The drawing Untitled (Charles Darwin) (1983), by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, incorporates portraits of biologists, geneticists and genetical terms. What follows is a personal reflection on how the text and symbolism of Untitled affected the authors as plant breeders, causing them to pause and reflect on their own work and that of their field. They learned how art speaks to the spectator differently from direct conversation, allowing for subtler, but perhaps more effective, criticism and a unique opportunity for public peer review. By employing emotion and invoking empathy, art places scientists in the depths of the ethical, sociopolitical and historical contexts in which their work unfolds, urging them to see more fully. In the end, the authors expose their own biases.

ABSTRACT In recent years, data visualization is increasingly being used to represent complex information and is mostly embedded in quantitative investigations. This article introduces an open source software tool for visualizing data that has been prestructured following qualitative research methods. The article goes on to summarize research material on current data visualization strategies in qualitative research. An example shows how the new software can be used to construct a visual data analysis through quantitative metadata and qualitative results.

This article proposes the application of shape grammar to the automatic generation of logo designs based on artists’ logo creation knowledge and visual structures of logos. The authors propose a set of rules to encode the design knowledge and enable automatic generation. They then present an experiment that was conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

ABSTRACT This report on the first-ever Art-Science Interface session at the annual Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium collects reflections from a number of the session’s invited participants as well as its organizers. What impact does the participation of artists have at an elite science research symposium? How does cross-disciplinary engagement of this kind both reflect on, and take part in, the larger conversation concerning art-science collaborations and the significance of their outcomes? These questions and others are briefly explored.

ABSTRACT Hollis Frampton’s much-discussed film Zorns Lemma is a complex and fascinating film that has a labyrinthine structure, alluding to a mathematical reading of the film as a visual metaphor for Max Zorn’s famous axiom Zorn’s Lemma. In the extensive literature about Zorns Lemma , there have been many different interpretations offered; however, none of these readings has provided a satisfactory mathematical interpretation of the film. After first providing an overview of Zermelo’s Axiom of Choice and some of its equivalent statements, this article provides a mathematical interpretation of Zorns Lemma that shows the film as a cinematic/poetic demonstration of the Axiom of Choice, a statement that is mathematically equivalent to Zorn’s Lemma. In addition, this paper explores some of the consequences of such an interpretation, including one that connects the film to the ideas Frampton was exploring in Magellan .

ABSTRACT When specific metals are cooled to a very low temperature (typically colder than about −200°C), they become superconductive and can make magnets levitate. This paper reports on a collaboration between physicists and designers to exploit this quantum levitation. The main goal of this collaboration was to create artistic displays, experiments and videos to engage a large public with fundamental physics. Beyond its public success, this “SupraDesign” project enabled an encounter between two communities: researchers in physics and designers. The collaboration revealed unexpected similarities in working methods, such as testing through experimentation, engaging in teamwork and making use of creativity in a constraining environment.

ABSTRACT Alan Turing decoded nature in drawings and algorithmic programming. His botanical decryptions helped situate synthetic AI/ALife processes in digital realms now encompassing algorithmic simulation. These little-known drawings prompted the author's analysis via Maturana and Varela's theory of autopoiesis because of its emphasis on self-organization and minimal requirements for life. Autopoiesis, if hybridized with Andy Clark's extended cognition, then supports an underpinning hypothesis for generative architecture. Together, the theory and drawings propel design research, leading to the question: Can buildings think? —reprocessing Turing's original question: “Can machines think?” This paper thus situates Turing's 1950s' nature-to-computation images as unacknowledged design patrimony appropriated for generative architecture derived from nature and implemented via autopoietic-extended design.

ABSTRACT This paper compares and examines in mathematical terms the work of Zdeněk Sýkora and François Morellet devoted to structures and lines. Using concrete examples, the paper demonstrates that, despite many apparent similarities, the artists' approaches are considerably different. A farewell letter by François Morellet to Zdeněk Sýkora, who died on 12 July 2011, is included.

ABSTRACT This article proposes a new approach to literary hypertext, which foregrounds the notion of interrupting rather than that of linking . It also claims that, given the dialectic relationship of literature in print and digital-born literature, it may be useful to reread contemporary hypertext in light of a specific type of literature in print that equally foregrounds aspects of segmentation and discontinuity: serialized literature (i.e. texts published in installment form). Finally, it discusses the shift from spatial form to temporal form in postmodern writing as well as the basic difference between segment and fragment.

ABSTRACT The burial of human remains on the Moon conjures up the idea of a lunar cemetery. This paper reviews related artistic projects and practices and situates the concept of the lunar cemetery in relation to Michel Foucault's articulation of the notions of heterotopia and biopolitics to explore the implications of perceiving the Moon as a globally shared space populated by the dead. The author also suggests that the possibility of a cemetery on the Moon reveals peculiar biopolitical approaches toward lunar space, in which death is used to uphold its heterotopic potential and support the envisioning of prospects for humanity's future beyond the globe.

ABSTRACT The term self-idiomatic music is introduced as a practical tool for discussion of current directions in music that are otherwise termed free improvisation, non-idiomatic music, meta-music and electroacoustic improvisation. The work of self-idiomatic musicians (including the author) is characterized by exploration of the sound possibilities afforded by musical instruments and sounding objects. The author discusses some characteristics of self-idiomatic music, some of its roots in the popularization of consumer audio electronics, and how the music's flexibility and widespread Internet access have facilitated the recent global growth of a self-idiomatic music culture.

ABSTRACT Cognitive research has revealed learning techniques more effective than those utilized by the traditional art history lecture survey course. Informed by these insights, the author and fellow graduate researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago designed a “serious” computer game demo, Art Thief, as a potential model for a learning tool that incorporates content from art history. The game design implements constructed learning, simulated cooperation and problem solving in a first-person, immersive, goal-oriented mystery set within a virtual art museum.

ABSTRACT This paper initially examines the differences between functional and aesthetic forms of visualization for information visualization. The author then shows such a dual categorization to be ineffective as a critical scheme for evaluating artwork that utilizes comparable visualization techniques. Adopting Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito's classification of artistic production, the author argues for the use of “genre art” and “research art” as more suitable criteria for the analysis and assessment of such artwork.

ABSTRACT The author presents an analysis of the workings and tensions involved in the integration and articulation of academic research, artistic creation and industrial production. He makes use of the results of a study conducted among creator-researchers of a Canadian prototype for the organization of these relationships: the Montreal, Canada-based interuniversity consortium Hexagram.

ABSTRACT This compilation presents examples of artistic artifacts that have served as successful visual analogies to aspects of chemistry. The authors have used them in various college-level chemistry classes, outreach programs and chemistry textbooks, as well as in journals and monographs. They include ancient Chinese, Turkish and Thai sculptures, modern sculptures and a medieval fresco. These examples illustrate the chemical concept of chirality, the periodic table of the elements and molecular systems such as buckminsterfullerene, nanotubes and quasicrystals.

ABSTRACT The text describes several media-art projects that introduce pain as a form of interaction within the context of a two-player game: PainStation (2001–2003) and LegShocker (2002) by Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe, Tekken Torture (2001) by C-Level and Tazer Tag (2005) by Randy Sarafan. By presenting these examples and briefly analyzing the nature of pain and games, this text offers an overview of the implications of incorporating pain into a computer game and presents an approach to the motivations that lead players to perceive a painful experience as fun and addictive.

This article traces the invention of the relational circuit, which makes possible an art of relationships called Threeing. This process of invention grew out of extensive video replay. Contrapposto made it possible to depict motion in stone. The relational circuit likewise makes possible a formal art of relationships for three people. This art form can be viewed in the light of relational aesthetics, a theory that judges artwork based on how it prompts inter-human activity and engagement with the world.

The authors present their research on using virtual reality (VR) in the presentation of protein music and immersive games. They first describe the core components of VR technology for protein modeling, visualization and interaction. They then present their implementations of VR protein games and protein-derived computer music. Instruction in protein-structure learning is discussed in the context of the authors' trial project in the Chinese High School in Singapore and an exhibition at Singapore Art Museum.

The authors introduce a new kind of computer art motivated by cortical structures in the human visual system. This type of computer art is related to the sub-group of the impressionist art movement called pointillism. However, while pointillism visualizes and makes use of processes that have been associated with the human eye, Symbolic Pointillism also makes cortical processes explicit. The visual representations underlying this art have been developed during a project that aims at the transfer of functional aspects of human vision to artificial systems. The authors have applied their findings in such an artificial vision system and in a sound/vision installation.

During viewing of most objects in one's everyday environment, the binocular and monocular relative depth cues interact in a harmonious, concordant and reinforcing manner to provide perceptual stability. However, when one views pictorial art, these binocular and monocular cues are discordant, and thus a perceptual “cue conflict” arises. This acts to reduce the relative apparent perceived distance of objects in a painting, thus producing overall perceptual depth “flattening.” The theory and physiology underlying this phenomenon are discussed.