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Heartbeat 02

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Heartbeat
 · 26 Apr 2019

  


From cclash@web.net Mon Aug 26 21:38:42 1996
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 96 21:03:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jocelyn J. Paquette Bob Ewing" <cclash@web.net>
To: ftp@etext.org
Subject: Heartbeat

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HEARTBEAT #2 a free weekly email exploration of late 1990s
culture both on and off the Net.

url: http://www.izad.com/cultureclash. published by

Culture Clash Communications
cclash@web.net

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@

Straight From The Heart: by Bob Ewing

We are all searching. A recent article in The Atlantic
Monthly about megachurches slammed this thought home. Spiritual
comfort and companionship is one goal but an equally old need is
crying out; the need for community. Much has been written about
the vanishing neighbourhoods and the various attempts to revive
them.
I participate in two versions of an online community; one a
community of interest is visited by people throughout the
province of Ontario who come together to discuss their opposition
to Premier Mike Harris and his government. Ideas, tactics,
actions resources are shared. This community is located on Web
Networks.
The second community is not as focused except that all its
members read The Atlantic Monthly. Post and Riposte
[http://www.theatlantic.com] is a community forum for discussing
a wide range of issues in a friendly, yet, challenging way.
In my organic world, I'm still looking but have noticed
that, at least here in Thunder Bay, the shopping malls are
serving one community function. They give people, who can at
least buy a coffee, a place to gather and talk.
I have found elements of a succesful community, a community
garden, a obliging corner store, friendly neighbours and a few
good friends. There is hope in all this. We can build community
and we must if we are going to thrive.




Action Plan:

NIKE: HOT AIR OR A LEADER?

In May 1995 a campaign started in Holland on sporting shoes
and working conditions. The campaign is focused until now on
sportswear manufacturer Nike, and production in Indonesia. The
slogan is: Nike:fair Play?
The campaign aims at informing people, especially youth, on
working conditions of the women who work for the suppliers of
Nike. We want to give people tools for action, like a solidarity
fund and a petition. We want to have a dialogue with the involved
multinational. We try to make a contribution on the discussion on
the way arrangements on working conditions and codes of conduct
can be implemented effectively.
Nike is an American company, but almost all the shoes are
produced outside the US. Nike doesn't produce for themselves.
It's much cheaper to subcontract production to factories in Asian
countries like Indonesia.

For More information contact the Clean Clothes campaign via
email: ccc@xs4all.nl


Publisher's note:

We've departed from our originally planned Star Trek segment
for this issue. We have added a new title to our thirty years
perspective on Star Trek; a look at community within the Star
Trek universe.


STAR TREK AND COMMUNITY: by JJ Paquette.

Star Trek fans will understand that within the Star Trek universe
notion of community is tangible and fragile thing. Community is
defined as anything from a totalitarian regime to a sense of full
acceptance of who and what we are. It is in this diversity that
one could sense the vision that was and remains Roddenberry's.
"Where no one has gone before" stands for the essence and complex
whole of a world where the individual being is part of a
complete and ongoing celebration of life in all its
manifestations and diversity. As the Vulcan IDIC denotes,
"Infinite Diversity, Infinite Complexity."

Dr. Sevrin in "The Way to Eden" (TOS 1969) believed in
the existence of a planet that would hold the answer to
his understanding of community. Eden would provide the
quintessential response to a world gone mad. Infected with a
virulent bacillus strain, Sevrin, a once brilliant scientist, now
a carrier of sythococcus novae, would take the small band of free
thinkers to begin a community that would recognize the true
meaning of freedom. Their symbol, hands outstretched, pointer and
thumb touching in the shape of a triangle. The message, "WE
REACH" understood by the stoic Spock who feels the isolation and
need to belong and searches for and locates the
mythical Eden. Assuring their right to relocate on the planet
Sevrin arranges to disable the Enterprise long enough to allow
them to transport to the surface of the planet. Arriving on
Eden the seekers find only death. The plant life contains high
levels of harmful acids. Disappointed the small group of
idealists agrees to return to the ship but Sevrin bites into a
piece of fruit and dies. His would be the final act in
"freedom".

As community we are forever linked with each other and our
environment. It is in "The Inner Light" (TNG 1992) we experience
the reliving of several generations in only minutes. Picard is
hit with a nucleonic beam from a probe. Jean Luc now finds
himself on the drought-stricken planet Kataan. Unaware of what
has happened Kamin (Jean Luc) feels he should be some place on a
space ship. Here in Kataan he is married and has two children
with his wife Eline. They grow old together and take active part
in the lives of their children. His daughter gives him a
grandchild. In the end Picard assists in the growth and finally
the last hope for the dying planet. They send up a probe with
the memories and record of the community that was Kataan. Picard
awakens back on the bridge of the Enterprise but now shares in
the memories of those who lived centuries earlier in Kataan.

Community, for Picard, our starship captain, has always meant
family. We are told he felt a loss at not having had a family of
his own. He takes pride in his nephew and feels that the family
line is secure only to have this taken away when his brother and
his nephew die in a fire in "Generations". While the storyline
of "The Inner Light" shares the unconditional acceptance of Kamin
and his beliefs of a starship we are made aware of the tolerance
and opportunity shared with Kamin.


Alexis in "Community"(DS9 1995) had a dream where technology and
mechanical industry took a back seat to community. Diverting a
group of colonists who believed they were on their way to a new
colony for settlement find themselves on a plant that blocks the
use of any systems. They must learn over the next ten years to
make their own clothes, build the shelters and grow the food they
need to survive. And survive they do till Sisko and O'Brien
arrive looking to verify the readings of human life on the
planet. Only to discover that the planet's inhabitants were
living the life of settlers. They had succeeded in creating a
community where the individual did not exist except for the
group. Where punishment for disobeying the rules brought you to
time in a box. This community's leader had one idea of what it
meant to have a cohesive smooth working community and did not
tolerate dissent. In the end Sisko is reached by Dax and Kira.
O'Brien and Sisko return to the shuttle with Alexis and her son
who is ready to defend her reasons and vision. The community
itself recognizes that this is their home now and they refuse to
leave.

Infinite diversity infinite complexity attempts to arrive at a
point where tolerance and awareness is part and parcel of the
greater good. Where justice is not question of choice but of
design. "Live long and prosper"

NEXT issue " Commercialism and product recognition"




THREE ARTISTS DISCUSS CYBERSPACE
by Bob Ewing

The Internet, Cyberspace, perhaps the mid-1990s two most hyped
words. Claims and counterclaims circle the globe. The Internet is
a network of computer networks and cyberspace is where the
networking happens. I view cyberspace as a place of tremendous
potential that is only just beginning to be realized. For this
article I contacted a number of artists and asked if they would
comment on what cyberspace means to them. Three agreed. Their
words, which follow, are reproduced exactly as I downloaded them
from my email folder. If you have email access and want to talk
with the three artists who responded do it.







From: ideasz@tinored.cu (Banco de Ideas Z)
Reply-To: ideasz@tinored.cu
Subject: interview.1
To: cclash@web.apc.org



Well,I didn't know anything about cyberspace three years ago when a group
of friends began the cultural project Banco de Ideas Z. And anything about
computers neither. Some day I found an cuban american magazine with an
article about The email: a tool for the poor peoples.The email sound exciting
on the pages of the zine,but regarding that on this years the electronic
networks haven't any promotion here,I didn't discovered any practical
utility for this remote "device".

By casualty,I meet one guy who is specialist on the email system of the
Cuban Sciences Academy.He talked a lot about the email,and he gave us a
login and password.But on this time we didn't know what can we do with the
email,and resigned the use. Then,we discovered Internet and virtual reality,
and the dream of the unlimited communication invaded our heads.

Now,after August,we decided to begin to edit and transmit a weekly cultural
bulletin. At the beginning we used a pocket modem because we haven't our
own PC.With this kind of modem we can plug on many PC which belong to several
cultural institutions. Now,with our PC,we edit the bulletin,the only one in
Cuba dedicated to cultural matters and transmitted to 14 countries and stored
on Internet thanks to the solidarity of a collective from NY.

We made weekly four bulletins: one for international promotion of cuban
culture,and the others dedicated to foster here(between the cuban networks
users) some topics like gay and lesbian issues,AIDS cultural activism,
green education,Internet inside,practically unkown on Cuba.These materials
are extracted from several publications we get by barter.

The "international" bulletin contains art exhibitions catalogues,
commentaries,call for events and projects,information about cuban
institutions,visual arts,literature,theater,video reviews,etc. As the
cultural life here is so wide, we are now offering our knowledge to others
centres and projects in order to edit their own bulletins. And we will send
their materials to our usual readers.

We are wishing to jump to WWWeb. We need the software for making the pages,
so we will welcome every aid on this aspect.




--------


Date: Sat, 20 Jan 1996 23:07:01 -0500
From: MB29@aol.com
Message-ID: <960120230659_402342929@mail04.mail.aol.com>
To: cclash@web.apc.org
Subject: mail art cyberspace



Bob--E-mail has served me as a networking tool--a means of getting
information, principally, about mail art shows, fax art shows, and networking
news. It's been useful in the sense that it's helped me find out about a few
more opportunities to participate in shows than I would have had otherwise. I
also used e-mail and Internet postings to advertise a mail art show I was
organizing, and to advertise the opening of the show. I can't tell if it had
an effect, though. I haven't yet tackled issues of sending visual art by
e-mail or internet means, mostly because I don't have the equipment to do
that.

If you need to know any more, let me know.

Jeff Bagato












----------

abell@linfield.edu


Thanks Bob for reply. I work with e-mail mainly as a way to comunicate
with other artists worldwide on philosophical, content and other issues.
My other focus is the use of the fax machine to create interactive fax
art installations. My last project was in fall 1994 "Enter the Electronic
river" an installation at Renshaw Gallery, Linfield College. Interaction
was through the fax machine, some e-mail. We had over 110 artists from 20
countries and 6 continents, with 4 additional interactive projects that
developed from and with various participants. My next project will be in
September this year, also at the same venue. It is entitled "Balanced on
a point of equilibrium: techno-ambiance, megaliths and office machines"
and will address the question of obsolescence. It will again be an
international fax art installation directed by its participants. I will
be providing the physical setting of megaliths, boulders, a circles of
stones and fax machines which will receive/store/display images and texts
directed to the theme. Let me know if any of this is of further interest
to you. Perhaps some of the artists in your centre may be interested in
participating in the project which will be in September. Thanks so much.
Regards and greetings from Lilian A. Bell





Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 11:36:27 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Bell <abell@calvin.linfield.edu>
Subject: Re: artists and cyberspace
To: <cclash@web.apc.org>



As a cyber-neophyte I became interested in the interim technology of the
fax machine as a way of interacting in cyber space because of its ease of
use and access for those artists outside the western tech cultures. Many
of these colleagues find it difficult even to access a fax machine, let
alone have a modem and access to the web. What one can partake of in the
cyber arts depsends largely on ones cash, institutional affiliation and
technical know-how. Not every electronic artist has a modem, web access
or email address. Our present linkage to the telephone connection (as
well as some equipment incompatibility) also makes image transmission
slow and expensive.

The creative possibilities that draw me to the cyber medium include:
1. The possiblity of developing a philosophical and content based
aesthetic that somehow represents the essence of the cyber environment,
yet uses the simplest means possible- hardware and technique remain secondary
2. The desire to work in a space between "presence & absence" moving
between the real and the virtual through interactivity and transformation
3. The ability to focus on a worldwide aesthetic dialog within the
broadest cultural framework
4. The pursuit of a collective imagination to create boundary free works
of image/text by multiple authors. Douglas Coupland in his book
"Microserfs" notes that "this is the end of the age of authenticity,"
while Gyorgy Galantai of Artpool in Budapest, Hungary describes it as "a
mass produced uniqueness." Roy Ascott from the UK speaks of "a
conversation rather than a monologue."

As to how cyberspace can be used as an art medium, I can only speak of my
experiences with hybrid forms of tele-communication: we hijack hi-tech
office equipment to create spontaneous transmissions for a shared
consciousness and a new intellectual spirituality. The ability to alter
the axis, use the ripple effect of coincidence and insert subversive
ideas into the flow of image data results in a wonderful ambiance of
electronic energy that resonates through a cyber art project. Bruce
Breland, director of DAX-Digital Art Exchange feels that "the human
capacity for rapture is simultaneously a desire for fulfillment and an
invitation to anarchy."

Perhaps I can summarize these actions as follows:
1. artists in various global locations start the process as
"actors/spectators"--the abolition of time and place
2. The act of scanning occurs: digitizing electronic signals are the
medium. Recorded reality is re-arranged, distorted and improvised
3. Image flows converge to a collection site. Artists and art objects are
absent. The rawness of the visuals has the directness and freshness of
the present
4.Separate images become a living electronic reality created by multiple
minds
5. The fusion of near and far: form and content develop and visual
resonance is transmitted back into the digital stream of thought for
further transformations.

Thanks so much Bob. With best regards, Lilian A. Bell



couey@well.sf.ca.us


>A question: please tell me something about
>your work in cyberspace?

My work in cyberspace includes projects I've organized as art
works, and work for hire in which I focus on establishing cyber
territories for artists and other marginalized people. Both
types of work share similar goals; and in some ways I consider
it all art, though it might also be defined in socio-political
terms, or even just survival. The common thread is a commitment
to the idea of cyberspace as a mass participatory medium. My work
is predicated on the conception of communication structures as
organic sculptural media; and an aesthetic of use an action.

I came to cyberspace in 1985; at the time I was working with the
artists' organization, ART COM, and we had decided to publish
our art magazine on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a
conferencing system that was accessible through packet network
from 40 some countries. We were looking to cut production costs
and increase distribution. What we found instead was a revelation:
cyberspace was a many to many communications environment - a
radical shift from both the mass media and from the tradition
of fine art production. Another revelation was that we had
broken out of the experimental art ghetto - not many artists
had computers and modems at the time. ART COM, and a few
individual artists who were online at the time, began to
experiment with participatory art production. Our participants
did not define themselves as artists - rather they were
computer programmers, researchers, writers, radio talk show
hosts - a diverse range of people who just happened to be
interested and wealthy enough to buy the tools and explore
what this new world might mean.

My "art" work draws heavily from this experience: I organize
online environments that invite public participation, and seek
to cross over established communications barriers - particularly
those raised between different cultural groups and socio-economic
classes.

To give you a more specific idea about this work, a list
of projects & short descriptions follows:

Virtual Cultures, 1990
A 2-system open-participation panel organized to explore the
cultural applications of virtual reality, including computer
networks; and to provide access to the Cyberthon conference to
people who would otherwise be excluded.

Virtual Country, 1990
A 2-system project in which virtual countries were collectively
invented by everyone who responded.

Communications Across Borders, 1991
Organized to initiate an international movement for reciprocal
cultural communications via computer network, Communications
Across Borders invited participants to devise solutions to
unequitable network distribution as electronic sculpture.
CAB was designed for Reflux, an art telecommunication project
by Artur Matuck, in which a decentralized interchange of aesthetic
discourses are sent through (tele)communications networks.
Presented at the Sao Paulo Biennial.

Cultures in Cyberspace, 1992
An open-participation virtual panel organized to address the
impact of cyberspace on distinct cultural groups and vice versa.
Initiated locally on 5 systems, in collaboration with George
Baldwin, Anne Fallis, Randy Ross (American Indian
Telecommunications); Phillip Bannigan & Sue Harris (ArtsNet);
Judy Malloy & Eric S. Theise (The WELL), John Quarterman (USENET).
Created for the 3rd International Symposium on Electronic Art.

Imagining the Information Age, 1993
A project to broaden political discourse concerning the National
Information Infrastructure, so that it includes the realities of
lived experience, dreams, traditions, art and other modes of
perception usually excluded from national policy making. 4 nodes
create fictional Representatives who plan the future. Their
discussion is carried via email list, which also serves as a
document for the White House. Organized for Matrix: Women
Networking, an exhibition of online works by women artists
presented at Tomorrow's Realities, SIGGRAPH 93.

Imagining the Information Age: Stories/Visions, 1994-96
An online project to connect disparate realities in the same
city. 2 nodes, 1 at the ACM Multimedia Conference in San
Francisco's downtown business center, and 1 at the San
Francisco Digital Media Center, in the Mission district, a
low income, predominantly Latino neighborhood, added stories
and visions of the future to the same web site.
http://www.well.com/user/couey/here.html

The above projects have been organized as art events; I also
work with projects that seek to develop sustainable systems of
difference in cyberspace. These include: Arts Wire, an
communications system for artists and arts organizations - an
attempt to share information and build bridges across the
borders of race, medium, and institutional status; setting
up a web self publishing service for WELL users; training labor
activists to use the Internet; working with local community
networking projects.

Anna Couey








WWW SITES

http://netaccess.on.ca/~alone/acp.html

http://www.warhol.org/warhol

http://www.woodwind.com/ccafe

http://www.concourse.com/wwar/default.html

http://www.artnet.org/iamfree

http://www.cascade.net/kahlo.html


Collaborating artist email addresses:

ideasz@tinored.cu

abell@linfield.edu

MB29@aol.com

Video Review: "Tap"

This 1989 film starring Gregory Hines and co-starring Sammy Davis Jr. is fun. A
solid soundtrack that keeps your toes tapping sets the pace. Hines,a dancer, who
hung up his shoes and did time for a crime, committed to ease his fear of being
poor, provides some electric movements.
A good love story with a weak but workable sub-plot, Tap pleasures while it
gives you something to ponder. Take the time to rent this one.


Something to Think About:

Rent and watch these two videos and ask yourself what they have in common and
why were they made: "clerks", "kids". Feel free to drop us a note at cclash@web.net.

World Wide Web:

http://www.peacejam.org

http://www.outpost.com

http://www.oneworld.org/worldgoodwill/index.html

http://www.urbanec@dove.mtx.net.au





Books:

Farley Mowat, Sea of Slaughter

Piers Anthony, Being A Green Mother

Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers In The Land


Letters-To-The-Editor:

Write us. cclash@web.net


Submissions:

We welcome poetry and short esssays on art, society, culture. Keep length to 1000

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