talk on 40 year history of leonardo given at banff in 2008

2. The Leonardo organisation:
40 Years on…
Roger F Malina

3. Tell a few stories…..
• The world has changed, artists have changed...
• The New Leonardos are here…..
• Intimate Science and Micro Science…
• Art-Science Collaboration in the tool kit for
sustainable development….
• Artsactive: Artists in Labs, Scientists in Studios

5. The SuperNova Acceleration Probe Satellite
• Observational Cosmology:
Dark Energy and Dark
Matter
• Open new observational
‘niches’
• Design new intruments to
test theories
• Mysterious effectiveness of
Robots
• Cf Wigner: Mysterious
Effectiveness of Mathematics

6. Frank Malina: Astronautical Pioneer
• WAC Corporal Oct 1946
• First Man made object in Space 1949
• Jet Assisted Take Off Units
• Director/founder NASA Jet
Propulsion Lab
• Founder Aerojet General
Corp
• Deputy Director UNESCO
• President International
Academy Astronautics
• Frank J Malina IAF Medal

7. Frank Malina Kinetic Artist
• First art and
technology show 1955
• Patented Lumidyne
System
• Interactive art= sound
triggering images
• ELI Company
• Pioneer of Kinetic Art
movement

8. A little history
• Leonardo Journal founded
in Paris 1967
• Kinetic Art Movement
• Op Art Movement
• Cybernetics Serendipity 1968
• Experiments in Art and
Technology (E.A.T.) in NY
• Center for Advanced Visual
Studies, MIT
• C.P. Snow: “The Two
Cultures Debate”

9. Artists Working With Scientists and Engineers
Individuals with Hybrid Careers
– Frank Malina
– C.P.Snow
– Joseph Needham
– Jacob Bronowski
– Gyorgy Kepes
– Buckminster Fuller
– Richard Gregory
– Yona Friedman
– A.L Copley
– Claude Berge
– Photo: Nicolas Schoffer 56

10. Leonardo Organisation activities since 1967
• Working Groups
• Workshops/Conferences
• Publications
• Prizes and Awards
• Collaborations
• …over 40 years we have promoted and
documented the work of over 6000
• New Leonardos

11. Leonardo Books Series @ MITPRESS
30 books, 4/year
eg: Art and Innovation
( XEROX PARC )
Immersed in Technology
(BANFF, Canada).
MA Moser/D MacLeod
Language of New Media
Signs of Life: Art/Biology
Tactical Bio Media

12. Arts &
New Technologies……….Sciences…..

13. …. History ….. Philosophy/Theory

14. A story….
• Leonardo an organisation founded in the 1960’s
– A generation of survivors of World War II
– Creation of new international organisations
– A ‘social contract” between science and government
• Cultural appropriation of science and new technologies
• The birth of the digital arts

15. And now….?
• « Ask Not What the Sciences can do for the
Arts…Ask what the Arts can do for the
Sciences¨….Roy Ascott
• The « Hard Humanities »: art science
collaboration as part of the tool kit for building
a sustainable world….burning issues…
• Enabling and promoting the New Leonardos

16. Intimate Science
Roger F Malina
Banff
August 2008

17. Arrhenius 1896

19. The disconnect between our senses and
the world
• Most knowledge about our world now comes
through scientific instruments
o Few people have experience of mediated senses
o Experiments on data vs experiments on the world
o The Galilean Fallacy…The End of Theory
• Most of the world isnt on human scales
• Our intuition, languages, metaphors, arts are built
training on the wrong data for survival

20. Inhabiting New Scales
cf Cheese Diagram Guardans, Czegledy
SLOW........................................................................................................
• FAST
• SMALL OUR SIZE LARGE

21. The Senses: Augmentation
Sight , Touch, Temporality ……………………………………

22. New Senses: Gravitational Wave
Observatories-
LIGO in USA ,VIRGO in Italy

23. New scales: The Antares Neutrino
Observatory under the Mediterranean

24. Modern Science doesnt Make
Common Sense: A Cargo Cult ?
• We need a new sensuality
• We need a new scientific method
o Most science is done in protected semi monastic enclaves
• We need to understand the world
o « society » no longer think science is a priority for
government spending or for peoples careers
o Need the « hard humanities »
o A New Folkoric Art Movement appropriating scientific
knowledge of the world….hacker and “make” communities

25. • Micro Science: .
• Coupling Common Sense to Common Science
• Micro-Science
o Micro Science is to the National Science Foundation
What Micro Credit is to the World Bank
• Making science intimate
o Owning data about your own environment
o Science creating communities own their knowledge
o Building intution, language from mediated sensory experience

26. Muliple Modes to Intimate Science
• INTIMATE SCIENCE: «
ownership of the data
about ones own
environment »
• New AMATEUR
SCIENCE: « public or
peoples science », Calm
Technologies
• CROWDSOURCING :
» distributed and open
science »

27. Intimate Science
Pigeon Blog ( B Da Costa) Inside Outside Handbag (Katherine Moriwaki )
…Calm Technologies..Locative Media

28. Mediated Sensuality
1904 2004
Cezanne: Mont St Victoire.........Sabine Raaf: Translator II

29. Immersion in Extreme Environments
Antarctica......Deserts…Oceans…
eg Marco Peljham and Makrolab

30. Hybrid Bodies
eg Marcel.li Antunez Roca

31. New Corporality; Physical, Virtual
Stelarc Char Davies

32. Nano Intuition
Sommerer/Mignoneau

33. People’s Science, New Amateur Science
• Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti:
Indian People’s Science
Networks
• Brazil Digital Culture
projects
• Sergipe « Human Project »
o Humbi Umbi in Brazil
• Srishti School, Bangalore
• Ubiquitous micro science
producing communities

34. Calm Technologies/Distributed
Sensing/Locative Media
• Weiner 1991 Xerox Parc
• Eg Eric Paulos, Intel
• www.urban-atmospheres.net/
CitizenScience
• active participation in basic
scientific data gathering
• richer, finer-grain data sets
for modeling
• mobile phone for grassroots
participation in government
and policy making
• Trash Truck project

35. Crowd-Sourcing
• Distributed Science
• BOINC : Berkeley
Open Infrastructure
Network Computing
o SETI@home search
for extraterrestial
intelligence
o climateprediction.net ,
climate modelling
o malariacontrol.net

36. Innocentive.com:
« open innovation »
• Organisations can submit
problems for solution
• Together with award
incentive
• Over 200 problems
solved to date
• Problem solving
communities outside
the Academy

37. The way we do Science carries within
in the seeds of its own failure
Vesna/Gimzewski
• Failure of the
enlightenment
• Science is done in
guarded monasteries
• Science education and
outreach from the top
floor not from the
ground floor
• More science education
will not help
• Science must be
systematically
culturally redesigned

38. How
• Artists in Labs
• Scientists in Studios
• Town Scientists
• Micro Science funding for artists
• Open sourcing of data about your own
world
• Developing the ‘hard humanities’ to
change the content and direction of
science

39. ArtsActive Network
Artists in R and D Labs Programs
• Art in Labs, Switzerland, Jill Scott • Observers: James Leach, Emmanuel
• ANAT/Synapse, Mahe (Orange), Bronac Ferran,
Sammuelle Carlson
• Symbiotica Australia • List of patents filed by artists
• Dissonancias, :Laboral, Spain • Exchange of Intellectual Property
• Art and Genomics: Holland approaches
• ECTOPIA; Portugal • Jurying systems
• • Announcements
FUSE/CADRE: .Climate Clock • Scientists in cultural organisations ?
• UK ITEM, ArtsCatalyst, FACT/
Blue Sky Residencies
• Leonardo - UCB Space Sciences • www.artsactive.net
• Leonardo/POP SUD France
• TRANSGENESIS; Czech rep

40. Berkeley: Art and Space Exploration
Residencies
• Space Sciences Lab
• NASA and UK Arts
Council
• Rejane Spitz: web media
• Semi Conductor: data
sonification, infographie
• Liliane Lijn: robotique, new
materials
• Joanna Griffin: data
visualisation, education
• CNMAT STEREO Satellite
sonification “Sounds of
Space”…Marty Quinn

41. SemiConductor residency
• Secret Life of Magnetic
Fields
• Interviews of Lab
scientists on limits of
scientific knowledge
• Brilliant Noise
Installation= repurposed
solar data

42. Liliane Lijn:
Silicon Aerogel Sculptures
Solar Hills = solar robots

43. The Sound of Trees Growing
• David Dunn (composer,
sound artist)
• Jim Crutchfield
( complexity scientist)
• Artist driven recording
of sounds of trees
growing led to research
project in the coupling
of ultrasound from
trees, beetles, forest
fire system dynamics

44. And now….?
• « Ask Not What the
Sciences can do for the
Arts…Ask what the Arts
can do for the
Sciences¨….Roy Ascott
• The « Hard Humanities »:
art science collaboration as
part of the tool kit for
building a sustainable
world
• Enabling and promoting
the New Leonardos

45. Thanks
• rmalina@prontomail.com
• www.leonardo.info
• www.olats.org