The Aesthetic Status of Technological Art

A colloquium entitled “The Aesthetic Status of Technological Art” took place at the Les Treilles Foundation in the south of France, 3–9 March 1997. The colloquium was attended by 15 participants, including creators of technological art, principally in its visual, poetic or multimedia forms; composers of electroacoustic music; and others from the fields of aesthetics, sociology, mathematics and physics, as well as artists who do not practice technological art and who therefore were able to offer an outside view of it. In this and the next issue of Leonardo, we are publishing a special section of some of the papers and ideas presented at the colloquium [1]. Here, as an introduction, we present an account of the event, along with some personal comments.