Art on Film/Film on Art (review)

336 Leonardo Reviews into the concert halls. This growing trend was the subject of the five-day Touch Festival, which was comprised of a hands-on exhibition, a symposium and a series of concerts. The symposium set out to examine the musical, scientific and philosophical implications of live electronics, bringing together computer-music pioneers such as David Wessel and George Lewis, along with a philosopher and performers from a wide range of backgrounds . The organizers of Touch— electronic musicians and performers Michel Waisvisz and Joel Ryan and media theorist Sally Jane Norman—outlined some of the essential issues: these ranged from the importance of physical movement and touch, which have been relegated to the sidelines by the streamlined digital interfaces of our presentday information society, to the particular forms of intelligence that characterize the performing arts, such as the live performer’s mental agility and ability to play with time. They also stressed that electronic instruments should demand the same level of playing effort as traditional musical instruments, because virtuosity and skill are central to live performance. The speakers responded for the most part by outlining their personal research and experiences. Computer musician and trombonist George Lewis talked about his improvising computer, which can analyze his performance on the trombone and generate music accordingly , while he plays. British musician Trevor Wishart demonstrated his proficiency both as a performer and as a composer of electronic music: he illustrated his talk with a remarkable piece based on the treated voices of Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher, following it up with a stunning demonstration of his vocal improvisation skills. The symposium also featured presentations by non-musicians: juggler Tim Roberts and puppeteer Roman Paska fleshed out the discussion by highlighting the parallels between different branches of the performing arts. Astronomer and Leonardo editor Roger Malina put a new slant on the notion of man-machine collaboration: the robots he is building for space research can see and hear things that we cannot perceive , and so only humans and machines together can build a consistent view of the universe. Three evenings of performances rounded out the presentations and the animated discussions to which they gave rise. The artists included some of the leading names in the electronic performing arts—Laetitia Sonami, Jon Rose, Joel Ryan, Michel Waisvisz and Steina Vasulka—and they proceeded to give the audience a taste of its diversity and richness. These are early days yet for live electronic music, but the Touch Festival showed that the public is ready for more. VIDEOS ART ON FILM/FILM ON ART VHS color video, 5 volumes, of varying lengths, 1992. Distributed by Home Vision/Public Media, 4411 North Ravenswood Avenue, Chicago, IL 60640, U.S.A. Tel: 800-323-4222, ext. 43. Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: . Shouldn’t films on art be more than an illustrated narration with background music? Film is, after all, an art, with a largely untapped potential for scholarly interpretation. With that in mind, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1987 formed a joint venture called the Program of Art on Film. Over the next 3 years, they commissioned 28 art experts and filmmakers , working in pairs, to produce 14 innovative films and videos on an encyclopedic range of art subjects, including funerary portraits from Ancient Rome: Manet’s painting(s) of the execution of the Mexican emperor Maximillian; a sixteenth-century stone garden in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto; Giorgione’s Tempest; the Trevi Fountain in Rome; twelfth-century Christian cave paintings on the island of Cyprus; 11 tiny drawings of a deluge by Leonardo da Vinci; the Great Mosque of Cordoba; the new classical church of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris; anamorphic peepshows; the Gothic cathedral in Beauvais; Mimbres painted pottery bowls; a conversation with art historian E.H. Gombrich (filmed in his living room) on illumination and reflection ; and a guided tour by the painter David Hockney of a seventeenth -century Chinese scroll painting. All of these fascinating short films, which are as brief as 8 minutes and as long as 46...