ABSTRACT Taking its starting point from a recent experiment in the genetics of E. coli, this article explores how processes of organization, dis-organization and re-organization may be thought of as creative. Extending Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the Body without Organs and citing artworks such as George Legrady's Slippery Traces , Paul DeMarinis's Messenger , Jon McCormack's Eden and Natalie Jeremijenko's One Trees , the paper juxtaposes recent scientific research with experimental art in order to reformulate the concept of organization for use in artistic and interactive settings, theorizing it as a creative process rather than positioning it as a limiting, institutionalizing or negative force.

ABSTRACT At a high level of abstraction, it can be shown by analogy that attempts to reproduce natural phenomena occur not only in technological endeavors but also in human communication and the arts, including music. This paper presents the parallel development of artificial devices—or “naturoids”—in the fields of technology, message communication and musical composition, highlighting the transfiguration that unavoidably affects the resulting device, message or musical work. In the technological field and, to an extent, in the communications field, the transfiguration of the natural object is taken as a more or less unsatisfying outcome. By contrast, in the arts, and mainly in music, the transfiguration effect is exactly what the artist pursues through placing him- or herself at a nonordinary observation level.

ABSTRACT The author suggests that the intangible characteristics of computer graphics bear some resemblance to the brain's ability to construct mental images, as outlined by veteran researcher Stephen M. Kosslyn. An analogy might also be drawn with the “Imaginal World” of the Sufis, as described by Henri Corbin, which exists in a space of its own. As computer graphics have emerged as an artistic medium, one may consider how this internalized ability influences the artist's response to the computer, especially as new display technologies emerge.

ABSTRACT This paper proposes the concept of enactive system as an alternative to the standard human-computer system and elaborates the idea of content mediation as enactive media . The authors' system consists of the two elements coupled in a holistic manner by means of bodily and spatial involvement, or enactment . Such a system is recursive by nature, involving the impact of the technology on the human agent as well as the effect of the human experience on the technology. Instead of the standard explicit interface, there is an implicit connecting surface, based on unconscious psycho-physiological reactions. The aim is not only to point out an analytic approach to existing media systems but also to develop radically novel media concepts implied by the enactive systems.

ABSTRACT All animals receive light and sound from the surrounding world and use this input to provide information about the material properties of that world. Humans, in addition, are able to utilize information in light and sound that has nothing to do with its material source but is about objects and events that are not materially present and may have no material existence at all. The author argues that this perceptual capacity is a necessary condition for the development of the arts, the humanities, science and all that is considered uniquely human.

ABSTRACT The author considers the phenomenon of synesthesia, defining it as intersensory association formed by similarity or “contiguity” of heteromodal perceptions. The results of this associative process (occurring mainly at the subconscious level), when coming to the light of consciousness, may be fixed either in verbal form or directly in the sensuous material of the nonverbal arts (most significantly music). Synesthesia calls forth such notions as “melody line,” “the hearing space” and “tone color,” and makes it possible to perceive sounds and chords as “sharp,” “dull” or “high.” Synesthesia (and the particular case of “color hearing”) is the essential component of musical thinking, first of all, in music intended to evoke images.