Response

by Otto Piene
Winner of the 2003 Leonardo Da Vinci World Award of Arts

The National Archives of Finland
November 17th 2003

I am honored, and it is with great joy that I am receiving the Leonardo da Vinci Prize.

Once I wrote a college thesis on Leonardo but that would hardly qualify me for this formidable honor. However, Leonardo says in the Paragone of his Treatise on Painting that painting is the highest art form because it is the supreme science. This sentence is supreme Leonardo and his spirit lives on as today we are striving toward intense interaction among science, technology and the arts - evident in media arts and science and sky art.

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT - its humble birthplace next to an architectural icon, Alvar Aalto's Baker House dorm - held a vigorous international Sky Art Conference in Delphi and Ikaria just a year ago - thusly providing neighborhoods of oracle, charioteer , Greek Icarus (not the Mexican Icarus this time) and contemporary fliers, plus butterfly breeders, sky readers (i.e., x-ray astronomers) and white light holographers.Internationality and interdisciplinarity are intrinsic to the arts as many of us artists are fortunate to enjoy life and work "without borders" today. When after WW2 I co-founded Group Zero in Germany the resulting emergence of shared enthusiasm in previous "enemy countries" was - and remains - exhilarating - phoenix out of fire and rubble of a forever shameful world catastrophe.Peace, enlightenment, shared spiritual energy and cultural curiosity are values implied or openly advocated by a growing world community of arts.

The role of art in general and academic education - including science, technology and media - is being recognized, or , recognized a g a i n. in some places of today's world.If my idea of building buildings in the image of great persons in the history of art and culture were to be realized, Leonardo's magnificent head would be my first choice.By the way, I am currently working on a light tower formed after Sir Humphry Davy's colossal but small invention, his mining lamp.As usual , the world is in a state of crisis now but being here feels good.

Thank you very much, Consejo Cultural Mundial!