To browse Academia. The cultural convergence of art, science, and technology provides ample opportunity for artists to challenge the very notion of how art is produced and to call into question its subject matter and its function in society. The mission of the Leonardo book series, published by The MIT Press, is to publish texts by artists, scientists, researchers, and scholars that present innovative discourse on the convergence of art, science, and technology.
Envisioned as a catalyst for enterprise, research, and creative and scholarly experimentation, the book series enables diverse intellectual communities to explore common grounds of expertise. The Leonardo book series provides a context for the discussion of contemporary practice, ideas, and frameworks in this rapidly evolving arena where art and science connect.
Best considered as a 'position paper' on the relationship of critical media- arts practice and the technological complex - the 'Digital Leviathan-on-Wheels'. Technology and art define and continue to reshape the world we live in. Re-imagining what we know as real or as a solid ground, pushes not only our opinions and understandings of nature to the limits, but with new inventions and experiments, both the mind and the body, the language, and the world itself seems to be making room for a different sphere and fresh rules.
Thenceforward a subsequent fusion towards substitution of the former with the latter was imminent. In other words, contemporary artistic practices reach the climax-through video and digital art, of critically engaging in their means of expression as much scientific and technological advance as never before, changing the face of art forever and completing the revolution of sociological and political infusion into the field of art.
Less orientated towards the past, the present paper aims at reviewing the changing role of technology played in the art of the present with an interest taken in the artist status and the public involvement. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary experimentation central to contemporary art is given attention in order to point out how individual aesthetics have been gradually replacing general aesthetics.
