Leonardo/ISAST NEWS

LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 341–342, 2000 341© 2000 ISAST Leonardo/ISAST NEWS The Newsletter of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology Leonardo/ISAST News Coordinator: Andrea Blum. E-mail: . Editorial Board Member Profile: David Carrier Leonardo Co-Editor David Carrier is a 1999–2000 Getty scholar. A well-known art critic, he has published books on the philosophy of art history, abstract painting, Poussin’s paintings, Baudelaire’s art criticism and the comic strip. He is also a professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University , where he has been a department member since 1973. Carrier received his doctorate from Columbia University. He specializes in Aesthetics, Art Criticism, and the History of Art. Carrier describes his work thus: “In the 1980s, art historians began to take a new interest in the methodology of their discipline. They started to recognize that interpretation of pictures unavoidably involved the personality of the historian. Nor was it possible, as some commentators earlier had hoped, to understand artworks in essentially apolitical terms.” David Carrier can be contacted at: . Rich Gold Joins the Leonardo/ISAST Board Rich Gold is a composer, writer and artist who co-founded the first computer network band, the League of Automatic Music Composers, in the mid-1970s. He is probably known best for his “Books in a Day,” a gallery installation in which he used AI programs to help him write and publish novels in a single day. In the area of music, he designed the user interface for the Serge Synthesizer, one of the first uses of icons as an input device . He is currently at Xerox PARC, where he was the primary software designer for the PARC Tab. His other research activities have included a large range of Pen-based systems; a radical new Postscript-like language; and three-dimensional sound. What’s New in Virtual Africa? New on the Virtual Africa site of OLATS, Chiedza Musengezi reviews the exhibition “The Last Paintings of Luis Meque.” Organized in 1998, the exhibition commemorates the life and artwork of Meque, a painter who actively contributed to Zimbabwean artistic life. His last paintings, characterized by predominantly dark colors and an expressionist style, find their inspiration in urban scenes, in portraits of marginalized people. They also reveal Luis Meque’s daily struggle with illness and death. Text in English: . In the “Arts and Sciences” section of the site, Jean Pierre Rossie presents his recent book Toys, Culture and Society: An Anthropological Approach with Reference to North Africa and the Sahara. Rossie is a social-cultural anthropologist and staff member of the Nordic Center for Research on Toys and Educational Media (University of Halmstad, Sweden). For several years, he has been working on the social representation and significance of toys in North Africa. Text in French and in English: . —Jocelyne Rotily, Curator George Gessert Recent activities of Leonardo Editorial Advisor George Gessert include two publications: “The History of Art Involving DNA” in LifeScience: Proceedings of Ars Electronica (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1999) and “On Exhibiting Hybrids,” part of an art-and-technology supplement organized by Eduardo Kac for Circa, an Irish art magazine.(Circa, Vol. 90, Winter 1999, Technology Supplement). Gessert has also given two recent talks: at Ars Electronica he presented “Art and Genetic Engineering,” in which he addressed the question “Why do we see so little art that uses the tools of genetic engineering even though the biological revolution is already a quarter of a century old?” A second talk, at the College Art Association, was called “Art Is Nature,” addressing the relationship of art and nature. This was part of a panel organized by Ken Rinaldo titled “Nature in the Microchip : Art and Artifical Life.” George Gessert has developed hybrids of plants since 1979. He continues to research and write about the overlap between art and genetics. Gessert lives in Eugene, Oregon, and can be reached by E-mail at . CD Release by David Rosenboom Leonardo Music Journal editorial board member David Rosenboom has announced a new release of his “Music from On Being Invisible II: Hypatia Speaks to Jefferson in a Dream in the 1960s” (Centaur Records). On Being Invisible was a project to...