Considering legacies and futures inherently provides context and heightens focus on the present. For better and for worse, humankind finds itself in a pivotal moment of reflection, simultaneously reckoning with our respective experiences of the past while struggling to imagine a collective future. At its core, this is a time to redefine who we are and how we live within the fragile, evolving ecosystems of our planet, societies, and communities. As we fumble and feel our way through this transition, hybrid creatives experiment with new ways to capture the imagination, ideas, and images of transformation.
In this final issue of Volume 57, Leonardo features a special section on “Histories, Legacies, and Futures of Image-Processing.” An array of image-processing tools, case studies, accounts of its evolution, and artist recollection all combine to set the contemporary moment in a sweeping backdrop of illuminating histories while foregrounded with forecasted possibilities. The convergence of past and future meet up in the present, raising questions about the state of image-processing today. Ultimately, this also steers attention to processing as creative practice over image as creative product.
Emphasizing practice over product echoes one of the central themes in the recent documentary Leonardo da Vinci, a new film by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon (see review by Amy Ione in this issue). In an exclusive interview with Ken Burns, who previewed a glimpse of the two-part film for an Arizona State University audience in September 2024, we had a chance to discuss Leonardo’s enduring legacy and inspiration, asking, “Is Everyone a Leonardo?” The response: Yes and no.
While Leonardo da Vinci’s stature as the most famous artist in his lifetime and arguably of all time was singular, he also embodied the more universal virtue of creative practice as a lifelong pursuit. This innate calling to interrogate who and how we are in the world is not an act of unattainable creative genius; it is a collective birthright we share in the human condition. Perhaps not everyone is “a Leonardo,” but everyone can aspire to access this spirit of Leonardo in finding endless wonder through creative practice, inquiry, and experimentation. Recognizing our shared “inner Leonardo” helps build connection, reinforce trust, and offer a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves, rising above the discord and distance of disconnected individuals.
Leonardo was keenly aware of the value of connectedness as the throughline of intersecting ideas and the lifeline of collaborative engagement and even patronage. Leonardo did not achieve fame in isolation, nor was his success measured by the quantity of artistic output, as he produced relatively few finished paintings in his lifetime. The true measure of Leonardo’s creative genius was not the number of masterpieces he painted; rather it was the entirety of his life lived as a masterpiece itself. His creative genius was the totality of a full life inspired by the irrepressible joy of curiosity, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and the drive to question anything in the universe. His relentless search for a golden thread unifying patterns of form and movement defined how he lived his creative genius. As a “disciple of experience,” Leonardo believed that true knowledge is found in nature and gained through lived experience.
His legacy invites everyone, as disciples of lived experience, to explore the collective spark of creative genius throughout the lives we lead. Leonardo’s history invites everyone to consider how to craft a future infused with deep connectedness to others, joyful curiosity in pursuit of knowledge, and boundless wonder at the world, even as we redefine our place in the present.