.

In his opening line of The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation, Jon Gertner states that “This is a book about the origins of modern communication as seen through the adventures of  several men who spent their careers working at Bell Labs” (p. 1). Gertner goes on to explain that the Bell Labs environment was an incubator of innovation and offers a narrative documenting many of the transitional technologies of the twentieth century that were created from within this culture. Among the best known are the transistor, developing methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light, Charge Coupled Device (CCD) semiconductor imaging sensors and the discovery of the predicted level of background cosmic radiation left over from the Big Bang. It is often stated, and Gertner reiterates this, that creativity thrived at Bell Labs because the leaders of the company set up an arena that encouraged employees in different fields to work together. Another reason Gertner expounds on is that the Labs’ success was due to the way that employees enjoyed significant freedom in pursuing projects. This was possible because Ma Bell’s monopoly and the guaranteed income it generated meant that there was little pressure to restrict the projects to foreseeably moneymaking innovations.

AT&T’s monopoly, which ended in 1982, was put in place when the US Congress passed the Willis-Graham Act of 1921. This legislation exempted the company from federal antitrust laws, allowing the company to function as a government-mandated “natural monopoly.” The premise behind the law was that AT&T inhabited a problem-rich environment because they needed to invent from scratch everything that we associate with the telephone industry (dial tones, hang-up hooks, telephone ringers, etc.). This unique set of circumstances allowed the monopoly to develop a manufacturing entity, Western Electric, the sole provider of equipment and a research and development arm, Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). Gertner takes us through various inventions and episodes of history of the Lab, which still functions today. Topics include how the design of the Murray Hill campus aided interdisciplinary exchange, the laying of the transatlantic cable, Echo and Telstart, and more. The chapters unfold along the lines Gertner outlined in his opening sentence, with the focus centered around a few especially significant people who thrived within Bell Labs (e.g., Claude Shannon, Jim Fisk, Melvin Kelly, William Baker, John Pierce, William Shockley).

Overall, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation reads more like a narrative documenting the rise and fall of Bell Labs, which I assume was the author’s intention, than a study of how the work at Bell Labs was a part of a larger revolution in the twentieth century. Because Gertner focused on the Labs’ story through looking at the “heroes,” rather than adopting a more systemic approach, the labs impact on the culture as a whole is underemphasized. He mentions that at its peak in the 1960s, Bell Labs employed nearly 15,000 people, including some 1200 PhDs, but fails to fully capture the scope of the projects these people conducted at this intellectual utopia. Thus, the end result of his study is less a definitive history than a narrowly conceived perspective. Given Gertner’s extensive use of interviews and primary documents it seems extraordinary that he missed so much of what I’ve always thought was an important part of Bell’s creative legacy.

For example, development of the transistor is one achievement of Bell Labs that is detailed extensively. (It is clear that Gertner read Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson [1].) Gertner explains that John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, who worked in a Shockley led research group, demonstrated the “point-contact” transistor on Dec. 23, 1947. They built their transistor with little help from him. Shockley, who does not come off as a “team” player throughout, then broke with the Bell Labs’ collaboration policy by separately inventing a second, more reliable, “junction” transistor in secret. This created some tensions, as Gertner outlines. Finally, in 1954, Morris Tanenbaum invented the third, “silicon” transistor (the previous designs were germanium) that is the basis for the vast majority of today’s transistors. One point the book reiterates is that Shockley left Bell Labs in 1955 and that his Shockley Labs in Mountain View, California laid the foundation for what would become Silicon Valley. In this sense, the legacy of Bell remains evident in the technology environment of today.

On the other hand, it seems strange to me that, although A. Michael Noll and Max Matthews were interviewed by Gertner, the book doesn’t convey the convergence of art, science and technology at the Lab. Some of what is missing is evident on Noll’s Bell Labs page [2]., where he notes:

“There were often interesting diversions from daily research. When the acoustic failings of Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center were acknowledged, Bell Telephone Laboratories was asked to investigate. My boss Manfred Schroder was a physicist with a strong knowledge of acoustics and headed our team . . . There was a steady flow of interesting visitors to the Labs. Roy Disney came by to see our early work in computer animation—but saw no relevance then to his company! We invited Leopold Stokowski to visit to hear our work in computer music. Max Mathews had many composers and musicians who visited to learn of his research into electronic music. Bela Julesz and I exhibited our computer-generated patterns at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City in 1965—the first exhibit of digital art in the US.”

I bought the book because of I was hoping to learn more about this side of Bell Labs, so I was particularly disappointed by its omission. Leonardo folks are probably asking what else was missing? Well, there was the early exhibition of computer art in 1965 called Computer-Generated Pictures, in New York City that featured work by Bela Julesz and A. Michael Noll, mentioned above. In this case, the name of the exposition did not include the word ‘art,’ because these ‘generated pictures’ were not yet seen as such. Shortly before the book came out Christopher Tyler, who did his post-doc at Bell Labs under Bela Julesz and had an office next to Max Mathews and across the corridor from Lillian Schwartz, mentioned the excitement surrounding a Stevie Wonder visit to the Lab to see the state-of-the art sound studio developed by Mathews. Lillian Schwartz, who is often characterized as a creator of 20th century computer-developed art, wrote a book that includes a sampling of the work at the Lab.

Another key figure from this time was Billy Klüver, the founder of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), who began his work in this area as an electrical engineer at Bell Labs. In the early 1960s, his first project was with kinetic art sculptor Jean Tinguely on his “Homage to New York” (1960), a machine that destroyed itself and was presented in the garden at MOMA. Klüver also collaborated with Jasper Johns, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Andy Warhol. One of Klüver’s best-known projects (in 1966) was with Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. They organized 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of performances that united artists and engineers. Other key figures included Emmanuel Ghent (electronic music); Ken Knowlton (Beflix , or Bell Flicks animation system), which was used to produce dozens of animated films with artists like Stan VanDerBeek); Laurie Spiegel (electronic music), and Jerry Spivak (a pioneer in interactive graphics) [3].

Strangely, the book that frequently came to mind as I read was A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn [4], which has nothing to do with Bell Labs. Zinn’s book, published in 1980, sought to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites. He did this because he felt that placing an emphasis on the “great men in high places” perspective, which was taught in most schools up until this point, missed many aspects of the events that actually shaped the United States. Indeed, because Zinn looked at the struggles of those who fought slavery and racism, labor unions, and war makers, some critics pegged the book as leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. Although the omission I noted in this book were not political, they were nonetheless apparent.

Gertner notes that Arthur C. Clarke said (in the late 1950s), “At first sight, when one comes upon it in its surprisingly rural setting, the Bell Telephone Laboratories’ main New Jersey site looks like a large and up-to-date factory, which in a sense it is. But it is a factory for ideas, and so its production lines are invisible” (p. 4-5). The art, science and technology community benefitted immensely from this “creative factory” and, ironically, this research arm of the AT&T monopoly funded the research that helped develop a new set of tools for artists. This book does convey some of the interdisciplinarity that thrived at the lab; thus, although not definitive, it is quite informative. Gertner’s knack for telling stories makes the book easy to read. Some segments of the story come through well, such as why many people say Marvin Kelly, who was the head of Bell Labs when Brattain, Bardeen and Shockley developed transistors, deserved to be the fourth recipient of their 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics (because of his way of bringing talent together and encouraging creativity). There is some discussion of the venture capital model and how it compares to the Bell Labs model, despite the way the former requires an end product and the latter allows basic research to thrive. In addition, figures like Claude Shannon are dealt with deftly in various stages of their careers. Still, as noted above, the reach of the book is an evident limitation in the narrative. While The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation is definitely worth reading, I would recommend that readers recognize that the volume omits key episodes of Bell Labs’ legacy.

REFERENCES

[1] Riordan, Michael. Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (Sloan Technology Series) New York: Norton, 1997.

[2] See http://noll.uscannenberg.org/.

[3] The EAT lectures are now on YouTube, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoxuzPPstXc. More information about the Bell Labs history is available at  http://retiary.org/ls/btl/btl.html and http://retiary.org/ls/btl/btl.html.

[4] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. Rev. and updated ed. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.

Imagery in the 21st Century
by Oliver Grau, Editor; with Thomas VeiglAs I began this review I began to think that the refrain “we are surrounded by images today” has lost its impact (despite my being among the guilty users of it). On the one hand, it seems that many of us notice the imagery.

Yet, on the other hand, as we increasingly engage with our visual culture certain norms for our critical investigations are also developing. I’m not sure where this leaves us. To be sure, the nature and complexity of our image-abundant culture is extraordinary. Images are no longer sparse and highly treasured. Rather, we have visual social media, scientific imaging tools, and even static objects like paintings populate the ever-changing screens of our mobile and desktop devices. Even those among us who have resisted some of the broad spectrum of electronic options (think Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, thousands of television channels, digital games, and virtual worlds) cannot escape this new world.

Overall, the book offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on expanding and novel forms of images and visualization.  Drawing on a number of experts, the twenty chapters highlight new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems. In today’s information explosion the question of where what digital images represent and where they fit in the scheme of things becomes quite prismatic.  As a whole, the chapters are quite strong; they do not suffer from the unevenness so common in collections of conference papers, which this book is.  Of particular value is the breadth of the essays.  Researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities explore the wealth of diverse functionality that images have evolved to offer to our lives, that includes lab applications, social commentary, humanistic questions, and experimental art projects.  The spectrum of topics include: database economy (Sean Cubitt), telepresent images (Martin Schulz), ethical boundaries (Eduardo Kac), the emergence of a future web-based video aesthetic (Thomas Veigl), brain research (Olaf Breidbach), medical illustration (Dolores and David Steinman), interdisciplinary practices (James Elkins), the role of source code (Wendy Hui Kyong Chun), the interface (Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau), the museum (Peter Weibel), cellular automata (Tim Otto Roth and Andreas Deutsch ), cultural analytics (Lev Manovich and Jeremy Douglass) and a digital version of the Warburg Image Atlas (Martin Warnke).  Even this abbreviated list offers a glimpse into the diversity of efforts to expand visual competence through providing cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities, and natural sciences. While this range makes the volume a valuable tool for examining this subject across disciplines, the title, Imagery in the 21st Century, is likely to seem a rash overstatement in a few decades, given that the century has hardly begun.

Chapters focusing on applications and innovations offer the most of substantive value, in my view. “Toward New Conventions for Visualizing blood Flow in the Era of Fascination with Visibility and Imagery” by Dolores Steinman and David Steinman falls into this category. Well written and comprehensive, these authors set the stage by pointing out that medical images (drawings, woodcuts, engravings) have always played a key role in educating practitioners and knowledge development. They then follow with case studies that illustrate their efforts to represent blood flow in the context of the living body and conclude with some commentary on medical imagery as art and in popular culture.

James Elkins’ chapter, “Visual Practices across the University: A Report,” also stood out. Elkins presents a brief summary of a book called Visual Practices across the Universitythat was published in German in 2007 and is little known outside of the German-speaking world. The essay summarizes an exhibition project that was initiated by sending email to faculty in the sixty-odd departments at University College, Cork asking for exhibition proposals from anyone who uses images in their work.  What stood out in his commentary is how differently scientists, humanists and artists think about images and imagery. In this case, he found that while most visual work in the university is done outside of the humanities, most of this work is invisible because the routine image making and image interpretation is not considered as important to the goals as what the images represent and the science that they make possible.

Oliver Grau, the editor, is a Professor for Image Science and Dean of the Department for Cultural Studies at Danube University, the author of Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion (2003) [1] and the editor of MediaArtHistories. His collaborator, Thomas Veigl, is on the scientific staff of the Department for Image Science at the Danube–University Krems.  Their opening chapter, Introduction: Imagery in the 21^st Century, sets the stage well and is available at http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262015722chap1.pdf . Grau’s concluding section on “Media Art’s Challenge in Our Societies” offers an overview of image studies today.  Parts of the chapter are useful but, because some sections in it are so focused on his professional efforts to meet today’s challenges rather than the challenges overall, the text read like an infomercial at times.

Throughout the book it is clear that there are the endless options for image manipulation and that while new media presents us with both interactive opportunities it also raises challenging questions (about human autonomy, entertainment, interaction, etc.).  The editors note:

“Images increasingly define our world and our everyday life: in advertising, entertainment, politics, and even in science, images are pushing themselves in front of language. The mass media, in particular, engulf our senses on a daily basis. It would appear that images have won the contest with words: Will the image have the last word?” (p. 6)

Perhaps images will have the last word.  On March 12^th of this year (2012) theEncyclopaedia Britannica announced “it will cease publication of the 32-volume printed edition of its flagship encyclopedia, continuing with the digital versions that have become popular with knowledge seekers in recent decades.”  The press release also noted that “[The Encyclopedia Britannica] was originally published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768 and has been in print continuously ever since [2]. When I grew up, like many of my generation, this book was like browsing the web.  I used to love to turn the pages, looking at the images and reading the articles that related to images that caught my fancy.

Of course, the Grau book itself raises another side of the question about whether images will have the last word. At this point in time it is not available electronically although sections of the text (without the images!) are on Google Books; moreover Google Books does not offer active links to all the many, many websites the Grau book references. Amazon’s page for the book does not link to a Kindle version.  Instead, Amazon has a link asking visitors to tell the publisher to offer a Kindle version.

So, will images have the last word? Perhaps. Or perhaps we need to ask: Is it a good thing for images to have the last word?  I did not think that the depth of this kind of question was fully addressed in the book since its focus was on the importance of understanding images as vital and dynamic parts of our world today. Thus, my primary concern about this volume, which I recommend overall, is that the reflections and analytical approaches offered did not seem to balance the euphony and cacophony of our experience today. While I’m not exactly sure how this relates to whether images will have the last word, I do know that at times all of the changing images surrounding me feel very cacophonic.  As a participant in the movement is to reverse the dominance of textual sources in our approaches to knowledge, as we celebrate our visual abundance, visualization methods, the distribution of images, and how imagery benefits our lives; it seems foreign to have evolved to the point that I think so much about the visual noise.  Even in this book I found that some of the projects seemed strikingly cacophonic, and thought that the theoretical assumptions of the authors overall are more biased toward euphonic reactions to our visual culture than the harshness and discordant qualities that are congruent with our visual culture?

Perhaps the next step is making sure we address that the cacophonic side is actively included in our critical analyses or imagery.  Grau does stress that using an historical lens is an aid in understanding our imagery today. This perspective opens the door for a balanced analysis of the visual and textual and I support him in this effort. Therefore, while the book is only a slice of the imagery picture today, I think readers will gain much from spending time with Imagery in the 21st Century.

References:
[1] See my Leonardo Review at http://leonardo.info/reviews/feb2003/GRAU_ione.html.

[2] “Encyclopaedia Britannica To End Print Edition, Go Completely Digital,” http://www.corporate.eb.com/?p=508.

These works were presented at the Leonardo Days at the Network Science conferences, the High Throughput Humanities conference, and in the Leonardo journal.

The publication is a project of the ATEPUCU: The ATEC Experimental Publishing and Curating initiative at UT Dallas. A web companion is available at http://www.AHCNcompanion.info.

Contents:

Preface by Roger Malina
Introduction by Isabel Meirelles and Maximilian Schich

I Networks in Culture

Networks of Photos, Landmarks, and People
David Crandall and Noah Snavely

GAP: A NeoGeo Approach to Classical Resources
Leif Isaksen et al.

Complex Networks in Archaeology: Urban Connectivity in Iron Age and Roman Southern Spain
Tom Brughmans, Simon Keay, and Graeme Earl

II Networks in Art

Sustaining a Global Community: Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
Juan Luis Suárez, Fernando Sancho, and Javier de la Rosa

Artfacts.Net
Marek Claassen

When the Rich Don’t Get Richer: Equalizing Tendencies of Creative Networks
John Bell and Jon Ippolito

The Mnemosyne Atlas and The Meaning of Panel 79 in Aby Warburg’s Oeuvre as a Distributed Object
Sara Angel

Documenting Artistic Networks: Anna Oppermann’s Ensembles Are Complex Networks!
Martin Warnke and Carmen Wedemeyer

Net-Working with Maciunas
Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt

Network Science: A New Method for Investigating the Complexity of Musical Experiences in the Brain
Robin W. Wilkins et al.

Networks of Contemporary Popular Musicians
Juyong Park

III Networks in the Humanities

The Making of Sixty-Nine Days of Close Encounters at the Science Gallery
Wouter Van den Broeck et al.

Social, Sexual and Economic Networks of Prostitution
Petter Holme

06.213: Attacks with Knives and Sharp Instruments: Quantitative Coding and the Witness To Atrocity
Ben Miller

The Social Network of Dante’s Inferno
Amedeo Cappelli et al.

A World Map of Knowledge in the Making: Wikipedia’s Inter-Language Linkage as a Dependency Explorer of Global Knowledge Accumulation
Thomas Petzold et al.

Evolution of Romance Language in Written Communication: Network Analysis of Late Latin and Early Romance Corpora
Alexander Mehler et al.

Need to Categorize: A Comparative Look at the Categories Of Universal Decimal Classification System and Wikipedia
Almila Akdag Salah et al.

The Development of the Journal Environment of Leonardo
Alkim Almila Akdag Salah and Loet Leydesdorff

IV Art about Networks

Tell Them Anything but the Truth: They Will Find Their Own. How We Visualized the Map of the Future with Respect to the Audience of Our Story
Michele Graffieti et al.

Model Ideas: From Stem Cell Simulation to Floating Art Work
Jane Prophet

Culture, Data and Algorithmic Organization
George Legrady

Cybernetic Bacteria 2.0
Anna Dumitriu

Narcotic of the Narrative
Ward Shelley

V Research in Network Visualization

Building Network Visualization Tools to Facilitate Metacognition Incomplex Analysis
Barbara Mirel

Pursuing the Work of Jacques Bertin
Nathalie Henry Riche

More information: Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks

The first initiative is a collaboration with the Centro Cultural Estación Indianilla and Tonaltepec Global S.C. in response to an invitation from The CODEX Foundation to co-ordinate CODEX MEXICO events at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) in late November 2011 and an Exhibition / with events (to be announced) at Centro Cultural Estacion Indianilla in February 2012. These two events will establish the CODEX Mexico Chapter as part of The CODEX International Network.

See: http://www.codexfoundation.org/mexico/index.html

A recurring topic among those interested in art, science, and technology is the value of transdisciplinary approaches. In my view, those who gravitate to this area (or related areas such as interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrative studies) see broad-based thinking both as a creative tool and a means to innovatively address some of the complex issues of our world today. Among these people are some who value disciplinary boundaries and believe that those who can operationally span their narrow parameters have the best foundation for conceptualizing how to innovate and see beyond known territory. The tendency to cast Leonardo da Vinci in the role of the “historical archetype” of this type of person, the “Renaissance Man,” has perhaps allowed us to lose sight of the many other original thinkers who exemplify what creative minds can accomplish when paired with a far-ranging, inventive imagination.

Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience by Michel Meulders offers a reminder that we can identify a number of figures in the past who worked across disciplines. The book introduces us to Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), trained by Johannes Müller, and one of the most accomplished physiologists of his time. A key nineteenth century polymath, Helmholtz used a versatile toolbox for his co-discovery of the principle of the conservation of energy, his invention of several instruments (e.g. the ophthalmoscope, the ophthalmometer and the telestereoscope), and his many significant contributions to physics, physiology, physical theory, philosophy of science and mathematics, and aesthetic thought.

How Helmholtz brought his varied interests and education into his laboratory is one thread that runs through the book. We learn that during his formative years he was exposed to philosophy and strongly influenced by his father, a German teacher who cultivated an interest in science and philosophy. Although Hermann was strongly attracted to the natural sciences, his father urged him toward medicine because funding for medical education was available. After training in physiology, Helmholtz worked in many areas outside of medicine over the years. Indeed, a defining feature of Helmholtz’s work was the way he branched out in many fields as he sought to translate his biological insights through an empirical and mathematical framework. In this, he was aided by his keen observational abilities and his passion for experimentation.

I began this book expecting a biography that would offer a chronology of Helmholtz’ work, along with contextual material to help the reader place his work within the nineteenth century world. The author instead offers a quite variegated picture that made it somewhat difficult for me to see the man as a whole as I read. The challenge in ferreting out Helmholtz’ story was due to the amount of material the author included that contextualizes Helmholtz in terms of the people and ideas that influenced him. For example, the chapter on “Goethe and His Vision of Nature” is 13 pages and does not mention Helmholtz. It seems its purpose is to provide a framework for where Helmholtz’ views of color differ from those of Goethe, which is discussed eight pages into the next chapter. Long “asides” such as this are quite distracting and make it difficult to understand what the author wanted the reader to take away from the book. What was clear is that the author has great enthusiasm for the accomplishments of Helmholtz. In addition to the Goethe chapter, there are chapters on “Johannes Müller: “Man of Iron” and “Conclusion: The Wisdom of Alexander von Humboldt.” It is hard to say if this format was intentional or if the chapters began as stand alone articles and were later pieced together into this book.

The strongest chapters are the two that cover Helmholtz’ work on hearing and acoustics and the one chapter that summarizes Helmholtz’s theory of visual perception. Helmholtz’s introduction in his Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music says that this work aimed to bring together work in physical and physiological acoustics, music and aesthetics that had remained unreasonably far apart. The author explains that Helmholtz’s early musical education and cultivation of musical activities throughout his life provided a foundation as well as a motivation for the experiments with sound. We also learn that this scientist invented the “Helmholtz resonator” to identify the various frequencies or “tones” present in musical chords and other sounds containing by multiple tones. The bell was among the instruments Helmholtz studied. His attraction to this instrument says quite a bit about he approached his work overall. Helmholtz was drawn to the bell because it is difficult to cast a good bell, for one needs to obtain an equal thickness around the whole circumference. If the thickness is different at two different places, there is a spot on the edge of the bell that vibrates to give a certain tone, while the neighboring spot produces a different tone and the intermediate zone between the two produced both tones at the same time. Helmholtz wanted to understand the unpleasant dissonance of this phenomenon. Ultimately, he demonstrated that difference and combination (or sum) tones existed objectively, outside the ear. (Although, ironically, bells are characterized by anharmonic relationships among their tones, but they still sound good.)

Another disappointment with the presentation was that the captions for a number of illustrations were far too abbreviated. Many basically said what the image is and provided virtually no information about how the depicted equipment (or whatever) works. Because this was not always the case, particularly in the chapter on music where the captions were full-bodied descriptions, the captions, too, led me to wonder if the chapters were originally written as stand-alone articles.

All in all, once I adjusted to the book “as a collage” and absorbed it on its own terms, I found it an informative read. It developed Helmholtz sufficiently to send me looking for more details. When I read further, I realized that all the basics were covered. It was only because the book covered the territory in an unusual fashion that it was harder for me to see the geography, so to speak.

Finally, based on the title of the book, Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience, I thought I would find many references to contemporary neuroscience. This was not the case. Basically, at the end the book acknowledges Helmholtz’s contributions to contemporary investigations, saying:

“Neuroscience and cognitive science, as we call them today, owe numerous research domains to [Helmholtz}, as well as attitudes. No phenomenon of nature, life, or environment left his encyclopedic mind indifferent. He believed he could reconcile science and philosophy, notably by thinking that Kant’s a priori had in the last resort a physiological basis that would one day doubtless be discovered.” (p. 215)

	The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World by David Deutsch Reviewed by Richard Kade
	Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell Reviewed by John Vines
	Helmholtz: From Enlightenment to Neuroscience by Michel Meulders; edited and translated by Laurence Garey Reviewed by Amy Ione
	Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts by T. Bartscherer & R. Coover, Editors Reviewed by Rob Harle
	Through The Looking Glass by Francisco López Reviewed by Eugene Thacker

Also:

L|R|Q – Leonardo Reviews Quarterly
The fourth issue of Leonardo Reviews Quarterly is available to download as a PDF.

Please click here to start the download.

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings brings together key documents related to institutional critique, a conceptual art movement that has raised questions about the workings of art institution (museums, galleries) since the 1960s.  Alexander Alberro (one of the editors of this volume) calls it a “gesture of negation” (p. 3) that was adopted by art world figures as they began to critically engage with the order of things within art venues.  The anthology presents the movement in four sections (Framing, Institution of Art, Institutionalizing, and Exit Strategies).  While the volume gives the impression that the critique is ongoing, the exit strategies section suggests that the initial concerns have morphed into something else.  Full Review

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings
by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, Editors
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011
440 pp., illus. 60 b/w. Trade, $21.95
ISBN: 978-0-262-51664-8.

	Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law by Kembrew McLeod & Rudolf Kuenzli, Editors Reviewed by Rob Harle
	Destroy All Monsters Magazine 1976-1979 by Destroy All Monsters Reviewed by Mike Mosher
	A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field: Bridging the Humanities -Neuroscience Divide by Barbara Maria Stafford, Editor Reviewed by Rob Harle
	Green Light: Toward an Art of Evolution by George Gessert Reviewed by Craig Hilton
	Modern Gestures: Abraham Walkowitz Draws Isadora Duncan Dancing by Ann Cooper Albright Reviewed by Giovanna L. Costantini
	Remixthebook by Mark Amerika Reviewed by Jan Baetens

Transmission Arts: Artists & Airwaves
by Galen Joseph-Hunter, Penny Duff, and Maria Papadomanolaki, Editors
Reviewed by John F. Barber

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings
by Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson, Editors
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Bach Jazz: Güher and Süher Pekinel Featuring the Jacques Loussier Trio by Barrie Gavin, Hanno Rinke, et al., Directors
Reviewed by Richard Kade

Situated Aesthetics: Art Beyond the Skin is the fruit of a workshop held in Milan in September 2009. The workshop brought together cognitive and neuroscientists, artists, philosophers, and others interested in expanding beyond the reductionistic, brain-focused approach that predominated in early art and the brain publications. Divided into three parts, the book first examines research that situates externalism within aesthetics in general.  A second section then examines externalism in relation to different artistic forms.  The third part explores the concept through specific artworks.

While collections of this sort frequently feel as if they were pieced together, all of the Situated Aesthetics papers are quite strong. Moreover, and to the credit of the contributors, the book carries the give-and-take of workshop conversations into the published papers.  Thus, there is a real sense of an engagement among the authors as they present their ideas. Riccardo Manzotti, the editor, begins with an overview of the papers and the current externalist approaches in neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Here he nicely summarizes the ideas of earlier authors and convincingly explains why adding externalism to the equation is important. In his words:

“By and large, externalism is the view that the external world is relevant and indeed constitutive of the subject, which is more extended than the body. In particular, externalism is taken as the view that the physical underpinnings of the mind are spatio-temporally more extended than the neural activity inside the nervous system.  For the purposes of this volume, the key is the fact that a shift in the subject’s ontology will inevitably have repercussions for any theory of aesthetics.” (p. 3)

As someone who often finds art and the brain research too narrowly based, I was glad to see that the volume includes visual art, music, text-based views ,and even work that fits within an art/sci/tech framework.  (For example, Stéphane Dumas looks at contemporary artists and theories in terms of biotechnologies.) This range reminds the reader that there are commonalities among the arts and nuances particular to specific media.  The comprehensive approach is even evident within the articles.  Not only do some authors refer to other articles in the book; at times writers offer more than one perspective on a topic.   While these papers do not explicitly address the early reductionistic way of placing art in the spiritual realm, their efforts to recognize the systemic qualities that are a part of art making and art appreciation will no doubt help us to further move beyond the framework that either relegated art to the spiritual realm or inadequately spoke about cognitive functions, environmental influences, and experiential/experimental aspects of all art forms.

For example, Joel Krueger and Liliana Albertazzi both connect art with extended space.  Krueger’s essay, “Enacting Musical Content,” presents music as an active skill that involves a physical interaction with the space where the music is heard and performed.  This includes an investigation of how sensorimotor regularities grant perceptual access to music qua music.  In other words, he argues that music is more than just sound. Thus, musical expression requires some attention to the music qua music, an approach that looks beyond “mere sounds.” Presenting such an approach, Krueger defends the ideas that music manifests experientially as having spatial content and presents the holistic component of the externalistic view.

Albertazzi, who writes from a visual art and pictorial representation perspective, focuses on the structure and nature of extended space. She sees “extended space” as a structure of our aesthetic experience and of the perceived physical world. Thus, for Albertazzi, the extended space is neither a purely phenomenological description of the lived nor a merely physical notion, but rather a concept we can use as an explicative bridge between externalist and internalist views.  Her view offers a path beyond the self-referential and an approach that allows for artistic expression as well as the audience’s aesthetic experience.

“Externalism, Mind, and Art” by Erik Myin and Johan Veldeman and “Art and Extensionism“ by Robert Pepperell are also compelling articles. As his title suggests, Pepperell uses the term extensionism to stress the extended dimensions of objects and events rather than the distinctions between them. Applying this approach to the analysis of art reveals the widely distributed nature of artworks and the mental qualities they convey. Pepperell explains concerns that are not brain-centric and his view is a fertile argument for the analysis of art as extended into the environment.

By contrast, Myin and Veldeman emphasize the importance of the externalist approach more generally. They first analyze the pros and cons of active and exploratory externalism in their analysis of cognitive mental processes.  Then, they apply their ideas to contemporary art and aesthetic experience.  Compiling complicated ideas in this quite readable essay both challenges the contextualist’s claim about the existence of an anti-aesthetic art and also includes an analysis of useful work that is (overly) focused on the brain. Their conclusion, that contemporary artworks challenge the assumption that our visual response to visual artwork is “purely” phenomenal, is convincing, as is their argument that the activity of looking at artworks serves many purposes.

It is noteworthy that Imprint Academic, the publisher of this refreshing volume, also initiated several of the early art and the brain discussions.  Their 1999 issue on “Art and the Brain” (a volume of the Journal of Consciousness Studies) presented the now classic articles on the subject by V. J. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki. When the editors invited commentary of the scientific articles, it was clear from the varied reactions that implicit tenets of the scientists were not shared by all with an interest in a systemic approach to art and the brain.  Imprint Academic has since published a number of special issues probing art, aesthetics, and other related topics.  Extending the discussion has helped the field grow significantly.  To oversimplify how the trajectory has changed and matured, while many argued that the early work of Ramachandran and Zeki neglected artistic process and the realms outside of brain activity, Situated Aesthetics shows that the artists, theorists, and scientists are clearly intent on filling in some of the early lacunae within the field. Not only does this volume expand the dialogue, it also feels much more contemporary than the early papers, which seemed out of touch with today’s art world and the experimental media that has transformed the way artists work.

Finally, the book states that the workshop showed there is common ground for future research activities. These authors show both that there is a broadly based constituency for using cognitive and neural inspired techniques and that the domain of art extends way beyond the limited brain approach. No doubt the ideas presented by these authors will help art historians, museum curators, art archiving, art preservation, scientists, and philosophers. The volume also shows bridges are developing across disciplines. Now cognitive scientists and neuroscientists appear open to using art as a special way of accessing the structures of the mind, artists and theorists add cultural/experiential concerns to the equation; and there are also artists who explicitly draw inspiration from current research on various aspects of the mind.  This book, which is substantive and yet easy to read, has whetted my appetite.  I look forward to seeing how the methodological paradigm that emerged from this workshop takes form once these ideas become a part of the broader conversation.

Reference:

[1] Imprint Academic’s three publications on Art and the Brain and their other art related special issues are available at http://www.imprint.co.uk/.

Situated Aesthetics: Art Beyond the Skin

by Riccardo Manzotti
Imprint Academic, Exeter, UK, 2011
250 pp. Paper, £17.95
ISBN: 9-781845-402389.

Reviewed by Amy Ione
Director, The Diatrope Institute
Berkeley, CA 94704, USA

ione@diatrope.com