Lea Abstracts

LEA ABSTRACTS© 1999 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 255–256, 1999 255 The following are summaries of articles and profiles published in the monthly issues of Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) and available via password on the LEA web site at . Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal subscribers can obtain a free subscription to LEA and access to the password-protected sections of the LEA web site by registering at . Authors and artists interested in publishing articles and materials in LEA should contact for information. FEATURED PROFILES A Living Map: CrimeZyland Stephen Wilson, E-mail: . CrimeZyland, an interactive public art exhibit located in an outdoor installation space near San Francisco’s City Hall, offered attractions such as “MapZ -crime,” “Choose-Z-crime,” “Scan-Zcrime ” and “Web-Z-crime” to installation visitors and Web surfers alike. CrimeZyland took place March– June 1998 as part of the “Exploration: City Site Public Art” series sponsored by the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery. CrimeZyland transformed a city lot into a computer-controlled living “map” of light, motion and sound corresponding minute-by-minute to crimes committed in San Francisco districts , as indicated by San Francisco police department cable crime statistics. In CrimeZyland viewers experience the crime “pulse” of a city first-hand. Electronic Garden/ NatuRealization: An Interactive Sound Installation Miroslaw Rogala, E-mail: . Imagine a garden in which one can feel the presence of the surrounding community , where shadows and whispers of the past can be seen and heard: an “electronic garden” in which one’s presence and movement define experience. In the center of Washington Square Park in Chicago, Illinois, I created Electronic Garden /NatuRealization, a piece that brought together multiple voices using infrared sensors and computer chips in an interactive sound installation. Known as “Bughouse Square,” Washington Square Park has been officially designated as a free-speech area and has functioned historically as a place for public debate by such luminary figures as Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs. Excerpts of some of these historic speeches are juxtaposed with speeches by contemporary political personalities and voices of members of the neighborhood and popular personalities such as Studs Terkel and Ken Nordine. Crossing the Border: About the Homestead, a WWW Project Paul Hertz, E-mail: . The Homestead/La Finca is a virtual exhibition of art and texts exploring the theme of colonization, which the author curated as part of a residency at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, in Valencia, Spain. A round-table discussion in Valencia with Roshini Kempadoo, Salvador Bayarri and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer further developed the theme of the colonization of cyberspace. FEATURED ARTICLES An Embryonic Scan of the Aesthetic Parameters of Technological Means Maureen Nappi, E-mail: . As the computer has an increasing impact on our daily existence through altering and enhancing the ways in which we do things, it is having no less an effect on the creation of contemporary art. For an increasing number of artists, the computer has become the means of and/or site for making art. In the midst of this shift involving the artistic utility and appropriation of technological processes, questions arise regarding appropriate critical and aesthetic approaches to new work. This article collects and sorts some of the contemporary and historical ideas specific to such an investigation. Transgenic Art Eduardo Kac, E-mail: . New technologies mutate our perception of the human body from that of a naturally self-regulated system to that of an artificially controlled and electronically transformed object. The digital manipulation of the appearance of the body clearly expresses the plasticity of identity. We observe this phenomenon regularly through media representations of idealized or imaginary bodies, through virtual-reality incarnations and through network projections of actual bodies (including avatars). Parallel developments in medical technologies , such as plastic surgery and neuroprosthesis, have ultimately allowed us to expand the notion of immaterial plasticity to actual bodies. The skin is no longer the immutable barrier that contains and defines the body in space; instead, it becomes the site of continuous transmutation. From the perspective of interspecies communication , transgenic art calls for a dialogical relationship between artist, creature/ artwork and those who come in contact with it. Are you Waving or Drowning?: Art...