The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 6.05.05
From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 13:52:18 -0700
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org
RHIZOME DIGEST: June 5, 2005

Content:

+note+
1. Francis Hwang: Director of Technology's report, May 2005
2. Francis Hwang: raw.rss

+announcement+
3. Michael Arnold Mages: June on -empyre-: we-blog with abe linkoln,
jimpunk, Chris Ashley and Tom Moody
4. Johannes Grenzfurthner: monochrom\\\'s EXPERIENCE THE EXPERIENCE
5. doron golan: new work at computer fine arts collection

+opportunity+
6. Kevin McGarry: FW: [oldboys] Reminder: MARS PATENT's 'OLDENBURG-REICHE
PRIZE'
7. Roopesh Sitharan: Call for participation>>>New Forms Festival 2005:
ecologies

+commissioned for Rhizome.org+
8. Joni Taylor: Book Review: "At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism
on the Internet"

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Rhizome is now offering Organizational Subscriptions, group memberships
that can be purchased at the institutional level. These subscriptions allow
participants at institutions to access Rhizome's services without
having to purchase individual memberships. For a discounted rate, students
or faculty at universities or visitors to art centers can have access to
Rhizome?s archives of art and text as well as guides and educational tools
to make navigation of this content easy. Rhizome is also offering
subsidized Organizational Subscriptions to qualifying institutions in poor
or excluded communities. Please visit http://rhizome.org/info/org.php for
more information or contact Kevin McGarry at Kevin AT Rhizome.org or Lauren
Cornell at LaurenCornell AT Rhizome.org

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1.

Date: 6.02.05
From: Francis Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org>
Subject: Director of Technology's report, May 2005

Hi all,

An eventful month. Let me go over some of the things I've been doing:

1. Membership policy change
Obviously, this was the biggie; a policy six months in the making, and
one that we hope will pave the way for us to offer lots of new great
stuff. There's already been lots of discussion about it; let me focus
on the technical stuff and say that it's my understanding that as of
this writing, there are no technical problems with the policy
transition. If you see any problems, please feel free to let me know.

2. Made /text/ quite a bit faster
I added a little caching code; http://rhizome.org/text/ should run
quite a bit faster than it used to. I'm looking at site speed more
closely than before, so this won't be the last of these sorts of
gradual tweaks.
One thing I realized is that our front page is about 100k, which seems
like it's too big. But then I look at other sites: Eyebeam's reBlog is
512k, Boing Boing is 756k, We Make Money Not Art is 298k, so maybe I've
got nothing to worry about. Hard to say. Some of our site users have
day jobs as web designers and surf our site from their office's T1
line; some are trying to get by using a computer at a media lab in
Bangkok with a 56k modem. You don't want to discount the importance of
users with slow bandwidth, but you'd like to keep the page visually
interesting, too ... Opinions, as always, are welcome.

3. Commissions
People are intermittently asking me about this, so: No, we still have
not announced the awards for this year's cycle. We're hammering out
some last-minute details and are hoping to announce quite soon. We're
quite sorry to put people to this sort of inconvenience.

Best,

Francis Hwang
Director of Technology
Rhizome.org
phone: 212-219-1288x202
AIM: francisrhizome

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2.

Date: 6.03.05
From: Francis Hwang <francis AT rhizome.org>
Subject: raw.rss

Now available at Rhizome: a Raw RSS feed!

http://rhizome.org/syndicate/raw.rss

Right now this feed re-posts the entire text as posted originally. So
it's suitable for reading, reposting, etc., etc. There are now three
separate ways to track the discussion on Raw: by email, by web, and by
RSS syndication feed.

I set the feed to track the last 40 items, which right now means it's a
sort of big feed, at 87k. Of course with Raw's traffic the way it is,
the resulting feed only tracks about the last 36 hours worth of posts.
I'm considering excerpting some of the bigger posts, and having more
posts per feed, if 36 hours isn't enough ... anyway, let me know if
you're using it and have suggestions for it.

This is one of those things that we couldn't have done three weeks ago.
I hope y'all find it useful.

Francis Hwang
Director of Technology
Rhizome.org
phone: 212-219-1288x202
AIM: francisrhizome

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3.

Date: 5.31.05
From: Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm AT du.edu>
Subject: June on -empyre-: we-blog with abe linkoln, jimpunk, Chris Ashley
and Tom Moody

-empyre- takes pleasure in welcoming four artists whose work engages the
medium of the weblog as a new area for artistic practice.

As the heritage of the Internet itself is essentially as a text-transmission
device, it is unsurprising that textuality can still be explored,
re-positioned and re-presented in compelling ways through the medium of the
Internet. As one of the most recent memes to infect mainstream culture the
blog is suddenly an essential business tool, an important force in the
ongoing development of journalism, and a new conversational network.

Mixing the genres of the documentary, the journal, the personal
conversation, the usenet discussion board, this month's artists bring the
weblog into the realm of artistic practice in the network.

===============

abe linkoln lives here: www.linkoln.net <http://www.linkoln.net>
here's a tattoo he has: http://linkoln.net/neversaydie.jpg
and he wrote this funny email once:
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0308/msg00073.html

jimpunk uses the tools of dataculture to create cinematic, yet
linguistically-based work that asserts computer control over the browser.
jimpunk's work and texts are available through http://www.jimpunk.com/

Chris Ashley is an artist, writer, and educator living and working in
Oakland, California. In addition to his work as a painter, he posts an HTML
drawing every day, and regularly posts writing about art on his weblog
(http://www.chrisashley.net). The weblog, called "Look, See", has a full
archive of past HTML drawings, images of paintings and drawings, art
writing, and writing by others about the HTML drawings.


Tom Moody is a visual artist based in New York. His low-tech art made with
MSPaintbrush, photocopiers, and consumer printers has appeared in solo shows
at Derek Eller Gallery and UP&CO. Documentation of his studio practice, as
well as his digital animation, music, and writing on a variety of topics,
appears regularly on his weblog at http://www.digitalmediatree.com/tommoody/
. Launched in February 2001, the blog was recently recommended along with 11
others in the Art in America article "Art in the Blogosphere."

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Rhizome.org 2005 Net Art Commissions

The Rhizome Commissioning Program makes financial support available to
artists for the creation of innovative new media art work via panel-awarded
commissions.

For the 2005 Rhizome Commissions, seven artists were selected to create
artworks relating to the theme of Games:

http://rhizome.org/commissions/2005.rhiz

The Rhizome Commissioning Program is made possible by generous support from
the Greenwall Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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4.

Date: 6.01.05
From: johannes grenzfurthner <jg AT monochrom.at>
Subject: monochrom\\\'s EXPERIENCE THE EXPERIENCE

monochrom:
EXPERIENCE THE EXPERIENCE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Los Angeles, Vancouver, San Francisco
June 14-July 24

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

So-called "experience" is a highly Anglo-American term. Roughly speaking,
everything is plugged as "experience". Whether it is a "dining experience"
in a restaurant or the "Disney experience" in Orlando or "experience the
sorrow and tragedy of Ground Zero" in New York City... everything has to be
made "experiencable" or presented as an "experience". Yet there is not even
a word for it in German. "Experience" is untranslatable. Of course, this is
the same as with all cultural ideas: being untranslatable, ergo driving you
crazy. Even though we are coming disguised as tourists, we don't want to
always just take. We would also like to give. We bring something with us for
North America. And when we leave, we will have gained the experience of how
our experience has been experienced. We want to see what that does to us and
what the what-it-does-to-us does to North America. We want to convey a total
of 7 new "experiences" to the local population in three North American
cities, making them "experiencable" in performances and events.

More tour infos:
http://www.monochrom.at/experiences/

About monochrom:
http://www.monochrom.at/english/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrom

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DATES AND EXPERIENCES

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LOS ANGELES
Basecamp:
The Machine Project (http://www.machineproject.com/)

* Experience The Experience Of Being Buried Alive (June 14)
The people present will have an opportunity to be buried alive in a coffin
for fifteen minutes. As a framework program there will be lectures about the
history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history
of "buried alive". People buried alive not only populate the horror stories
of past centuries, but also countless reports in specialized medical
literature. The theme of unintentional resurrection by grave robbers also
runs through forensic protocols. Even in the 19th century it was said that
every tenth person was buried alive. No wonder that the fear of this fate
was immense and led - especially in the German-speaking region - to all
kinds of precautions to avoid it. Various death test methods were developed,
for instance. "Security coffins" with bell pulls and air hoses were
patented; mortuaries were built, in which corpses were left for days to
natural decay.

* Experience The Experience Of A Magnetism Party (June 18)
Electromagnetic data carriers are subject to the influences of time. Errors
thus accumulate, due to mechanical influences, chemical influences, thermic
influences, influences from external magnetic fields. The data carriers age,
and the information stored on them is affected. The bits can no longer be
read, or they are altered, or the information is lost. Accompanied by
contemporary alternative mainstream techno and house rhythms and using
several heavy-duty neodym magnets, monochrom will delete all the data
carriers that can be found. Naturally the public is invited to bring data
carriers themselves. The destruction of magnetic storage media is a form of
destruction that can reasonably be called unspectacular. But it is
important. Our society collects and collects and collects. The hard drives
are full. However, we can also dispense with the bourgeois-humanist
criticism of the "information flood", this maelstrom that is said to attack
the printed word. The Magnetism Party is therefore an attempt to actively
come to terms with one aspect of the information society that is almost
completely ignored by our epistemological machinery. Delete is just another
word for nothing left to lose.

* Experience the Experience of a Brick of Coke (June 21)
Sugar has always been expensive enough that in a variety of cultures and
eras it has even been used as a medium of exchange. In Europe sugar was
first introduced around the year 600, and it reached England via the
Mediterranean region in the 11th century - of course as a luxury good
reserved for the ruling class. The first recorded delivery of slaves (to
Lagos, Portugal in 1444) was intended for sugar cultivation on Portugalâ??s
Atlantic islands. In order to provide sufficient â??personnelâ?? for the
colonies overseas, the slave trade was promoted intensively. Sugar was in
part responsible for the development of the gigantic preindustrial
bureaucratic mercantile system of â??prosperity.â?? Refined white sugar was
the symbol of European conquest and of century-long repression and colonial
dependency. Sugar still dominates the Western meal plan as the main energy
provider. The â??formerâ?? tropical colonies are still ruled by the
multinational concerns of the sugar industry. Coca Cola is the largest
seller on the world market. monochrom is going to put several gallons of
Coca Cola into a pot and boil it down until the residue left behind can be
molded into a brick. A symbolic endeavor!

* Experience The Experience Of An Illegal Space Race (June 25)
The California desert begins just a few minutes' drive away from the
gallery. We will place the planets true to scale in the desert (sun, 4
meters in diameter, Pluto, one centimeter in diameter, about 20 miles away).
Then we will conduct a car race. The team that makes it through the desert
fastest wins the "illegal space race". In conclusion, of course, the speeds
of the cars will be calculated, for example, how much faster than light they
were. Planetary scientists will be on hand as guests to comment on the
events.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VANCOUVER
Basecamp: Contemporary Art Gallery
(http://www.contemporaryartgallery.ca/)

* Experience The Experience Of Being Buried Alive (June 30)
(See above)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SAN FRANCISCO
Basecamp:
RxGallery/Blasthaus (http://www.rxgallery.com/)

* Experience The Experience Of Being Buried Alive (July 8)
(See above)

* Experience the Experience of Growing Money (July 10)
Money is frozen desire. Thus it governs the world. Money is used for all
forms of trade, from daily shopping at the supermarket to trafficking in
human beings and drugs. In the course of all these transactions, our money
wears out quickly, especially the smaller bank notes that are changing hands
constantly. Although paper money (consisting of a robust blend of 75 percent
cotton and 25 percent linen) is manufactured to endure intensive use (4,000
folds in each direction without tearing!), a dollar bill only lasts an
average of 18 months in the USA. The Federal Reserve is responsible for
ensuring that money is not too worn, torn or soiled. For this purpose, all
bank notes that are returned to the Fed by other financial institutions are
tested, and the bills that don't make the grade are pulled out of
circulation. Money is dirty, and thus it is a living entity. This is
something we take literally: money is an ideal environment for microscopic
organisms and bacteria. We want to make your money grow. In a potent
nutrient fluid under heat lamps we want to get as much life as we can out of
your dollar bills. Take part!

* Experience the Experience of Catapulting Wireless Devices (Workshop: July
9; Event: July 16)
The term catapult (from the Greek kata + paltes, to hurl down or against)
generally refers to a machine that converts conserved energy into movement
(movement energy) with the aim of putting an object at rest into a state of
motion (to 'catapult'). In antiquity and during the Middle Ages, the
catapult was used to hurl stones or arrows. These devices were primarily
implemented during sieges. The propulsion medium for this sort of catapult
was usually a material such as wood, rope or sinew under tension, with the
tension having been accumulated through the work of the operating personnel
(bow and arrow principle). The catapult is one of the oldest machines in the
history of technology. It is no coincidence that monochrom would like to
instigate a creative return. The knife edge of technology hype is sharp,
most of all on the west coast of the United States. Thus monochrom would
like to initiate a competition. We invite interested persons to design and
build a catapult capable of hurling a cell phone or a PDA unit the greatest
possible distance. In order to ensure that no participant has any unfair
advantage, monochrom will provide a specifications list regarding materials
(e.g. metal) that may not be used and other limitations (e.g. size and
weight).

* Experience the Experience of 1 Baud (Workshop: July 17; Event: July 22)
The International Code of Signals serves to facilitate communication at sea.
It defines the meaning of alphabetical identification codes for safety and
navigation purposes. The key for 'sending' was drafted by a committee of the
British Board of Trade in 1855 and published in 1857. The 1969 edition,
revised in 2003, is still in use today.We have expanded the flag alphabet,
not just so that it also includes the AT sign, but so that city dwellers have
access to pure communication. The flag alphabet will be taught in a workshop
lasting several hours. After a few days set aside for study and practice, we
would like, in the form of a competition, to send an identical message
across the city over two equally long routes simultaneously. Will it work?

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5.

Date: 6.01.05
From: doron golan <v AT computerfinearts.com>
Subject: new work at computer fine arts collection

Xavier Cahen - Louvre 01/15/05 and 03/20
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/cahen/

G.H Hovagimyan - Vanity Search
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/hovagimyan/vanitysearch/

Patrick Lichty - Sprawl
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/lichty/sprawl/

Lokiss - Has Had and Like Love
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/lokiss/

Jody Zellen - War Stories
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/zellen/war/

utensil.net (Beth Stryker + Sawad Brooks): 1+1
http://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/utensil/1+1/


doron golan
http://www.computerfinearts.com

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Support Rhizome: buy a hosting plan from BroadSpire

http://rhizome.org/hosting/

Reliable, robust hosting plans from $65 per year.

Purchasing hosting from BroadSpire contributes directly to Rhizome's fiscal
well-being, so think about about the new Bundle pack, or any other plan,
today!

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BroadSpire is a mid-size commercial web hosting provider. After conducting a
thorough review of the web hosting industry, we selected BroadSpire as our
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6.

Date: 5.31.05
From: Kevin McGarry <kevin AT rhizome.org>
Subject: FW: [oldboys] Reminder: MARS PATENT's 'OLDENBURG-REICHE PRIZE'

------ Forwarded Message
From: helene von oldenburg <info AT arachno-space.net>
Reply-To: oldboys AT lists.ccc.de
Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 16:30:16 +0200
To: oldboys AT lists.ccc.de
Subject: [oldboys] Reminder: MARS PATENT's 'OLDENBURG-REICHE PRIZE'

Last call for the 'OLDENBURG-REICHE PRIZE'.
If you are thinking of submitting - now is the time to do it.


Deadline June, 15th, 2005 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\


MARS PATENT 's Competition 2004 / 2005
'OLDENBURG-REICHE PRIZE'


Rules and Information for the Competition 2004 / 2005

In 2004 the MARS PATENT¹s founders Claudia Reiche and Helene von
Oldenburg agreed to underwrite a contest designed to prove that MARS
PATENT¹s HRM_1.0n, the ³High Reality Machine² works and to explain its
principle functions.

Explain the High Reality Machine (HRM_1.0n)!

The authors pledged a Grand Prize of two polished brass plates for the
first scientist or artist whose solution is convincing to the MARS PATENT¹s
Grand Jury. This Jury consists of 5 (five) randomly chosen members of the
Friends of the MARS PATENT with an international reputation and experiences
as jury or progamm committee members, chairs of institutions or else. This
jury will stay anonymous until the results of the reviewing process being
declared to guarantee their independency.

One brass plate with the engraved name of the winner will be teleported
by the HRM_1.0n to the Mars Exhibition site (MES), and fixed with 2 brass
screws on a beautiful rock on Mars, coordinates: Latitude 19° N,
Longitude 281° E, facing south. The second brass plate will be given to the
winner at her or his free disposition. If there are two equally convincing
submissions, the female author will be declared winner.

Submissions should be e-mailed to: office AT mars-patent.org The winner
will be notified as soon as possible and presented on the MARS PATENT¹s
website, as will every submission to allow a public discussion of the
submissions and the jury¹s choice.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\


go: http://www.mars-patent.org

THE MARS PATENT
The first Interplanetarian Exhibition Space on Mars

Claudia Reiche
Helene von Oldenburg

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Rhizome ArtBase Exhibitions

http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/

Visit the fourth ArtBase Exhibition "City/Observer," curated by
Yukie Kamiya of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and designed
by T.Whid of MTAA.

http://rhizome.org/art/exhibition/city/

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7.

Date: 6.02.05
From: Roopesh Sitharan <intergra AT rocketmail.com>
Subject: Call for participation>>>New Forms Festival 2005: ecologies

New Forms Festival 2005: ecologies (September 15-24, 2005)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
NFF 05: Ecologies

The Festival is comprised of five sections:
Low art, Film, Exhibition, Performance and Conference.

NFF 05 Ecologies explores the complex interconnections in our inhabited
world. With a focus on the ecologies of technology and beyond; we
examine past, present and future models and ways of seeing, hearing and
feeling our environment.

This year's festival recognizes the wisdom that nature provides in
terms of the technological world around us, and how these
interpretations play out within arts, activism and culture. The
physical environment, the embodiment of technologies that we create,
and environmental issues all play a part in this larger discourse.

These include issues of sustainability, inter-relationships, variety,
complexity, balance, organism, spirit, non-linear approaches to space
and time, and non-linear relationships.

Systems and ecologies are expansive and all around us, and impact
everything from the programming we use in the virtual world, to our
sacred environments. As technology interconnects with our themes of
'Ecology' and 'Environment', we ask where will this
interconnection lead us? This year's festival will look at this question
in a
multitude of ways, bridging different interpretations on these themes
into one greater ecological perspective.

The selected sub-themes for each section of this year's festival will
be drawn from:

- Media ecologies
- Acoustic ecology
- Eco Systems: Negotiating Natural, Cultural and Technological Systems
in a Post-traditional Ecology
- Visual ecology
- Systems
- Cybernetics
- Complexity/chaos
- Natural Elements to Performance
- The Natural Environment
- Cultural ecologies
- Network ecologies
- Politics of nature
- Interacting with live instrumentation.
- Home and inhabited world
- Location and dislocation.

All submissions for the festival should identify the specific event in
the festival that they are submitting to. Further to the word
application, which can be downloaded through our website at
www.newformsfestival.com, all submissions for
exhibition/performance/low art should be accompanied by a hard copy of
works being submitted for the festival, with an entire
performance/installation in full. All conference submission guidelines
accompany this call, and can be sent via email to
submissions AT newformsfestival.com.

Email all submission forms and pdf/word documents to
submissions AT newformsfestival.com.

Accepted media for preview: Quicktime on CD/DVD ROM, TAPE(NTSC), CD92s,
websites. No demo versions please - only finished works will be looked
at. Where appropriate, an explanation should be given as to which
aspects of the works the jury should consider in particular. Please
send all applications to :
New Forms Festival 05. #200-252 East 1st Avenue. Vancouver, B.C.
V5T-1A6. For any inquiries please email curatorial AT newformsfest

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8.

Date: 6.05.05
From: joni taylor <joniponi2001 AT yahoo.com>
Subject: Book Review: "At A Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the
Internet"

At a Distance
Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet
Edited by Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark

The fact that the editors of ³At A Distance² are both from Australia comes
as no surprise. Having lived there, I often wonder if my own passion for the
Internet came about because it allowed me to feel like I was ³connected² to
the rest of the world. As pointed out in their introduction, the matter of
geographical distance and the necessity of communication go hand in hand.
But this book is about the precursors to the Internet--artistic and activist
exchanges that were happening long before I set up my first Internet
account. It¹s a timely publication, and one that has many repercussions in
the current trend of locative high tech communication.

The book spans the 60¹s to the 80¹s and traces the inter-relations of art
and activist activities that used PUBLIC communication devices--like mail,
fax, satellite, radio, phone and early networking technologies: what the
editors call Distance Art/Activism. Chandler and Neumark have brought
together a huge collection of authors (20 chapters) ranging from critics and
theorists to the artists that were directly involved in the many projects
and experiments that made up this movement. I find the recurring elements of
play and networking to most distinguish Distance Art/Activism.

In this ³post-digital² age, many art movements of the last 40 years sound
more like technical jargon, and, more often than not, refer directly to the
machines that created them. Some are better known than others, like "Mail
Art," "Computer Art" and "Net Art;" others like "Fax Art" and "Satellite
Art" remain obscure footnotes in reference books. What ³At A Distance² does
is point out that the importance of these projects is not solely determined
by specific technologies, but more generally by the impulse to send signals
or art across distances.


Access All Areas

Communication is the presence of a Third, the presence of a parasite.......
Just as the roll of the dice never eliminates chance, a signal can never
eliminate noise². - Siegert, "Relays"

This noise that Siegert writes of can be heard in all Distance Art/Activism.
It¹s the chance the mail will be lost, stolen or torn. It¹s the hiss, or the
cross line on that interstate call, and it¹s the virus, the glitch, the
ghost in the machine.

What struck me about Distance Art/Activism is that it always uses the
systems put in place by something other than the art machine. Systems put in
there by the state (Post), by businesses (Fax), by corporate giants
(Satellites) and by universities (early computer networking). It¹s an
iconoclastic challenge to these institutions and thus a true crossing over
of artist/activist.

The postal system was the first communication service to be ³infiltrated² by
artists, and Mail Art is a reoccurring theme through out the book.
(Neumark¹s grandfather's envelope-making inventions actually inspired the
editor to research Post and Mail Art).

Fluxus artist Robert Filliou wrote in the 60s of an ³eternal network²--an
artistic exchange to be developed through the postal service. This method
was uncontrollable and random, leaving space for play, chance and surprise.
Sending art through the mail was affordable, it reached everywhere, it was
anonymous ³an open space for cultural experimentation, a free space.² And
the post office provided artists with the distribution network.
In what echoes the cries for the democratization of the Internet, Dada
expert Klaus Groh stated ³Mail Art is more open, more democratic than all
artistic production before. It is open for everyone²

To continue chronologically, the next mode of communication utilized for art
and activism occurred within the corporate office environment. As faster and
more streamlined communication devices were being set up, there were more
opportunities to play with the bureaucracy that created them.

Net theorist Tilman Baumgartel gives an example of the NE Thing Company Ltd,
a precursor to many of today's online pseudo-identities. By utilizing the
telefax machine, (then usually only used by rich businesses), NE Thing
marketed themselves as a company, and were invited to trade and art fairs.
By using the telefax, they existed in a non-space similar to the net. They
could be ³everywhere and nowhere² at the same time; they played with space
itself. This was a fore-runner to the many later online groups (such as
ubermorgen and the Yes Men) who use the Internet to set up fake
institutions.

The Telephone, traditionally a one-to-one form of communication became a
one-to-many under the hands of bands like Negativeland. Band member Don
Joyce writes an autobiographical account of his radio show "Over the Edge,"
and how the band used the audio detritus of the times--found sound,
telephones, prank calling, electronic machines (and literally the kitchen
sink)--to transform the medium of radio into a telephonic and playful art,
in their own wonderful way.

Playing with satellites may seem like a utopian dream but as pointed out,
they have been used both for artistic and activist purposes. ³Mobile Image²
was a project by Californian activists Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz,
when they were given access to a satellite by NASA . Paper Tiger Television
and Deep Dish TV was another initiative to subvert the high technology of
space and used it for distributing activist video content. Deep Dish TV was
downlinked by at least 186 stations and came with a zine with contact
information to video activists around the Globe.


The Network

The word Network has become attached to Internet or Web based communication,
but the authors have included a range of examples proving that networks were
in fact occurring long before we started buying 10 metres of category 5
cable.

A topic that is echoed time and time again throughout the book is the idea
of Distance Art/Activism being ³objectless," and a challenge to ³inspired
authorship² by being collaborative by nature.

Fluxus was also a networked based movement, with the emphasis on
collectivity and collaboration, rather than individuality and exclusivity.
Fluxus member George Maciunus himself wrote ³Fluxus is a collective and
should not be associated with any particular Fluxus individual. Flux tends
to de-individualise individuals². In an essay by Fluxus expert and writer
Owen Smith, he points out that what the critical and open ended thinking of
Fluxus offered to art is parallel to what the open source movement offers to
computer programming today.

³At A Distance² provides an informative overview of the many early pioneers
of networked systems, and is a useful resource for those interested in its
early incarnations.

Network pioneer and creator of the term ³distributed authorship² Roy Ascott
gives an autobiographical account of his travels from Californian esoterics
to his electronic collaborations that led to the formation of telematic or
telemadic connectivism.

³The world in 24 hours²(1982) was an important telecommunications project
organised by Robert Adrian X for the Ars Electronica. It linked artists in
16 cities on 3 continents for 24 hours with the goal to follow the midday
sun around the earth. Another exhibition ³ZERO- the art of being everywhere²
set up ZEROnet as a bulletin board and was a precursor to networks such as
artex and other netcommunity groups such as The WELL and The Thing. Early
telecommunication technologies such the IP sharp APL Time sharing network,
slowscan tv and Audiolink were used to allow artists to engage in this new
form of distributed authorship. Other important experiments/shows in the
history of networked performances were Realtime (1993) and Chip Radio
(1992). Both were held in Austria and experimented with telerobotics and
radio space.

Musicians Chris Brown and John Bischoff give an autobiographical view of the
history of the ³League of Automatic Music Composers² which they founded in
the mid 70¹s. They designed and built their own hardware, playing with the
capabilities of the microcomputer (aka personal computer).

Another form of distributed authorship was the radio experiments of Japanese
mini FM developer Tetsu Kogawa. In an interview with the editors he explains
how by using recording devices he encouraged his students to create a
collective expression, a reversal of the Burroughs cut-up.

In the final chapter theorist Sean Cubbit brings these historical networking
movements up-to-date. He writes ³The old art of objects and even of ideas
pale into the past: We have the future to build, and it will be global,
networked and utterly new, or it will not be the future at all.²

Together the editors and authors of ³At A Distance² create an informative
and in-depth analysis of a movement that has--both directly and
indirectly--led to many of today's art and activist movements.
In this age of rapidly developing communication systems, where new devices
are still largely in the hands of corporate communication networks, it is an
inspiring and timely read.

Joni Taylor

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