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

The Milemete Treatise and Companion Secretum Secretorum: Iconography, Audience, and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century England
by Libby Karlinger Escobedo
Reviewed by Rob Harle

The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age
by David M. Berry
Reviewed by Jussi Parikka

Situated Aesthetics: Art Beyond the Skin
by Riccardo Manzotti
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo
by Nicolas de Monchaux
Reviewed by Valérie Lamontagne

Materials Received Plymouth September 2011Compiled by Martyn Woodward

Scholars from science, art and humanities explore the meaning of our new image worlds and offer new strategies for visual analysis. With contributions a.o. by Marie-Luise ANGERER, Olaf BREIDBACH, Adrian CHEOK, Wendy CHUN, Sean CUBITT, James ELKINS, Oliver GRAU, Stefan HEIDENREICH, Eduardo KAC, Martin KEMP, Harald KRAEMER, Lev MANOVICH, Martin SCHULZ, Christa SOMMERER & Laurent MIGNONNEAU, David & Dolores STEINMAN, Martin WARNKE and Peter WEIBEL.

More than ever we are surrounded by images: Flickr, Facebook, YouTube; thousands of television channels; digital games and virtual worlds, in media art and science, in politics, communication and knowledge representation. The digital image represents endless options for manipulation; images seem capable of changing interactively or even autonomously. Without new efforts to visualize complex ideas, structures, and systems, today’s knowledge explosion would be unmanageable. This volume offers systematic and interdisciplinary reflections on these new image worlds and new analytical approaches to the visual. Imagery in the 21st Century examines this revolution in various fields with researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities to achieve a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of the image in our time.

The contributors explore and discuss new critical terms of multidisciplinary scope, from database economy to the dramaturgy of hypermedia, from visualisations in neurosciences to the image in bio art. They consider the power of the image in the development of human consciousness, pursue new definitions of visual phenomena, and examine new tools for image research and visual analysis. The goal is to expand visual competence in investigating new visual worlds and to build cross-disciplinary exchanges among the arts, humanities and natural sciences.

MIT Press: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12675

Ione, A. (2100) “Multiple Discovery. ” In: Runco MA, and Pritzker SR (eds) Encyclopedia of Creativity, Second Edition, vol 2, pp. 153-160 San Diego: Academic Press.

Please email me for a pdf of the article.

Arnheim for Film and Media Studies
by Scott Higgins, Editor
Reviewed by Ian Verstegen

ArtScience: A Journey Through Creativity – permanent exhibition and Travelling the Silk Road exhibition
Reviewed by Stella Veciana

Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work
by Nigel Cross
Reviewed by Dene Grigar

East Bay Open Studios Preview Exhibition and East Bay Open Studios 2011
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Fastwürms Donky@Ninja@Witch: A Living Retrospective
by Philip Monk
Reviewed by Rob Harle

The Horizon: A History of Our Infinite Longing
by Didier Maleuvre
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
by Peter Lunenfeld
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

Think Art – Act Science (Pensar art – Actuar ciència): Swiss artists-in-labs
by Irène Hediger, Curator

and

Visceral: The Living Art Experiment
by Orton Catts and Ionat Zurr, Curators
both reviewed by Harriet Hawkins, Deborah Dixon and Elizabeth Straughan

New materials received – July 2011 Compiled by Martyn Woodward