PORT: Navigating Digital Culture Organized by a r t n e t w e b MIT List Visual Arts Center January 25 through March 29, 1997

PROJECT DESCRIPTION SETTING: The nimble software known as CU-SeeMe flings us into the gray reality of the AlulA Dimension. AlulA grows somewhere in the tangle that is our current culture of wires and anxieties. There is a rumor that it's a broken video game or an aborted cognitive psychology experiment -based, perhaps, somewhere in Brooklyn. Others disagree and point out AlulA's extremely unmeasured, weedlike qualities. The National Geographic, August 1993, has the following passage: "Desmina Poseidon, a local sage who sells roasted chestnuts in the back streets of Athens, made an odd demonstration of her impression of AlulA. Scuffing her feet on the ground like a bull and glancing up at the sky, she growled to this reporter, 'It's just some place, but it needs me.' " PERFORMERS: One or two Alulians, in Alulian attire, may be seen climbing silently around Alula's inner matrix of poles. Periodically they may move forward near the intruding video camera, and begin wailing and worbling. After a few moments they may seem to return to silent climbing about the chamber. PERSPECTIVE: There is some discussion as to whether the silence/wailing cycle exercised by the Alulians is connected in some fashion to Quaker Meeting for Worship. In such a ritual the centralized power of the minister or priest is replaced by the congregation itself. Participants, sitting in a silent circle or square, take turns saying whatever comes to mind. This egalitarian mechanism for "thought merging" may have roots in Native American, North African, and other democratic traditions, and has some relevance to the stream of grassroots publishing now being exercised over the internet.

EBON FISHER Ebon Fisher received a BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University, and a Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT in 1986. He taught media at MIT's Media Lab in the mid-80's at its inception, and now teaches cultural studies online at The New School in New York City. He is creating "The AlulA Dimension" from his studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Fisher has developed a series of "Media Rituals" which attempt to bring the human body and mind into a ceremonial relationship with technology and information. These rituals have been conducted at a variety of venues including abandoned warehouses in Brooklyn, rock clubs, The Kitchen, and Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art. Many of Fisher's insights into the moral and behavioural relations between human beings and technological systems have evolved into a series of iconic diagrams called "The Bionic Codes" which "float" in a variety of media (t-shirts, the internet, stickers, even a tattoo on a Canadian biker's shoulder). Fisher has given lectures in media at MIT's Media Lab, Columbia University, the Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Iowa, and the New School for Social Research. His works have been discussed in The Drama Review, Flash Art, Newsweek, and Wired Magazine. Fisher's post-art manifesto, "Wigglism," is now circulating in the internet, and on telephone poles in Brooklyn.

SPONSORS The Computer Institute and the San Francisco Computer Museum 110 McAllister Suite 409, PO Box 420914, San Francisco 94142-0914 vox: 415-703-8362 | fax: 415-703-8359 | web: www.fog.com