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leonardo reviews editor-in-chief Michael Punt associate editors Hannah Drayson, Dene Grigar, Jane Hutchinson A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the Leonardo website: leonardo.info/reviews. b o o k s Never aloNe, except for NoW: arT, Networks, PoPulaTioNs The BeauTy of NumBers by Kris Cohen. Duke University Press, iN NaTure: maThemaTical Durham, NC, U.S.A., 2017. 208 pp., illus. PatterNs aNd PriNciPles Trade; paper. ISBN: 978-0822369257; from The NaTural World ISBN: 978-0822369400. by Ian Stewart Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Ivy Press, Lewes, U.K., 2017. 224 pp. Paper. ISBN: 978-1782404712. doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01704 Reviewed by Phil Dyke. This is a very ambitious book, and Email: [email protected]. one that in many regards stands up to its theoretical and critical ambitions. doi:10.1162/LEON_r_01703 A reflection on the way in which the Ian Stewart has written many books, relationships between individual and so he has nothing to prove in terms group, selfhood and community, sub- of being a successful author who ject and environment are redefined by explains difficult topics in an acces- modern network technology, it also sible way. This book seems to be contains many fascinating analyses very close to another of his, first and hypotheses on the functions and published in 2001, called What Shape ducing three-dimensional patterns. functioning of art in contemporary Has a Snowflake? (Ivy Press). The This leads to the middle part of the society. These topics are of course present version, also with this pub- book, the largest, with over 100 far from new, but from the very lisher but with MIT Press as well, has pages (eight chapters) that go into improved new pictures as well as a more technical detail. Stewart some- Reviews Panel: Fred Andersson, Jan Baetens, better title, though the text is more how does this without the need to John F. Barber, Roy Behrens, K. Blassnigg, or less unchanged. The text does not understand any actual mathemati- Catalin Brylla, Annick Bureaud, Chris Cobb, need to change, although some on cal symbolism. It is a tribute to his Giovanna Costantini, Edith Doove, Hannah page 162 shows its age. Ian Stewart explanatory powers that he succeeds. Drayson, Phil Dyke, Ernest Edmonds, Amanda is the David Attenborough of the Here the section on animal stripes Egbe, Anthony Enns, Enzo Ferrara, Kathryn Francis, George Gessert, Allan Graubard, genre and his style is fluent, readable, stands out, as does that on animal Dene Grigar, Rob Harle, Craig Harris, Craig J. informative and confident. gait; these are research topics for Hilton, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Ione, Richard This is a splendid book. The excel- Stewart, but once more there’s no Kade, Valérie Lamontagne, Mike Leggett, lent prose is enhanced by spectacular mathematics here, just clear expo- Will Luers, Kieran Lyons, Roger Malina, pictures. It is breathtaking in its sition. There is much more, from Jacques Mandelbrojt, Florence Martellini, Elizabeth McCardell, Eduardo Miranda, scope, and the layout is refreshing. astronomy to architecture, patterns Robert A. Mitchell, Michael Mosher, Sana Each topic is confined largely to just in time, even packing fruit in a box. Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen A. Nappi, two sides—the open page. The book The final section, five chapters, goes Claudy Opdenkamp, Jack Ox, Luisa Paraguai, is so well written, with no wasted into complexity, fractals and chaos. Jussi Parikka, Ellen Pearlman, Ana Peraica, words, that this works. There are The book is philosophical, beauti- Stephen Petersen, Michael Punt, Hannah Rogers, Lara Schrijver, Aparna Sharma, three parts: Principles and Patterns, fully written, artistic and with a George K. Shortess, Brian Reffin Smith, The Mathematical World, and Sim- touch of humor (Stewart has coau- Yvonne Spielmann, Eugenia Stamboliev, plicity and Complexity—16 chapters thored with the late Terry Pratchett Paul Sternberg, Malgorzata Sugiera, James in all. The first three start with snow- and written science fantasy). Stewart Sweeting, Charissa N. Terranova, Yvan Tina, Flutur Troshani, Ian Verstegen, John Vines, flake hexagonal symme try, honey- has authored many books, all worth Claudia Westermann, Cecilia Wong, Martyn combs, then other two- dimensional reading. This just might be the best Woodward, Jonathan Zilberg curves from nature, finally intro- of them. ©2019 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 87–100, 2019 87 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_r_01705 by guest on 29 September 2021 beginning Cohen makes very clear while at the same time introducing from nonartistic artifacts, and one of that he will try to avoid any form new theoretical concepts that help in the great rhetorical and theoretical of technodeterminism—a problem understanding the fact that selves are strengths of the book is to systemati- he thinks is recurrent in the “visual now defined by networked relations, cally bring them together in a way studies” approach, too focused on which themselves are affected and he himself calls symmetrical (that medium affordances in his view—as changed by their actual uses. is, nonrepresentative, nonsymbolic, well as of representation—a typical Two concepts or rather two lines nondeterministic). Cohen brings priority of “cultural studies,” which of thinking come here to the fore. together the way in which recent likes to reframe hidden or explicit First of all that of “group form,” a activist forms of minimal and con- mediations in symbolic terms. very general and voluntarily neutral ceptual art tend to produce similar Although his starting point is clearly term that refers to the way in which “group form” effects as diacritic signs that of relationality in art and society, people relate thanks to all kinds of (such as LOLs or emoticons) in con- Cohen proposes to supersede any networks as well as to the way in temporary Internet communication. direct or reciprocal interpretation of which networks produce relation- This way of reading is extremely personal, social and political relation- ships between all kinds of people. productive. It is also very helpful ships through works of art as well What matters most in the concept in reducing the possible dangers of as nonartistic artifacts in order to of “group form” is that it avoids the discursive and political overinterpre- defend a framework based on what clash between the more traditional tation of works of art that may seem he calls symmetry, namely the his- concepts of the “public” (that is the deprived of any direct political or torical and contextual convergence group form created by individuals societal impact, be it lack of a sizable of different systems and protocols having some form of freedom and audience (as in the case of certain that clearly influence each other but agency, in the Habermasian tradi- forms of performance art) or a priori whose mutual definition can never tion) and of the “population” (that neutralized by its institutional setting be reduced in linear or hegemonic is of the group as produced by com- (as we know, galleries and museums ways (that is, this layer determining puter algorithms and big data, which are not necessarily the best possible the other layer, but not the other way no longer have to take into account places for political activism). The around). nonquantitative features). What symmetry Cohen displays between Given the key position of relation matters in the idea of group form is the often very sophisticated and thus and relationality, the major issue is the fact that it helps foreground new, not always immediately readable art- of course to understand how persons often improvised and ephemeral works and the sometimes extremely relate with each other in networked forms of relationality and social- ordinary and often overlooked forms environments. In this regard, Cohen ity, regardless of traditional ways of of communication and group form rejects both the optimistic neolib- describing or producing selves and work on the Internet help demon- eral stance toward digital networks populations (here the influence of strate both the social and political as the source of new opportunities, Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality relevance and the effective impact increased agency and theoretically is blatant). The apparently paradoxi- of artworks that work in symmetry unlimited freedom and the more cal title of the book, which strikingly with other, better known mecha- pessimistic reading of the power of combines “never” and “except,” may nisms and procedures. The analysis these networks as instruments of be a good illustration of these new of Thomson & Craighead’sBEACON , corporate control beyond any demo- forms of relationships that it is no a set of online and offline instal- cratic debate or negotiation (most longer possible to explain with the lations that question the multiple research based on Debord’s ideas of help of the antinomy self/network. meanings of the search engine in the the theory of the spectacle strongly At the same time, Cohen is also very multilayered and conflicting con- underwrite this way of thinking). In explicit in his efforts to dismantle the texts of the self, the public and the the same vein, he is not looking for a priori positive or negative readings population, but also the group form, a kind of middle ground or nuanced of either the concept of public or that is an excellent illustration of Cohen’s balance between these competing of population. basic claims on networked relation- interpretations, both very well repre- The second major theoretical con- ality which at the same time enrich sented in current scholarly and soci- tribution of the book has to do with political thinking on new forms of etal debates. Instead, he proposes to Cohen’s reading of artworks, which identities, connectivity and therefore elaborate a different way of thinking are no longer isolated from nonartis- action, and underline the possibility that radically undermines the pos- tic artifacts (quite a logical move, if of producing an art-critical discourse sibility to distinguish between both one follows the “group form” struc- that neither isolates nor prioritizes sides—that of the self, that of the net, ture he elaborates at the level of rela- the work of art.