The history of art practice in electronic media attests to the symbiotic
relationship between the evolution of technological tools and creative
expression. For those of us long ago addicted to electronic processes, this
relationship has proved highly stimulating, as a rather hyper-active driver -
accelerating both creative thought/production and the evolving dynamic
development of the tools themselves propelling interdependent paths of desire.
Electronic art works have often provided a dexterous saber for critique of
current technological culture, while also delineating the tenacity grip of the all
too familiar, love/hate relationship with our various chosen techno-tools of
production. Critical awareness of the intimacy of this relationship with the
"double edged swords" of our art(s) reveals the profound depth of a virtual
surgery performed on artist, audience, and culture - as consumers.

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Aside from the more obvious and all too tangible physical and psychic
implications/dangers of lives spent interacting with electronic media, the
foundation of our assumptions about art, its production and potency of its
effects has been drastically altered. The very nature of creative being lies
anesthetized atop the operation slab. Questions beckon - whom, what, why -
for what end is this specter scalpel carving? What new self/culture emerges, or
surgical mishap may be wrought, in this quickening of our times?

Clearly there is an economic (= power/control) foot on the accelerator. The
development of tools (sales) is driven by global corporate demands, leaving us
constantly learning new hardware/software packages in a seemingly unending
addiction for the new, better, faster - more. Creators require a modest mastery
of the tools of production. For tools need to disappear, as when one no longer
sees/hears the instrument, or becomes one with it. When tools become
transparent, personalized territory, then there is a relationship that allows for
the subtle, the profound. At the same time, the traditional boundaries of self
(garretized artist) and the public sector (audience/collaborators) - public and
private space have blurred.

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The electronic artist's poetic investigation, the spiritual stance, is often
seduced, enslaved, obliterated, swept away in the roar of the "info.
superhighway". Our vision blinks spasmodically from fear of drowning in this
darkening river of imagery less meaning. Two second edits are cut to the beat
with increasing frequency, spewing forth from the sewage "tube", which is
suckled - uncontrollably. We are disenfranchised from effective statedgies and
means of contextual control - entangled in the Net like some virtual Moses
searching forth into the promise.

As an electronic artist - I have long espoused my creative practice as...
reminiscent in an essential way to the alchemical art. There the fluidity,
specificity and control of the electronic processes re-integrate cyclically
distilling into finished works. The corporal life and psychic stuff transform into
simulations, like an electro-magnetic Isis conjuring the body Osiris encoded.
Then came that enrapturement with a McLuhanesque figment for a global,
electro-psychic exoskeleton that would mirror our inner life, transforming us
with an omnipresent in-communication "vibe". "So, why haven't you answered
my e-mail, yet?" - Love your addictions. Fetishize your tools. -

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The raster's flickering enslavement of enveloping body armor and economic
servitude hovers like an astral specter around the magical qualities of the
portable studio experience. The laboratory as ultimate, nomadic crucible -
digital camcorder and notebook (with FAX-modem, Internet connect) in hand, a
"zeitgeist" tool kit. We are off to wield the sword at the dragon's throat,
preferably in some obscure, slightly primitive 3rd-World spot. The alchemically
chic travel through the drudgery of airports, coddling chronic back problems
and laboring with "the equipment", like some premature skeletal cyborg,
longing for tele-com implants.

With hindsight, as a member of the aging porta-pack generation of the early
70s, the naiveté towards the "virtual" promise held out first by the fabled cable
community, then satellite's tele-presence and now the global Internet, was truly
prodigious for its optimism as well as for its myopic vision. The artist (desiring
redefinition as creative overview thinker/cultural experimental simulator; yet, still allied to the old trickster-fool/clown archetype) - rushed head long into this extended love affair.
As in all romance, it's difficult to say - who, which or what institution/power
base has best been served, benefited most by this "hot and bothered" desire for
copulation, or for the psycho-electronic wedding? Has it been a spiritual quest,
after all? Is this a Holy Grail issue... or, fearing the worst, some kind of over
stimulated debauchery among electrons... with the master(s) peering in from
some obscure slit in the global bedroom drapery?

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The perpetual lust (and true love) for this affair… tangles in the oscillations of
frequency, seduced by magnetism's so pervasive caress along with time's
palpable omnipotence. Occasionally, the mad dervish balances momentarily in
the bliss of quietude achieved as presentness - the Now. In this implosion,
wrestled from technology, not without some spiritual effort... with the cool
sweat from recent surgery evaporating, I must muse - might it be that I - we've,
somehow missed some essential, educational point to this romance.