How can vibrant, contemporary art be produced that deals with vibrant, contemporary mathematics? To address this question, a collaboration began between an artist (Schuh) and a mathematician (Devadoss), revolving around recent problems in phylogenetics and the space of evolutionary trees. The result was twofold: First, a triptych of paintings was created, using acrylic, graphite, watercolor and metal leaf, that focused on different navigations within this tree space. Second, a novel set of open mathematics problems was discovered solely as a result of this investigation.

This article discusses two opposite meanings of the concept of “demediation”: on the one hand, the very specific and strongly materializing reading given by Garrett Stewart, who coined the notion in an essay on book art qua visual art; on the other hand, the general and more intuitive reading of the term, as sometimes used in the broader debate on digital culture as immaterialization. Putting a strong emphasis on the (broad) notions of materiality and medium-specificity, the article offers a critique of certain immaterializing tendencies in transmedia storytelling theory, while ending with the brief presentation of an example (the collaborative network Général Instin ) that tackles, within the framework of ghost theory and dust theory, the dialectic relationship of materiality and immateriality.

ABSTRACT A neglected theory of aesthetics by the eminent Gestaltist Kurt Koffka is reviewed with the hope that it will spark new interest in the Gestalt contribution to art. Koffka’s particular emphasis on the art object, its perceptual qualities and its relation with the intentional self holds the potential for advancing scientific theories of aesthetic experience.

ABSTRACT Engaging a general audience with scientific research can be effectively assisted by visualization. Visualization art has the potential to engage users with data in a way that gives the audience deep and reflective insights into information. This article reviews relevant literature on different methods and practices of visualization from the analytical to artistic. The literature shows that beautiful presentations of data, in a clarified context, can help an audience with little understanding of the data domain gain deep, meaningful insights into information.

ABSTRACT Can music supplant mathematics for planning environmental systems? The author’s research and experience as presented here would indicate as much. First, an optimization problem is formulated where the number of ecological reserves is to be minimized while conserving all species in a region. Next, the author describes a music-inspired optimization algorithm called “harmony search” by focusing on the analogy between music performance and problem optimization. Finally, computational results are shown.

ABSTRACT Through editorials such as Bob Root-Bernstein’s ArtScience “manifesto” in Leonardo Vol. 44, No. 3 (2011), Leonardo has long encouraged a broader and more inclusive understanding of the subtle interplay between science and art, and the belief that as individuals and cultural agents we all blend both aspects in our respective fields of endeavor. However, discourse and collaboration across the arts, sciences and humanities is not yet a mature and fully effective process. The authors contribute to this debate by drawing on elements of their Project Dialogue research program, set alongside published accounts of experiences at earlier U.K. art-science programs, to sketch out a theoretical framework that could inform ArtScience through a re-formulated cultural model of knowledge encompassing art and science.

ABSTRACT The author offers a short history of how our perceptual relationship with the Moon has changed over time. Examples of lunar imaging by Early Renaissance painter Jan Van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, 19th-century photographer James Nasmyth and NASA's Ranger and Lunar Orbiter missions of the 1960s reveal ways in which our perception of the Moon has changed. Images of the Moon produced by technology remain far from “complete”—they are akin to fragments, sketches or models, providing information upon which the imagination can build. How we imagine the Moon, the author argues, is symbiotically linked with our representations of it; we only perceive the truly complete, whole Moon in the non-localized zone of our imaginations.

ABSTRACT Technologies of space, information and power are integral aspects of cartography that have serious implications for the legibility and accessibility of a city; thus the design of locative media is more than a technical problem. In this paper, i-metro, an interactive installation, is developed in four stages: first, a theoretical discussion of urban representation is linked to historical notions of the commons; second, research methodologies are described; third, the findings are summarized, exposing a critical information inequality; fourth, a public locative media intervention is proposed as a design response.