TABLEAUX Networks is an unusual interdisciplinary project, based largely at Cork RTC. It brings together academics and artists, and its ambitious journal also looks at the connections (and differences) between art, science and technology.
This latest issue includes a guest editorial by Roy Johnston on the science and technology White Paper, and essays ranging. from history to poetry (including a translation of a Miroslav Holub poem) and even a piano score, by John Gibson.
Popular science writer Paul Davies looks at the relationship between computer compression, algorithms and the underlying, patterns of nature, and John Malito examines popular. "chemophobia" (fear of chemists). June O'Reilly's timely piece, "Sucking Up to Scientists", raises hard-hitting questions about the art world's" current uncritical love affair with digital technologies.
Interspersed among the prose are colour reproductions of artworks, though some readers might be disappointed by the figurative bias in both issues so far.
Yet the production values are high - and the overall content is both refreshingly provocative and thoughtful, a rare thing in this era of fleeting bytes and empty soundbites.