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148 Design by Numbers Merchant Prince And spatial environments that takes place in and very useful reference index and Frank Lloyd Wright advised in his auto- the medium of television with the intro- gives a comprehensive bibliography. biography that “no home should ever duction of 3D computer graphics. These be on a hill”; instead, it should be “of expansive images, as the book explains, DESIGN BY NUMBERS the hill, belonging to it.” Just as gestalt are first presented in animated logos and theory described the holistic connec- openers. While this part closes with the by John Maeda. MIT Press, Cambridge, tions between figures and backgrounds, critical investigation into disembodi- MA, U.S.A., 1999. ISBN: 0-262-13354-7. Wright emphasized the interdepen- ment, the third and last part of the book dence of architectural structures and explores visualizations of “discursive ex- Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of their surroundings. It is said that he al- change” and alternatives to “impersonal Art, Univ. of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, ways decided the site before consider- relations” in recent media arts. IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: ing a building’s style, its spatial orienta- While at first the book clearly works <[email protected]>. tion, or the materials with which to out the strategic role of virtual imaging build it. Of all his projects, there may be in warfare and in particular the devel- Design by Numbers is both a book and an no better example of that than opment of virtual reality tools as war tac- interactive tutorial in computer pro- Fallingwater (c. 1938); a small but tics to create “belief,” this is contrasted gramming for artists and designers. elaborate home in the woods (commis- with artists that self-reflexively conduct While it is now common for printed sioned by a wealthy Pittsburgh depart- virtualities to unfold the mechanisms of books to include CD-ROMs, this one ment store owner named Edgar J. such a “realistic” look. Throughout the has instead its own website at <http:// Kaufmann). The building is embedded book Morse increasingly is concerned dbn.media.mit.edu>, where free soft- in the landscape, making it inseparable with media arts that differently express ware, called DBN (Design by Numbers), from the waterfall, woods and cantile- the notion of the virtual world and en- can be accessed, downloaded and used vered rock ledges of its location. Whilst gages in bodily experiences. In particu- by anyone with a JAVA-enabled browser. much has been written about Falling- lar she discusses installation works that Using the book and website in combina- water as a completed structure, less has are based in video and describes possi- tion, it is the intention of the author been said about its preparatory draw- bilities of “personal” interactions with (who heads the Aesthetics and Compu- ings, the friendship between merchant the video image on monitor. Further- tation group at MIT) that designers, prince and master builder and the more she considers the expansion of even those who are “mathematically dozen projects that Wright and the feedback and superimposition into the challenged,” might quickly acquire “the Kaufmanns intended to build (few of multiplicity of virtual space that is skills necessary to write computer pro- which were ever realized) from 1934 un- stored in the computer and allows for grams that are themselves visual expres- til the architect’s death in 1959. This is navigation and virtual voyaging. What is sions,” and, as a consequence, “come to the full-color catalog for an exhibition important here is that a concept of cy- appreciate the computer’s unique role of fifty of the more than 600 Wright berculture gains shape that unfolds a in the future of the arts and design.” drawings for projects commissioned by model of human-machine interaction Unfortunately, the layout of the book is Kaufmann, which opened on 10 April that does not remove or delete one or so unexceptional (particularly the dust and continues through 3 October 1999 the other aspect. Rather the preferred jacket, which might have been used in a at the Heinz Architectural Center at the model enhances the internal, affirms powerful way) that it is unlikely to con- Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. personal, subjective “interaction” be- vert any graphic designers, who create (Reprinted by permission from Bal- tween inside and outside, so that the ex- far more complex forms intuitively, with last Quarterly Review 14, No. 4, Summer perience of cyberculture is seen as little or no knowledge of programming. 1999.) grounded in the physical experience of As a result, it may only reach those who need it least, meaning those who are al- one’s own body. “And, finally, although STAIRWAYS TO THE STARS: a virtual environment is an invention ready straddling the line between art KYWATCHING IN HREE and a simulation that is prepared in ad- and mathematics, between graphic de- S T vance, we (and even its designers) can- sign and computer programming. GREAT ANCIENT CULTURES not fully anticipate what it means to ex- (Reprinted by permission from Ballast by Anthony Aveni. Wiley, New York, NY, perience that realm until we are Quarterly Review 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.) U.S.A., 1997, 1999. 230 pp. Paper, ‘inside’” (p. 211). This notion of the $15.95. ISBN: 0-471-32976-2. body is grounded in the need of differ- MERCHANT PRINCE AND ence and against sameness. The experi- MASTER BUILDER: EDGAR J. Reviewed by David Topper, 272 Oxford ence will never be the same. Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3M 3J7 AUFMANN AND RANK Beyond the emphasis on the “real” K F Canada. E-mail: body in “virtual” reality, the book gives a LLOYD WRIGHT <[email protected]>. wide range of definitions within an in- by Richard L. Cleary. Heinz Architec- tense theoretical framework that thor- tural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art, As I write this review, Venus is at its oughly connects the recent debates on Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A. Distributed by maximum brightness in the western sky media culture with the conceptual his- Univ. of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, at dusk, but I wonder how many folks, tory and discursive use of terms and 1999. Exh. cat. ISBN: 0-880-390036-0. especially those living in cities, are models that have developed in linguis- aware of this fact. Fewer still know of tics, structuralism, film and television Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of the 584-day synodic cycle of Venus as theories to understand media communi- Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar the planet dances about the sun. But cation. The reader also greatly appreci- Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: surely pre-modern and ancient cultures ates that the book closes with a detailed <[email protected]>. knew the sky, probably better than most 148 Leonardo Reviews Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2000.33.2.148c by guest on 25 September 2021 of us today. One need only to experi- The chapter on Stonehenge is an ex- heliacal rising of the Pleiades was also ence a clear night sky, far from the light cellent overview of the archaeology and common among the Native Americans pollution of city and town, to get a archaeoastronomy of this prehistoric in North America. They probably used sense of what those cultures saw and site, which was built, rebuilt and modi- it, along with other celestial events, as felt; the moon, the stars, the Milky Way, fied from about 2900 to 1800 B.C. The an agricultural calendar; Aveni also a planet, the occasional meteor, all idea of Stonehenge as an astronomical speculates that the Incas used it as evoke a presence close and encompass- observatory began with Norman such, telling them when to plow, plant ing in the canopy of the heavens. Lockyer in the late nineteenth century, and harvest. Alternatively, sit at dawn and watch but went full steam in the 1960s when The last chapter, with the clever the sun rise, as I once did at Chichén Gerald Hawkins plugged the alignments title, “The West vs. the Rest,” brings Itzá in the Yucatán. As the glow in the into a computer to reveal, supposedly, the discussion toward the inevitable eastern sky slowly gave way to the bright that the Stonehenge was a computer. comparison of these cultures with sphere of the sun, I knew why that an- Aveni discusses the initial skepticism ours, a product of ancient Greek cient culture studied the cyclical mo- among some archaeologists, such as Ri- thought. Specifically, Aveni focuses on tions of the sun ever so precisely, and I chard Atkinson, as well as his own doubt a comparison of Greek geometrical had a glimpse of why they worshipped it. of Hawkins’s claim that Stonehenge can and spatial thinking, which gave rise to Anthony Aveni’s latest book is a be used to predict eclipses. Aveni is con- cosmology, with earlier Babylonian as- clearly written and often fascinating in- vinced that it was used as a horizon cal- tronomy. As he correctly points out, troduction to the archaeoastronomy of endar for correlating the solstices and the Babylonian tradition of detailed Stonehenge in Britain, the Maya of lunar standstills. Mention is made, but trackings of the motions of celestial Mesoamerica and the Inca of Peru. Al- not discussed in any depth, of objects is merely another version of though the idea that various prehistoric Alexander Thom’s studies of other precise naked-eye sky-watching as and other structures entailed possible megalithic sites in the British Isles. found in the Americas. But for some celestial alignments is about 100 years Unfortunately, all we can know about untold reason Aveni finds this “resem- old, it was only during the past 3 de- Stonehenge astronomy and other mega- blance” to be surprising (p.
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