From Digital Design to Material Artworks, Leonardo Electronic Almanac

From Digital Design to Material Artworks, Leonardo Electronic Almanac

The rise of affordable and accessible design and production tools such as Computer Numerically Controlled machines and open hardware micro-controllers is giving new life to crafting, producing new spaces and practices where material production is inherently connected with digital design.

Such contexts are marked by a strong interdisciplinarity: artists, engineers, designers and hackers work together experimenting creative development paths for the future. This issue explores new theories, methodologies and methods related to the materialization of
digital arts.

We would like to welcome papers relevant to the following themes:

- digital crafting, digital manufacturing and art;
- the role of fablabs as spaces for contemporary art practices;
- makers communities engaged in interdisciplinary art activities;
- open hardware and software facing contemporary art;
- aesthetic challenges given by digital design.

What are the main challenges for digital arts in the age of distributed manufacturing? Is ingenuous D.I.Y. design going to re-define the boundaries between art and other disciplines? What are the chances to go beyond the abused generative aesthetic seen in these first years?

This special issue of LEA aims to answer some of these questions, analyzing the complexity of the relationships between art and innovation in digital fabrication.

Senior Editors Lanfranco Aceti and Bertram Niessen (Digicult).