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Leonardo Reviews Posted December 2011

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:57:43 +0000

Leonardo Reviews is pleased to announce the December 2011 postings at: http://leonardo.info/ldr.html (ISSN: 1559-0429)

	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.

The Lying Brain: Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction by Dr. Melissa M. Littlefield PhD

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:31:53 +0000

Real and imagined machines, including mental microscopes, thought translators, and polygraphs, have long promised to detect deception in human beings. Now, via fMRI and EEG, neuroscientists seem to have found what scientists, lawyers, and law enforcement officials have sought for over a century: foolproof lie detection. But are these new lie detection technologies any different from their predecessors? The Lying Brain is the first book to explore the cultural history of an array of lie detection technologies: their ideological assumptions, the scientific and fictional literatures that create and market them, and the literacies required for their interpretation.

By examining a rich archive of materials about lie detection—from science to science fiction—The Lying Brain demonstrates the interconnections of science, literature, and popular culture in the development and dissemination of deception detection in the American cultural imagination. As Melissa Littlefield demonstrates, neuroscience is not building a more accurate lie detector; it is simply recycling centuries-old ideologies about deception and its detection.

Ann: Leonardo Reviews online (May 2011)

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:43:18 +0000

Compression & Purity
by Will Alexander
Reviewed by Allan Graubard

Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond Buttons
by Christian Ulrik Andersen & Soren Pold, Editors
Reviewed by Ellen Pearlman

The Filming of Modern Life. European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s
by Malcolm Turvey
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

In Praise of Copying
by Marcus Boon
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Lumo: One Woman’s Struggle to Heal in a Nation Beset by War
by Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Paris 1919: Inside The Peace Talks That Changed The World
by Paul Cowan
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

Octopus Time: Bellmer Painting
by Herbert Lust
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

A Touch of Blossom: John Singer Sargent and the Queer Flora of Fin-de-Siècle Art
by Alison Syme
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher

U-n-f-o-l-d: A Cultural Response to Climate Change
Museum of Contemporary Photography and Glass Curtain Gallery
Reviewed by Elizabeth Straughan, Deborah Dixon and Harriet Hawkins

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction
Arthur B. Evans, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk, Editors
Reviewed by Enzo Ferrara

New Materials Received – May 2011
Compiled by Martyn Woodward

Now Available: L|R|Q – Leonardo Reviews Quarterly

admin — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:34:23 +0000

The third issue of Leonardo Reviews Quarterly is available to download as a PDF.
Please click here to start the download.

Time for a Technology Diet?

admin — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:13:03 +0000

All those tweets, apps, updates may drain brain
James Temple
Published Sunday, April 17, 2011 | San Francisco Chronicle

A team at UCSF published a study last week that found further evidence that multitasking impedes short-term memory, especially among older adults. Researchers there previously found that distractions of the sort that smart phones and social networks present can hinder long-term memory and mental performance.

A 2009 study at Stanford University found that, surprisingly, persistent multitaskers perform worse than infrequent ones on tests that require them to jump from task to task. It seems they were more easily distracted by irrelevant information thrown up during the evaluations.

Webinar Through History’s Lens: How history contributes to a better understanding of science

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:14:42 +0000

On 1 April at noon EDT, the AAAS is sponsoring a webinar, “Through History’s Lens: How history contributes to a better understanding of science” that is free but requires registration to view the event. From the announcement: “A panel of historians and scientists will give examples of how history has helped our human understanding of the natural world. The hour will include a unique opportunity to see important historical scientific artifacts from Harvard’s Putnam Gallery and the NIH’s Stetten Museum. The panel will also discuss what science is learning now that could shape the future.”

For more information and to register, click this link

Judge Rejects Google’s Deal to Digitize Books

admin — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:18:16 +0000

A federal judge rejected Google’s $125 million class-action settlement with authors and publishers, delivering a blow to the company’s ambitious plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

Full article

Ann: David Stork to give 2011 C. P. Snow Memorial Lectures

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 23:26:39 +0000

David G. Stork, Chief Scientist, Ricoh Innovations
“When Computers Look at Art:  Image analysis in humanistic studies of the visual arts”
Thursday, April 14, 7pm
Ithaca College | Textor 102
More information:

Free and Open to the Public
Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Kim Wojtanik at 274-3102. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.

New computer methods have been used to shed light on a number of recent controversies in the study of art. For example, computer fractal analysis has been used in authentication studies of paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock recently discovered by Alex Matter. An international group of computer and image scientists is studying the brushstrokes in paintings by van Gogh for detecting forgeries. Sophisticated computer analysis of perspective, shading, color and form has shed light on David Hockney’s bold claim that as early as 1420, Renaissance artists employed optical devices such as concave mirrors to project images onto their canvases.

How do these computer methods work? What can computers reveal about images that even the best-trained connoisseurs, art historians and artist cannot? How much more powerful and revealing will these methods become? In short, how is computer image analysis changing our understanding of art? This profusely illustrated lecture for non-scientists will include works by Jackson Pollock, Vincent van Gogh, Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling, Lorenzo Lotto, and others.

You may never see paintings the same way again.

Biographical Information
Dr. David G. Stork is Chief Scientist of Ricoh Innovations. The breadth of his interests and contributions is revealed through the academic departments and programs in which he has held faculty positions: physics, mathematics, electrical engineering, statistics, computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and art and art history. He has taught a variety of courses, including “Light, color and visual phenomena,” “The physics of aesthetics and perception,” “Optics, perspective and Renaissance painting,” and “Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art,” at a variety of institutions, including Wellesley College, Swarthmore College, Clark University, Boston University and Stanford University.

A graduate in physics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, Dr. Stork also studied art history at Wellesley College. He has published seven books, including Seeing the Light: Optics in nature, photography, color, vision and holography, Pattern Classification, and HAL’s Legacy: 2001′s computer as dream and reality (the source of his PBS television documentary 2001: HAL’s Legacy). He has also edited volumes of SPIE proceedings, including: Computer image analysis in the study of art, Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art, Computer vision and image analysis in the study of art II. Dr. Stork holds forty U.S. patents and has published numerous technical papers on human and machine learning and perception of patterns, physiological optics, image understanding, concurrency theory, theoretical mechanics, optics, and image processing. He has served as an Artist-in-Residence through the New York State Council of the Arts, and was a Fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition and Chair of its Technical Committee on Computer Vision in Cultural Heritage Applications. He was one of four scientists invited to comment on David Hockney’s optical projection theory at the December 2001 Art and Optics Symposium at the New York Institute for the Humanities. He has made over 220 scholarly presentations on computer analysis of art in 17 countries, including in major museums such as the Louvre, National Gallery London, National Gallery Washington, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, van Gogh Museum, and many others.

For more information, please see Dr. Stork’s professional website.

Ithaca College | School of Humanities and Sciences » Volume 8, Number 1, Fall 2007 »

It was Snow’s essays on the “two cultures” that inspired Professor Robert Pasternack to begin the lecture series. Pasternak, chairman of the speaker series committee and member of the chemistry department, wrote to Lord Snow in 1964 and requested permission to use his name. Snow responded, “I am deeply touched by what you say and shall be honored to have your series of talks called the C. P. Snow Lecture Series.”

Farewell to Kodachrome

admin — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 01:37:02 +0000

Eastman Kodak Co announced that the last rolls were hitting the shelves in June 2009. Kodachrome is the first successful color film and perhaps still the most beloved. Indeed, the end is at hand with the last lab in the world that processes the famed color film, Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, discontinuing its processing at the end of the year. The last rolls to be processed must be there by noon, Dec. 30, 2010. The New York times reports that the last Kodachrome processing machine in the world will be shut down to be sold for scrap at that time.

The last roll Kodak manufactured was given to Steve McCurry, who shot the famous Kodachrome image of the green-eyed Afghan girl that was on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985. Last spring, he used up the roll in New York City and India, and the prints will eventually be on display in 2011 at the Eastman House museum.

Fifty photographers nationwide, plus a few from Canada, northern Europe and South Africa, sent in portfolios for “A Last Exhibition,” a juried show in San Francisco to celebrate this technology that excited photographers, many of whom are sorry to see it go. Twenty-one photographers were selected and 45 prints are in the show, which opened Dec. 17 and, after a Christmas break, will reopen Jan. 4.

Leonardo Reviews – Reviews Posted, September 2010

admin — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 02:54:29 +0000

Leonardo Reviews is pleased to announce the new postings at:
http://leonardo.info/ldr.html (ISSN: 1559-0429)

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/san_kuras.php>
by Ellen Kuras, Director; Thavisouk Phrasavath, Co-Director
Reviewed by Abhijit Sen

Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/nino_berry.php>
by Chris Berry, Soyoung Kim, and Lynn Spigel, Editors
Reviewed by Martha Patricia Nino

Fleeing from Absence: Four Cross-Disciplinary Essays on Time, Its Nature and Its Interpretations <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/ox_ast.php>
by Olga Ast and Jula Druk
Reviewed by Jack Ox

Inside the Death Drive: Excess and Apocalypse in the World of the Chapman Brothers (Tate Liverpool Critical Forum, Vol. 11) <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/harle_harris.php>
by Jonathan Harris (ed.)
Reviewed by Rob Harle

La Scomparsa dell’Orologio Universale: Peter Watkins e I Mass Media Audiovisivi (The Disappearance of The Universal Clock : Peter Watkins and Audio Visual Mass Media) <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/pennisi_duarte.php>
by German A. Duarte
Reviewed by Giuseppe Pennisi

Now Is the Time: Art & Theory in the 21st Century <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/verstegen_vesters.php>
by Christel Vesters (coordinating editor), Jelle Bouwhuis, Ingrid Commandeur, Gijs Frieling, Margriet Schavemaker, Domeniek Ruyters, Editors
Reviewed by Ian Verstegen

Mapping the Moving Image. Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900 <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/baetens_valiaho.php>
by Pasi Väliaho
Reviewed by Jan Baetens

Music and Cyberliberties <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/pennisi_burkart.php>
by Patrick Burkart
Reviewed by Giuseppe Pennisi

Out Of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/vines_noe.php>
by Alva Noë
Reviewed by John Vines

Popular Music of Vietnam: The Politics of Remembering, the Economics of Forgetting <http://leonardo.info/reviews/sept2010/zilberg_olsen.php>
by Dale A.Olsen
Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg