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Leonardo_37-3_175-266 5/12/04 10:18 AM Page 262 Leonardo Network News The Newsletter of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology and of l’Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Technosciences In Memoriam: Billy Klüver mental change. The two-day event will be facilitated by It was with a great sense of loss that we learned of Billy Klüver’s Leonardo/ISAST in concert with its Cultural Roots of Global- death this January. Born in 1927, Wilhem J. Klüver founded Ex- ization Project. In addition, Leonardo/ISAST will focus a spe- periments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) in 1966, along with cial issue of Leonardo on new media arts programs and emerging fellow engineer Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschen- artists. berg and Robert Whitman. The creation of this revolutionary For further information, contact: organization was inspired by the event 9 Evenings: Theatre and Leonardo/ISAST: E-mail: <[email protected]>; Leonardo Pub- Engineering, a series of performances involving such artists as lications: E-mail: <[email protected]>; Leonardo/ISAST Advisory John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Öyvind Falstrom, Alex Hay, Debo- Board: E-mail: <[email protected]>; ISEA 2006 San Jose Con- rah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, tact: Joel Slayton, CADRE Laboratory, (408) 924-4368; ISEA 2006 David Tudor and Robert Whitman, along with a team of 30 en- San Jose Contact: Beau Takahara, ZeroOne, (650) 810-1057. gineers and scientists, mostly from Bell Telephone Laborato- ries, where Klüver worked as an electrical engineer. Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board Klüver was instrumental in helping artists create work that Members Renew Terms required technical and technological expertise; they included Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, as well as Leonardo/ISAST says goodbye to some of its long-serving the 9 Evenings and E.A.T. teams. His most cherished wish was board members and welcomes back returning members for an- that the new technologies, until then the military’s exclusive other term. Lynn Hershman, Mark Resch and Piero Scaruffi domain, would be used with peaceful aims in artistic and have rotated off the board. Marty Anderson, Penny Finnie and community-based projects. Beverly Reiser have been elected to renew their terms. In recent years, Billy Klüver and his wife and longtime col- Renewing their terms on the Leonardo/ISAST Governing laborator Julie Martin had been in the process of entrusting Board, Marty Anderson, Penny Finnie and Beverly Reiser have their considerable resources to various research centers, in- expressed their enthusiasm for new activities in the network’s cluding the Getty Research Foundation in Los Angeles and the future. Marty Anderson has agreed to serve as vice chair in ad- Fondation Daniel Langlois in Montréal. dition to his role as treasurer of the board. Penny Finnie serves Sylvie Lacerte on the Leonardo/ISAST Nominating Committee and fills a key Montréal, 14 January 2004 role in the strategic planning process for the organization by leading the project to revise the Leonardo/ISAST vision state- ment. Beverly Reiser, as chair of the Leonardo/ISAST Inter- Leonardo/ISAST Collaborates with ISEA national Advisory Board, will be deeply involved in the planning 2006 and implementation of the Pacific Rim Summit organized in San Jose, California has been chosen to host a biannual inter- conjunction with ISEA 2006 in San Jose. national symposium in August 2006 that will feature a global Although Lynn Hershman steps down from the board, she gathering of leaders in the art, science and technology com- remains actively involved in Leonardo/ISAST activities by chair- munities to explore developments in creative expression using ing the Prize and Awards Committee and serving on the In- new and emerging tools. The International Symposium on ternational Advisory Board. Likewise, while this marks the end Electronic Art, sponsored by the Netherlands-based Inter- of Mark Resch’s term on the Governing Board, where he served Society for Electronic Art (ISEA), fosters interdisciplinary ex- as secretary, he will continue to participate in Leonardo/ISAST change among culturally diverse organizations and individuals activities, such as chairing the Leonardo/ISAST panel at the working with art, science and emerging technologies. The 2006 2004 College Art Association annual conference, “Art, Science, conference theme is “Silicon Transvergence” and will focus on and Technology: Problems and Issues Facing an Emerging In- projects that bridge the boundaries between the arts, educa- terdisciplinary Field.” Piero Scaruffi has also vowed to remain tion, technology and business communities. active in Leonardo/ISAST activities, serving as an advisor on Internationally renowned new media curator Steve Dietz will issues related to marketing and globalization. serve as the 2006 symposium director, responsible for coordi- The Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board in its entirety con- nating and establishing the programming of the symposium and sists of Roger Malina, Chair; Martin Anderson, Vice Chair and related events. ZeroOne, a local Silicon Valley non-profit that fo- Treasurer; Penelope Finnie; Michael Joaquin Grey; Greg cuses on creating new opportunities to explore the connections Niemeyer; Ed Payne; Anne Brooks Pfister; Sonya Rapoport; Bev- between art and technology, will be the lead organization coor- erly Reiser; Joel Slayton; Darlene Tong and Stephen Wilson. dinating the 2006 symposium logistics. The CADRE Laboratory For further information, visit <http://www.leonardo.info/>. for New Media at San Jose State University will be the lead edu- cational institution for the ISEA Academic Conference. A unique pre-conference summit of Pacific Rim New Media Leonardo Network News Coordinator: Melinda Klayman. Centers will explore the conference theme within a context of E-mail: <[email protected]>. economic globalization, regional integration and environ- 262 LEONARDO, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 262–263, 2004 © 2004 ISAST Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0024094041139391 by guest on 01 October 2021 Leonardo_37-3_175-266 5/12/04 10:18 AM Page 263 Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha Win the partment at the University of California, Davis, where it will be 2003 Leonardo Award for Excellence presented at a prize award lecture on campus during the Spring Arthur Elsenaar and Remko Scha’s article “Electric Body Ma- 2004 session. For further information visit: <http://techno nipulation as Performance Art: A Historical Perspective,” pub- culture.ucdavis.edu>. lished in Leonardo Music Journal 12, has been named the winner Download .pdf documents of the winning article and three of the 2003 Leonardo Award for Excellence. This annual award honorable mentions at <http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/ recognizes excellence in an article published in Leonardo. Ex- Leonardo/isast/awards.html>. cellence is defined as originality, rigor of thought, clarity of ex- pression and effective presentation. Three articles received Leonardo International Advisory Board Honorable Mention: Steve Dietz’s “Ten Dreams of Technology” Welcomes Hisham Bizri (Leonardo 35, No. 5), Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr’s “Growing Semi- Living Sculptures: The Tissue Culture & Art Project” (Leonardo Hisham Bizri joins the ranks of the International Advisory 35, No. 4) and Edward Shanken’s “Art in the Information Age: Board’s art-and-science luminaries. Members communicate via Technology and Conceptual Art” (Leonardo 35, No. 4). e-mail and telephone on an ad-hoc basis to guide Elsenaar and Scha’s winning article traces the historical de- Leonardo/ISAST in its projects and collaborations. velopment of using electrically manipulated human bodies for Hisham Bizri is a filmmaker and visual artist from Lebanon, theatrical display. Addressing the controversial aspects of this currently living in San Francisco. His films, videos and multi- sometimes destructive art form, they extend their inquiry to media installations are meditations on his exilic experience as investigate the implications of electrical executions. More often, a Lebanese Muslim living in the West. Describing his philoso- they note the stimulating effects of electricity upon the body, phy of filmmaking, Bizri states, “I hope to bring aesthetics back studying Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation as im- to cinema, so that cinema can be seen once more as a window plemented in the 19th century by Duchenne and continued onto the world, and not as a mechanistic vehicle for ideology.” in practice today by artists such as Stelarc and co-author Else- Bizri studied with filmmakers Raoul Ruiz and Miklós Jancsó naar. Citing technological advances that enable interactive and has lectured extensively in the U.S.A., Lebanon, Ireland, nerve stimulation, Elsenaar and Scha point toward a future of Korea and Japan. A pioneer of “cinematic” virtual reality in- computer-generated dance and theater performances. stallations for the CAVE theater (which premiered at Ars Elec- Arthur Elsenaar is an artist and electrical engineer who ran tronica and ISEA 1998), Bizri has also directed a number of his own pirate radio station and built the transmitters for many narrative and experimental films and videos that have been illegal radio and television stations throughout the Nether- shown internationally at venues including the Museum of Mod- lands. Elsenaar’s recent work employs the human face as a com- ern Art (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the puter-controlled display device. Remko Scha is an artist, DJ and Louvre