See also Color Plate A No. 1.) (Eugene Thacker, 81 S. 6th St. #2, Brooklyn, NY 11211, U.S.A. E-mail: . Web site: .) 252 Leonardo Gallery L E O N A R D O E L E C T R O N I C A L M A N A C BAD by Natalie Bookchin BAD (Burn the Art World Down) is a journal committed to the documentation of acts of terrorism and agitation against the institutional art world. One can read in BAD about the recent takeover of an exhibition space in a major Los Angeles museum, the hacking of a reputable contemporary art magazine and the theft of a highly respected art critic’s identity. One can also read about a prominent critic who appears to have been drugged...