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that, beyond the one on one contact with a computer. For their performances in the early 1990s, for instance, Station Rose would connect their computers to the Internet and ask people online to join in the performance by sending messages. This way the performance space (often a party setting) would be extended or expanded. On a technological level this expansion happens outside the direct reach of the audience, but on a social, cultural or psychological level the audience definitely becomes engaged. «Through Telnet and this ‹u command› anyone could log on and send something, when they knew we were doing Gunafa Clubbing in Frankfurt.» Rose continues, «The (German) e-mail program we used then, Magicall, ran on Amiga, which I used to perform live with 4 projector screens. … I let … the e-mail and the animation program run live at the same time. When I got a new message, there was a flash on the screen. That resulted in an extra light effect in the club, a digital strobe light effect, because we got so many messages». [8] All of this happened in a time when the Internet was largely unknown, not just to the general audience, but to many media art festivals as well.» In

 

1995 Ars Electronica still didn’t have an e-mail address», says Danner, «if my memory serves me well». [9] Even in 1998 it was not uncommon for media art festivals not to reply to e-mails, simply because they could not handle their mailboxes. One can only try to imagine what performances as described above would do to the audience. They must have been mysterious, arousing curiosity, definitely creating a buzz. After the show was over it would probably feel like something special was lost. «It takes hours to build virtual rooms, to bring them to life», says Rose, «and they are gone and will never come back the same way as soon as the (analogue) lights are switched on…. Composing in cyberspace in real-time is extreme.» The Gunafa Clubbing events seem to have been temporary autonomous zones, some of the unstable bits of Public Domain 2.0.

Heath Bunting: Project-X

Simple projects can be beautiful. «Projekt -X,» a 1996 street work by Heath Bunting , was of such simple beauty. Bunting chalked an Internet address on a sidewalk, a wall, or another object in public space.

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