Art(a)Science [Paperback]

Christa Sommerer (Editor), Laurent Mignonneau (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 24, 1998 | ISBN-10: 3211829539 | ISBN-13: 978-3211829530 | Edition: 1

The Arts and Sciences have long been regarded as separated disciplines. In the era of the rapidly developing computer technologies a novel interdisciplinary spirit has emerged that indicates a promising new collaboration between research and art. Computer Graphics, Interactive Arts, Scientific Visualization, Communication, Artificial Life and the Internet are areas where artistic thinking influences science and where scientific methodology reaches into the arts. "Art@Science” brings together the pioneer thinkers in this interdisciplinary movement into the 21st century and features articles by: Philippe Quéau, Maria Grazia Mattei, Ryohei Nakatsu, Donna J. Cox, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Demetri Terzopoulos, Thomas S. Ray, Louis Bec, Machiko Kusahara, Michael Naimark, Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Weibel, Gottfried Mayer-Kress, Otto E. Rossler, Toshiharu Ito, Hans-Peter Schwarz, Peter Richards, Itsuo Sakane, Michael Klein, Cynthia Goodman, Erkki Huhtamo, and Roy Ascott. "... This cultural bridge-building is attempted either through learning the skills of the ‘other’ or through collaborative projects between artists and scientists/engineers ... a thought-provoking collection on good paper with high-quality illustrations.” (CIRCA)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"... This cultural bridge-building is attempted either through learning the skills of the other or through collaborative projects between artists and scientists/engineers ... Springer have spent a lot of money producing a thought-provoking collection on good paper with high-quality illustrations. " -- CIRCA, January 1999

For the time being, the best overview of this renaissance of interaction between art and science is furnished by the collection Art@Science, edited by Sommerer and Mignonneau. Art@Science provides a multifaceted view of the trailblazers of computer technology. Whether artist, scientist, historian or the director of one the new museums for media art, aptly selected international experts present their views on an advanced level but remain nonetheless generally understandable as they lead us through the extremely complex topics covered in this well organized volume. In recent years a new type of artist has appeared on the scene. This new breed is active in the main centers of research and part of an internationally well-connected polyglot scene that has access to current and state of the art materials. These artists participate, with aesthetic methods and objectives, directly in the further development of the computer medium. In pursuit of special effects and realistic virtual illusions, art and science are approaching one another on the most advanced levels of technology The kind of artist who is both artist and scientist is now returning. The slogan-like warning against a split into "two cultures," preached by Charles P. Snow forty years ago, is rapidly dissolving away and the well-worn separation of art and technology is dispossessed once again. -- DIE ZEIT, September 12 1998

The convergence of the natural sciences and the arts in the age of digitalization is the subject of this collection of essays in English entitled "Art @ Science", and edited by the media artists Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. The two dozen texts cover the fields of visualization, telecommunication, artificial life, complex systems and the chaos theory as well as metatheoretical considerations. The cooperation between artists and scientists during the European Renaissance can be considered as one of the historical models for the current situation, and its continuing influence is described by Donna J. Cox in her essay "What Can An Artist Do for Science: 'Cosmic Voyage' Imax Film". Visualization experts, film-makers, animation artists formed inter-disciplinary "Renaissance teams" to produce the large format film. Several of the essays deal with the cooperation between artists and scientists within institutions, and here mention may be made of the Exploratorium in San Francisco (Peter Richards "From London to Nagasaki - The Roots of Interactive @ the Exploratorium" or the Frankfurt Institut fur Neue Medien (Michael Klein: "The Evolution of Images Between Chaos, Art and New Media). In taking stock of this continuing process of disintegration of the dividing line between art and science, this volume is invaluable particularly for this sector. -- SCREEN MULTIMEDIA, July 6, 1998

Product Details

• Paperback: 330 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (March 24, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3211829539
• ISBN-13: 978-3211829530
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,643,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Art of Cut&Paste - creativity of the 21st century, October 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Art(a)Science (Paperback)

Several positive reviews of this book made me buy this book. I regret having done so. The book is well prepared (paper, typesetting, printing, binding, index, colour figures, references, footnotes) as one can expect from a well known publisher like Springer. It is the content that is disappointing.

Having read the reviews, I thought the book was about science or technology in the arts. This would have implied some kind of science in the book. Instead I found a book about the way some contemporary artists think about their kind of art. From their point of view, producing colourful pictures in interactive environments is Art@Science. OK, there is much talk about philosophical matters. Descartes, Leibniz and Newton with their boring mechanistic view on one side and Einstein, Schrödinger and Heisenberg with their "holistic" view on the other side. But this kind of "philosophy" is scarcely more than just name-dropping. For example, on page 12, the editors write:

"in 1950 Relativity and Quantum theories were developed by Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr [..] Today, the activity of the cosmic web is coming to be understood as the very essence of being, as one indivisible whole"

The names are correct, the year 1950 is simply wrong and the conclusions are vulgar. The depth of understanding of physics is well illustrated by another quotation from the introduction:

"Nam June Paik is often credited with the development of one of the first interactive works by putting a magnet on a television set, thus transforming the image on the screen through magnetic waves."

First some nit picking: such a magnet produces a field, not waves. When I was about 14, I also discovered the wonderful blue and yellow spots around my LEGO magnet on the screen. My parents did not like them and I got into serious trouble for doing some harm to our TV set. Nevertheless, Nam June Paik is referenced 7 times in the index for such groundbreaking discoveries. The index also has entries for Apple, Netscape, NTT, Deutsche Telekom, Xerox and other helpful companies.

What about contributions from non-artists like Prusinkiewicz, Rossler and Mayer-Kress ? I liked Prusinkiewicz's 9 pages for its introductory approach. Rossler's 3.5 pages circle around Descartes being poisoned in Sweden and end with the remarkable sentences "This book is called Art-at-Science. It could also be called Science-at-Art." Is this irony ? Mayer-Kress mentions himself exploring sub-atomic particles, himself meeting Jean-Pierre Eckman as well as himself inventing the notion Global Brain.

Peter Weibel's chapter gave me an idea how such books come into existence. It is the Art of Cut&Paste. On page 173 he says:

"Still today (1980) in an interview [..]"

Obviously he still has his old articles in WordStar or TeX format and from time to time mixes them up into just another significant paper by Cut&Paste.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the who-is-who of art & science, November 8, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Art(a)Science (Paperback)

Before reading Art@Science we did not know there was such a thing like art and science collaboration; they seemed two completely divided areas. Especially for students in media art this book provides a good introduction of Ôthe who-is-who of art & science,Õ with great illustrations and a useful bibliography.

5.0 out of 5 stars Introduces a real breakthrough, September 13, 1998

By 

Annick Bureaud ([e-mail]) LEONARDO ... - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art(a)Science (Paperback)

This book is not just another collection of essays on the relations between art and science. The approach of the editors (Sommerer & Mignonneau) introduces a real breakthrough that put an end to the dualistic, cartesian way of looking at this issue that have characterized so far most of the writtings about it.

In the introduction they write : "We suggest that art and science should no longer be considered separate and contrary disciplines, but instead complementary to each other, where patterns of mind (art) and patterns of matter (science) are reflections of one another that are dynamically interrelated throught the human consciousness, changing their states from mind to matter and vice versa, from matter to mind. We consider both of them part of a holistic, intinsically dynamic and self consistent universe."

On this basis, they have organized the book in 8 chapters. Five of them are dedicated to key contemporary researches and issues : Telecommunications, Scientific Visualization, Artificial Life, Artists as Researchers, Chaos and Complex Systems. Three relate to the "environment" and history of the art/science field : Public Spaces (where and how to exhibit the artworks, presentation of the experiences conducted at ICC, ZKM and The Exploratorium), Education of Art and Science and Art and Science in Historical and Cultural Context.

The essays of each of the contributors (artists, scientists, researchers, theoreticians or ... all at the same time in the same person) focus on an element of the puzzle but with the same holistic approach. It is to be put to the credits of the editors to have avoided artificial connections and to have gathered such a diverse and rich material from so many challenging people, among whom Philippe Queau, Donna Cox, Thomas Ray, Louis Bec, Machiko Kusahara, Michael Naimark, Peter Weibel, Otto Rossler, Toshiharu Itoh, Itsuo Sakane, Roy Ascott and the editors themselves.