in Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications, a special
issue of Leonardo (Vol. 24, No. 2) edited by Roy Ascott and Carl
Eugene Loeffler, 1991.
The creative use of
networks makes them organisms. The work is never in a state of completion,
how could it be so? Telematique is a decentralising medium; its metaphor
is that of a web or net in which there is no centre, or hierarchy,
no top nor bottom. It breaks the boundaries not only of the insular
individual but of institutions, territories and time zones. To engage
in telematic communication is to be once everywhere and nowhere. In
this it is subversive. It subverts the idea of authorship bound up
within the solitary individual. It subverts the idea of individual
ownership of the works of imagination. It replaces the bricks and
mortar of institutions of culture and learning with an invisible college
and a floating museum the reach of which is always expanding to include
new possibilities of mind and new intimations of reality.
The communities engendered
via computer networks are organisms. Like physical communities
they evolve and are influenced and defined through user participation.
Like physical organisms, the extent of their impact on the ecosystem
depends on their interaction with other organisms. Creative use of computer
networks implies, from a user standpoint, experimentation with forms
of communication and user interaction. From a systems standpoint, creative
networking involves investigations into levels of user interaction in
virtual space, community building and cross-pollination, or the creation
of links between previously disparate communities. As organic communications
systems, telematic art can initiate previously unknown behaviors and,
over time, create operative new realities. Its meaning lies not in what
it is (identity or objectification), but in what it effects.
Ideas gain validity in their
practice, use and integration into the ecosystem. In the interest of
representing activity as a means of reflecting, evaluating and generating
ideas, following is a case study, or portrait, of the evolution of a
perpetual computer networking organism forming through the creative
investigation of constructs, processes and geographies of communication.
Given the format of hard-copy publications, it is a fixed representation,
covering the organism's evolution from 1986 to 1990. The organism is
called the Art Com Electronic Network (ACEN). It was originally
conceived by Carl Eugene Loeffler and Fred Truck, originally realized
and structured in collaboration with Nancy Frank, Donna Hall, Darlene
Tong, Lorna Truck, myself and the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL),
especially Matthew McClure and John Coate. As soon as ACEN became a
working system, it became (and continues to be) defined by its users
and the scope of its distribution.
ACEN is an ongoing investigation
of interactive electronic communications media as a means toward new
culture building on a personal basis. As an art system, it questions
applications of cultural hierarchy: the role of artist as individual
genius, of art works (as a noun), of the public as viewers of art. It
creates art as process (art works as a verb or, at least, actualized
upon the users' demand), and exposes viewers as artists, artists as
instigators of art applications. It strongly underscores the concept
of art = communication, by definition (co = with) a participatory process.
The following represent fragments
of activity on ACEN, selected for and described in relation to their
specific investigations of the creative process, the art object, and
the roles of audience and artist in electronic space. These constructs
are listed in order of chronological origination to illustrate the non-linear
(yet often related) and evolving sensibilities towards electronic networking.
Some of the projects themselves have evolved in structure over the years;
they are described in their current form.
Art Com Magazine
(electronic edition, 1986-)
This is currently a monthly periodical whose form and content (within
the context of contemporary art and new communications technologies)
is determined by rotating guest editors. Guest editorship is open, and
proposals are encouraged. Art Com Magazine is available in ACEN's
Newstand and in alt.artcom, an internationally distributed USENET
newsgroup; it is also electronically mailed free of charge upon request,
both to ACEN readers, and to readers on other networks. The magazine
also encourages feedback, and issues that raise other concerns become
bulletin board topics for further discussion. Art Com Magazine
attempts to realize publishing as a creative (art publishing as art
work) and communicative medium shaped by the community that reads it.
This project for the Venice Biennale (1986) was conceived by Roy Ascott.
Nodes of artists (in Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the
United States and Wales) created and sent news (open to interpretation)
via ARTEX (the internationally accessed electronic mailbox service for
artists on the I.P. Sharp Associates network, initiated by Robert Adrian
in 1980) and slow-scan television to each other and for public display
in Venice. As one of the nodes, ACEN created a link with ARTEX and opened
a bulletin board topic for the posting of news, inviting contributions
from whomever desired to participate. News contributions came not only
from professional artists, but from professional futurists, writers,
engineers, computer programmers, system operators and media activists,
all of whom became exhibiting artists in the prestigious Venice Biennale.
The definition of 'artist' in this way becomes 'participant' and is
not restricted to specific professions. 'Art work' becomes the work
of many individuals.
The First Meeting of
the Satie Society
Conceived by John Cage and realized through the application of programs
written at Cage's request by Jim Rosenberg and Andrew Culver (1985-86),
this homage to the composer Erik Satie consisted of texts (presents)
by writers who knew and loved Satie's work (or who might have if they
had existed in a time period thar enabled them to know it), restructured
by two computer programs. The texts were written by Henry David Thoreau,
James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Chris Mann, Marshall McLuhan and John Cage,
and also included selections from The Book of Genesis; there
was also a "response" by Satie, consisting of selected quotes.
One of the computer programs, MESOLIST, by Jim Rosenberg created mesostics
on Satie's name and works from lines of text selected by IC a program
by Andrew Culver that replicated the chance processes of the I Ching.
The reordering of the texts was intended to create a global rather than
linear writing. The First Meeting of the Satie Society has also
been performed live; on view in electronic space (ACEN's art gallery)
it becomes a work made accessible for anyone to use -- "We are
getting rid of ownership, substituting use"(1).
As a 'meeting' the work conjoins minds of different geographies and
times, much as online communities do. The First Meeting of the Satie
Society, while conceptually the work of Cage, was written through
the convergence of several humans and software -- and reflects of a
multiplicity of (not entirely human) voices. Cage's emphasis on the
readers' use of the work points both to the importance of process (that
art extends beyond its completion by the artist) and to user participation
(in creating additional meanings through use).
Bad Information Base
Conceived and programmed by Judy Malloy (1986-7), this was originally
set up as a bulletin board topic in which Malloy invited users to contribute
information that was bad, wrong, silly or subject to misinterpretation.
In the process, bad information was contributed by a wide variety of
user artists and was shaped not only by their individual imaginations
but also by the context of the group, as previous entries inspired new
ones. Malloy later organized and programmed the contributions into a
database structure, which is accessible in ACEN's art gallery.
The Bad Information Base questions the authority of true, definitive
databases by purposefully being a database of bad information. By locating
the process of information-gathering in a creative context, The Bad
Information Base describes information-gathering as art. And, by
opening the creative process to an electronic public, it describes as
artist those who choose to participate.
Slash or "/":
Kinetic Drawing for Word Processor
This work by Stephen Moore (1987) was a 4K slash drawn simply with '/'
strokes, stored online, and actualized in kinetic form when a user opened
the file. Though low-tech in application, it pointed to creation as
being the convergence of artist, software and the realization of the
In the Heart of the
Conceived by Dromos Editions (1987- ) this continual work in progress
invites readers to submit their biographies for inclusion as characters
in a subsequent chapter. The story is shaped by the identity of its
Conceived by Carl Loeffler and Fred Truck (1987-88), this bulletin board
topic invited participants to a conceptual game of roulette, winners
determined by the spin of a random number-generating computer program.
Since losing in electronic space was relatively risk free, bets were
limited only by imagination. As the game progressed, winners and losers
developed their own virtual characters. They bought each other virtual
drinks, virtually flirted and fought. They created a place that was
Das Casino, that existed in words. Things happened in Das
Casino, and so the topic became a participatory text performance,
in which the script evolved collectively through time.
Conceived and programmed by Gil MinaMora (1988- ), this is a version
of the surrealist game to unlock the unconscious, rendered electronic
and open to participation. Contributors see the last line of the previous
contributors' entry, to which they are invited to add text and/or ASCII
(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) graphics. After
69 entries a Corpse is complete, and is displayed in its entirety,
a record of its anonymous creators' processes of association.
Art Com Electronic
Conceived by myself, Carl Loeffler and Fred Truck and programmed by
Fred Truck (1989- ), this pop virtual representation of a shopping mall
is predicated in part on the recognition of electronic space as territory.
A mall can be viewed not simply as a construct of capitalist consumption
but also as a functional mechanism for cultural production through the
dissemination of products. Distribution makes art by making it communicate,
by making it accessible. Functionally speaking, the Electronic Mall
makes access to contemporary art information and products irrelevant
to geographic location and time -- and it employs the technology of
computer networking as a distribution venue for art activity. The emall
currently contains an art bookstore, art video store, and art software
store. Shoppers can browse the aisles, see descriptions of the art products
and purchase items online with the checkout cashier. Currently under
production by the Normals (aka the Normal Art Group) is the option
of shoplifting at the mall -- at your own risk!
Couey Virtual Museum
of Descriptions of Art
Initiated and "curated" by the Normals (1990- ), this is a
bulletin board topic of users' descriptions of art works as a museum.
Users variously describe their experience of seeing a work of art, or
create their own through description. The museum also has featured in-depth
descriptions of the works of a single artist. Its collection is determined
by what users choose to add to it. The Virtual Museum points
to the art work as being that which is communicated -- what the viewers
Art effects culture to the
extent that it interacts with its society at large, especially if its
intent is to evolve participatory cultures. Computer networks are not
de facto generators of new realities; the construction of electronic
space is determined by the perceptual constructs of their creators and
user base, and the flexibility of the system to accomodate evolution.
In this context, the structuring and distribution of systems is an integral
element of the telematic art process.
From its origination, ACEN
has been attentive to its relationship to and location within the ecosystem.
It is a personal computer networking system, employing ASCII format
standardized text -- it does not depend on users owning specific systems
in order to interact. It houses itself on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic
Link), an inexpensive, publicly accessible bulletin board system based
in Sausalito, California, and linked on a 'near-local-phone' basis across
the United States and to 70 countries through long range carriers such
as Compuserve Packet Network. The WELL's user community is broad-based,
including professional artists as well as individuals of varying creative,
progressive, technical and non-technical professions and backgrounds.
ACEN's current evolutionary
emphasis is connectivity, the creation of new geography and new cultures
through the linking and interaction of internationally dispersed communications
nodes. One of the first steps has been to initiate a newsgroup, alt.artcom,
on USENET, a network of systems that is fed automatically to 29,000
sites globally and is accessible locally, thus bypassing the often prohibitive
expense of accessing internationally diverse nodes. USENET is structured
as a distributed conferencing system, providing users with access to
participation in global communications. ACEN is also developing mechanisms
for data exchange so that projects and information generated on local
nodes are reciprocally disseminated across the network. Its concern
is to decentralize and broaden communication between diverse cultures
and minds (including socio-economic backgrounds, interests, experiences
and perspectives) and to explore what can happen with combinations of
communities -- what happens, for instance, when farmers in the Midwestern
United States discuss with artists political mechanisms for increasing
ecological rather than short-term profit farming? Or what happens when
Australian aboriginal communities bring their perceptual constructs
to the online environment? Or ...?
Being an environment of minds,
electronic space can be seen as territory of the imagination. Being
public and participatory mental space, it offers the opportunity to
investigate possible constructs of collective imagination. In its ideal
state, a creative communications system evolves in contrast to the paradigm
of art-making that relegates cultural production to a small segment
of the population. It is not a 'one-to-many' communications relationship;
it is public art because the public makes it. Employing networking technology,
it evolves in contrast to the paradigm of mass media. It is predicated
on building new ways of being in the world that generate from the perpetual
expansion of the territory of mind created by user participation and
choice. The extent to which it realizes its idealism is directly based
on the extent to which it addresses real issues of participation and
access -- issues of economics, language, distribution, politics -- concerning
the use and development of technology.
ART MEANS WHAT IT EFFECTS
This article is a portrait
of art-making that employs technological tools as a means to generate
participatory cultures. This art takes as its subject constructs of
communication and interaction -- ancient cultural forms, such as storytelling,
contemporary social constructs, such as shopping, and virtual community
building. Rendered perpetual via computer network, these constructs
are not fixed representations, but creative processes that conjoin artist,
art work and viewer (now user/participant) in evolving public imagination.
John Cage, Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters
Worse), (1965) Section I, line 2. Cage included this statement as
part of his introduction to The First Meeting of the Satie Society.