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Leonardo/Olats
www.olats.org |
Leonardo/Isast
www.leonardo.info |
Leonardo
& Art of extreme environments
Partner of the @rt Outsiders Festival 2009, Leonardo/Olats proposes a compilation of the articles published in the journals Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal, together with projects that the organisation organised or co-organised —Art & Climate, Mutamorphosis— related to the different themes linked to extreme environments.
Articles published in the Leonardo Journal and the Leonardo Music Journal are available online on the JSTOR service (paying) :
http://www.leonardo.info/archive.html
Underwater world
Morgan Robert C., "Waterfields: Conceptual Water Drawings",
Leonardo, Vol. 17, n°2, pp.71-74, 1984.
From 1972 (o 1975 the author developed and realized a series of swimming pool perforamnce pieces called Waterfields. The objective of this series was to construct temporally based drawings in which the process of motion and structure could be perceived on the surface of a pool. Among the concerns involved in constructing these water drawings was the problem of motion and locomotion as related to the swimmers' movemnts. Three basic forms of motion (active, passive and static) are explored within the context of the Waterfields performances. The kind of internal experience this swimming event might bring to the performers is discussed in light of the work of phenomenologists and surrealist artists. The psychologocial, social and architectural aspects of the perceptual experience are emphasized, as is the interaction of the swimmers as they become aware of thes elements in the work.
Perloff Nancy, "Hearing Spaces: David Tudor's Collaboration on Sea Tails",
Leonardo Music Journal, Vol.14, pp.31-39, 2004.
In 1983, David Tudor collaborated with kite artist Jackie Matisse and filmmaker Molly Davies on a six-monitor video piece called Sea Tails: Davies filmed Matisse's underwater kites, and Tudor recorded sea sounds from which he later mixed a score. Using notes and correspondence found at the Getty Research Institute, as well as interviews conducted with Matisse and Davies, the author reconstructs the collaborative process of making Sea Tails. Points of contact between the media of film, sculpture and sound reveal Tudor's post-Cagean form of collaboration, in wich Tudor ceded control over compositionnal process and performance to outside forces —Matisse and Davies and the reverberation of the performance and sea spaces.
Quon Jane, "Phenomenology and Artistic Praxis :
An Application to Marine Ecological Communication",
Leonardo, Vol. 38, n°3, pp.185-191, 2005.
The author's ecologically informed art praxis can be traced back to her experiences while deep-diving off Tasmania's eastern coast. These provided a plethora of aesthetic sensations, but also images of the appalling degradation wrought upon the marine environment by humans. Her art focuses upon this juxtaposition between natural harmony and ecological dysfunction. The artist/author outlines her views on artistic communication generally and, specifically, on the role of art as ecological communication and discusses the significance of presenting her multimedia and sculptural installations in "general" public contexts. She discusses three of the artworks and possible future projects.
Deserts
Goldring Elisabeth, "Desert Sun/Desert Moon and ths SKY ART Manifesto",
Leonardo, Vol.20, pp.339-348, 1987.
Desert Sun/Desert Moon and the SKY ART Manifesto embody environmental sky art and future sky art projections as interpreted by the SKY ART Conferences, a series of four international conferences spanning a 5-year period from 1981 to 1986. Each SKY ART Conference brought together artists as well as scientists, engineers and public officials from many countries and includes exhibitions, lectures, panels, events, installations and a catalogue. These efforts constituted a determined attempt to document the emerging field of sky art and to discover and project forms of art in space. Desert Sun/Desert Moon Moon was a series of temporary events and installations in the Alabama Hills outside Lone Pine, in California in 1986.
Burns Laura, "Moisture",
Leonardo, Vol. 37, n°5, pp.364-366, 2004.
Moisture, is an evolving, multi-year, multi-phase experimental desert research project by a Los Angeles-based artist collective. The group, artists Claude Willey, Bernard Perroud, Kahty Chenoweth, Deena Capparelli, Adam Belt, SE Barnet and Mark Tsang, came together in 2002, joined by a common interest in desert-region water harvesting and by a desire to work beyond the radar o fthe gallery-based art scene.
Keen to have a project focused on water retention in the desert, the California-based Center for Land Unse and Interpretation (CLUI) offered the site for what became MOISTURE. The Desert Research Station (DRS), found within the town of Hinkley, California, soon became the locus of the group's initial activities. And so the MOISTURE collective ventured deep into the Mojave Desert, one of the driest deserts on the planet, to carry out a series of experiments.
Outer Space
http://www.olats.org/space/biblio/leonardoArticles/leonardoArticles.php
Leonardo/Olats offers a space art bibliography, within which are listed all the articles published in Leonardo, among which Howard Boland & Laura Cinti about The Martian Rose, exhibited at @rt Outsiders 2009.
Nuclear
Gessert George, "Notes toward a Radioactive Art",
Leonardo, Vol.25, n°1, pp.37-41, 1992.
Nuclear devices derive meaning from their uses. At present they are weapons to the extent that their keepers intend to use them as weapons. In addition, they are products of advanced technology, sources of economic profit and emblems for both security and evil. They can also be art. This note explores their potential as art.
González Marisa, "The Destruction of A Nuclear Plant",
Leonardo, Vol.41, n°2, pp.106-109, 2008.
This project is a record of the dismantling of a nuclear power plant. It reveals the contradiction between the monumental and dangerous industrial site and its location in a natural seaside paradise. This digital-technology work was created by means of long hours of video and photographic recordings and uses countless objects rescued from the nuvlear plant in Bilbao.
Pinkel Sheila, "Thermonuclear Gardens :
Information Artworks about the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex",
Leonardo, Vol.34, n°4, pp.319-326, 2001.
The author traces the evolution of her installation about the military-industrial complex during the 1980s and early 1990s and artworks that emerged as a result of her research. In addition to national and international data, maps, graphs and statistics about the industry, the author over time progresively added regional, site-specific information in order to empower viewers. The process of creating these works revealed the place of the nuclear industry in the author's own family, which ultimately facilitated the design of later installations.
Others
"Container Culture",
Leonardo, Vol. 39, n°4, pp.290-3°3, 2006.
Container Culture is an exhibition developed by the Curatorial Working Group of the Pacific Rim New Media Summit. Each curator has selected one or more emerging regional artists to present at ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA1006, using a shipping container not only as its means of transportation but also as the "white cube" for the works' exhibition.
This exhibition included several projects related to extreme environments, among which Hu Jie Ming Altitude Zero, shown during the @rt Outsiders Festival 2009.
Harrison Newton, Mayer Harrison Helen, "Shifting Positions Toward the Earth :
Art and Environmental Awareness",
Leonardo, Vol.26, n°5, pp.371-377, 1993.
The authors present thier philosopy of a holistic and interdependent universe, and situate the origins of their work in their concern with the issue of survival. Following a model of nature as a conversation, their work is composed of visual and textual narratives presenting arguments for ecological preservation and a rethinking of current uses of technology. An emphasis on the potential of any work to affect this posited universal whole is related to their projects as proposals for change.
Art & Climate
The Leonardo/Olats "Art & Climate" project includes numerous references to art in the polar regions together with the list of articles published in Leonardo on this topic, among which several by Andrea Polli.
http://www.olats.org/fcm/artclimat/articles.php
Mutamorphosis
International Conference on extreme and hostile environments, organised by CIANT, in collaboration with Leonardo/Olats and Leonardo/Isast, as part of the ENTER festival in the framework of the Leonardo 40th anniversary celebrations (Prague, November 2007). The participants' texts are available on the event web site:
http://mutamorphosis.wordpress.com/