[spectre] Bill Seaman wins Leonardo Award for Excellence

[Oliver Grau]

OLATS/Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et des Techno-Sciences
http://www.olats.org

Bill Seaman wins the 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence
Bill Seaman has been chosen as the recipient of the 2002 Leonardo Award
for Excellence for his article, "OULIPO / VS / Recombinant Poetics"
(Leonardo 34:5, 2001, Digital Salon Special Issue). In his article, Bill
Seaman explores alternative avenues of creativity and redefines them
through visual and sonic digital media. OULIPO, or the Ouvroir de
litt=E9rature potentielle (the Workshop for Potential Literature),
encourages writers to explore challenging ways of mixing words and
letters in their work. Recombinant poetics is the practice of playing
with media-elements in generative virtual environments to create
entirely new works. "VS" (versus), normally implies antagonism, but here
refers to the standard procedure of titling remixed techno music as
"remixing deejay VS original artist." Seaman describes how the
principles of OULIPO, recombinant poetics, and remixed music have
influenced his work in machinic genetics. These practices led him to
attempt creation of a Hybrid Invention Generator, in which a viewer/user
(vuser) could choose multiple 3-D objects and fuse them to create a new
invention.

Bill Seaman is head of the Graduate Digital Media Program at Rhode
Island School of Design, and is exploring issues related to the
continuum between physical and virtual/media space.
The 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence is co-sponsored by the
Technoculture Studies Department and the Art Department at the
University of California, Davis, where it will be presented at a prize
award lecture on campus during the Spring 2003 session. For further
information visit http://technoculture.ucdavis.edu.

The other nominees for the 2002 Leonardo Award for Excellence were:
Jean-Louis Lhermitte, "Sculpting Ionized Plasma" (Leonardo 34:3); Sheila
Pinkel, "Thermonuclear Gardens: Information Artworks about the U.S.
Military-Industrial Complex" (Leonardo 34:4); Ando Arike, "What Are
Humans For?: Art in the Age of Post-Human Development" (Leonardo 34:5,
Digital Salon Special Issue); David Toop, "Not Necessarily Captured,
Except as a Fleeting Glance" (Leonardo Music Journal 11). Panelists
included Lynn Hershman, chair; Lisa Bornstein, Nina Czegledy, Fran
Dyson, and Edward Shanken. For further information about Leonardo/ISAST
and the Leonardo Awards Programs, visit http://www.leonardo.info