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<blockquote> <br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="-1"><font
color="#6666ff">SCREENPLAY</font><font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay.html">NERVEPOOL'S WORLD</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><a href="screenplay_opening.html">THEME SONG</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay_episode_1.html">EPISODE </a></font><a
href="screenplay_episode_1.html">1</a><font size="-1"><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay_episode_2.html">EPISODE </a></font><a
href="screenplay_episode_2.html">2</a> <br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="-1"><font
color="#6666ff">EBON FISHER</font><font color="#ffffff">.</font> <a
href="Ebon_Fisher_Bio.html">BIO</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><a href="screenplay_resume.html">RESUME</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="Ebon_Fisher_People_Quotes.html">COMMENTARIES</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="Ebon_Fisher_Media_Samples.html">PRESS</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><font color="#6666ff">EMAIL</font><font
color="#ffffff">..</font><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></font>
</font><br>
<br>
<p><img src="Fuji_TV_host_w_ebon.gif" border="2" height="161"
width="215">
</p>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">Fuji Television
host, Tetsuo Suda, interviewing</font></font></font> <br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">Fisher at Galapagos
Artspace, Brooklyn</font></font></font> <br>
<br>
</p>
<p><b><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+1">A Selection
of Press on Ebon Fisher</font></font></font></i></b> </p>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">___________________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Contemporary Artists</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Edited by Sara
and Tom Pendergast</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(St.
James Press, 2002, From Frank Popper's article, <i>Ebon Fisher</i>, p. 516)</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon Fisher
is an artist whose "Media Organisms" -- artificial lifeforms cultivated in
the plasma of popular culture -- and "Bionic Codes" -- subjective ecosystems
existing over the internet -- constitute a highly original contribution to
the latest developments in technological art…</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher's
"Wigglism Manifesto"… can be seen as an effort at moving our collective gaze
away from both art and science and towards the nurturing of "life" in the
broadest, non-objective, and non-human sense. It is an attempt to seed a
form of "subjective ecology." This leads, among other things, to a de-centered
authorship where one creates with the community, with the medium, and with
nature.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_______</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Die Zeit</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">September 19,
1997</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
<i>Vis-à-vis Manhattan</i> by Claudia Steinberg, p. 77)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">In the
long shadow of the Manhattan skyline a colony of artists and outsiders has
settled who have sworn off SOHO as the seat of all culture…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
Fisher, a gentle ethicist… initiated "Organism," the event that 120 artists
participated in [with an audience of 2000], which has such a following that
even Newsweek wrote about it. Events like these finally established Williamsburg
as an artists' colony.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">__________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Newsweek</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">July 26, 1993</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
<i>Where Do We Go After the Rave?</i> by Melissa Rossi. p. 58)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Call
it the sequel to the rave… Organism, a web jam held last month in Brooklyn…
For 12 hours, more than 2,000 people pushed into an abandoned mustard factory
to see the work of 120 artists, featuring everything from exploding watermelons
to performers rapelling down silos. "The fine arts are dead," [Ebon Fisher]
explains, "and we're taking advantage of decentralized media to create a
new cultural forum."</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">______________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">The Village Voice</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">January 30, 1991</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(Ben
Map on Ebon Fisher's Media Compression)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">A
network of… media droids.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_______________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">New York Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">November 13, 1995</font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
<i>The New York Cyber Sixty</i>, p. 48)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
Fisher…More Jenny Holzerish than Jenny Holzer.</font></font></font></i>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">____________________________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Art Since 1940: Strategies
of Being</font></font></b> <br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">by Prof. Jonathan
Fineberg, U. of Illinois</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(2<sup>nd</sup>
Edition, Prentice Hall, 2000, p. 502)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
focused on the immediacy of body experience and on community-based culture,
organizing massive participatory art events in the neighborhood; "Organism,"
for example, held in an abandoned mustard seed factory near the Brooklyn waterfront
in the summer of 1993, was a sensory overcharge… Fisher also began making
digital art that had no fixed materiality; instead it had the flavor of contemporary
Cyberpunk fiction, as in William Gibson's 1984 novel, Neuromancer, where
humans fuse with computers and communicate digitally. Fisher wrote Utopian
"social programs" on the computer, which he instructs his viewers to "absorb
into memory" as templates for a new social (dis)order. Through community-based
cultural enterprises and consumer technology, he aspired to reclaim the production
of culture from the mass marketers and return it to each of us, one person
at a time.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">_______</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Domus</font></font></b> <br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">February 1998</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
<i>Go with the Flow: Eight New York Based Artists and Architects in the
Digital Era </i>by Suzan Wines, p. 84)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">In June
1993, 120 artists from the Williamsburg community created Organism: A Web
Jam. Conceived by Ebon Fisher, Organism became a kind of symbolic climax
to the renegade activity that had been stirring within the community since
the late eighties. It exploited the notion of architecture as living event,
breathing and transforming for fifteen hours in an abandoned mustard factory.
Unlike a traditional gallery exhibit where each object only engages the cube
of space that it occupies, the collaborators in a "web jam" create work that
engages the entire space, the body and mind of the audience and through this
process ultimately integrates with the community at large. A layering of
system upon system whose intersections spawn unique accidental places…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">When
permitted to occur, this same spontaneity gives the public space of a city
its character and is the experience that people crave from interactions through
the internet. In virtual space an environment is invisible data. It takes
on dimension when engaged by human visitors. As such, the experience of a
space is more important than the material which creates it. This kind of
organic flexibility and environmental efficiency is a refreshing perspective
with which to approach architecture and urban design, particularly now, when
the creative energy of the digital revolution is still relatively untainted
by social and political restrictions…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">As a
"living media organism" the AlulA Dimension has a completely symbiotic relationship
with its environment and inhabitants. Inspired by similarities between the
flexible structures of ecological systems and the internet, Ebon Fisher began
breeding the AlulA Dimension as an "organic matrix" for social interaction.
From a virtual perspective, according to Ebon, all media and scales are equally
valid and inhabitable. Its chambers are accessed through narrow corridors
whose dimensions are governed more by the laws of communication than physical
accessibility…</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">_____________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Wired Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">December 1995</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Mr. Meme by Matt Haber, p. 44)</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">"I'm fascinated
by the possibility of floating a code in the media," says Ebon Fisher, one
of the first guerilla artists and instructors at the MIT Media Lab. Fisher's
Bionic Codes project is an evolving system of images… "I'm incubating structures
in billions of neurons, various databases and a slew of nightclubs and T-shirts.
It's a weird undertaking. It's neither art nor science, but a form of breeding."</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Wired Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">March 1995</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Jim Clarage's letter on Ebon Fisher's Bionic Codes)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Breathtaking
biology. Got your codes flashing inside my eyelids. Won't let me sleep...
Now if I could find some scripty way to project them onto the walls of my
house.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Wired.com</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">May 1997</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Ebon Fisher Explores Subversive Play by Mike Tanner)</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">"I consider
myself a mind artist," says Ebon Fisher, one of the original teachers at the
MIT Media Lab and a cultivator of the now pervasive "meme" meme. "I take
a concept and grow it interactively."</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
is referring to his biomorphic diagrams, which represent man-machine interactions
as interlocking groups of nerve-shaped forms, accompanied by slogans about
linking with others (such as "link via infant node"). These works, titled
The Bionic Codes, have existed in media as varied as T-shirts, zines, nightclub
projections, and now inhabit a Java-driven interactive game on the Sandbox
webzine which launched on Tuesday.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">This
migration between media is emblematic both of the mutability inherent in Fisher's
art, and of the kind of work that Sandbox has been covering as a paper zine
and a performance collective for the last three years. The group has worked
-- mostly with artists associated with the Williamsburg performance/installation
party scene of the early '90s -- to examine the medium-specific nature of
art and "explore the manifold aspects of subversive and creative play."</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">__________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Wired.com</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">February 1999</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Virtual Art, Real Conversation by Reena Jana)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Pixel,
a new interactive gallery showcasing digital art, is taking interactivity
to a new level… Ebon Fisher's Shockwave piece, Spitting in the AlulA Dimension,
a mysterious, meditative work that presents microscopic views of the bacteria
found in a woman's saliva, is featured as Pixel's inaugural exhibition…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Pixel
staff curator, Yael Kanarek, analyzed existing online galleries, including
the Walker Art Center's Gallery 9 and the online projects of Razorfish Studios,
as well as physical exhibition spaces in New York City's SoHo arts district
to help shape [her] concept of an online gallery. Ken Goldberg, an internationally
recognized Internet artist and an associate professor of engineering at the
University of California at Berkeley, whose work will be featured next month
at Pixel, points out that "access is one of the distinctive qualities of
Net art. As with public art, the work in the Pixel gallery runs the risk
of being musunderstood. If it ruffles feathers in the art world, all the
better."</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">__________________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Guggenheim Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Spring 1997</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Intelligent Life, by Laura Trippi, p. 53, an introduction to the Guggenheim
Museum's online CyberAtlas which includes Ebon Fisher's Bionic Codes project)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Linking
from site to site, mutating slightly from sign-on to sign-on, users flock,
disperse and migrate in protean networks of information-based relations. In
this way the Internet itself seems like a sprawling -- and unintentional --
simulation of a living system. Nowhere else is the shift in our understanding
of what counts as intelligence, and what constitutes life, more pronounced…
The map below presents an array of Web sites spotlighting hubs of activity
in this expanding field, ranging from artifical life (in cyberspace) to remote
sensing (of, mostly, outer space) and from the figure of global evolution
to the ground of distributed intelligence.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">______________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Britannica.com</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">August, 2000</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
The Web's Best Sites)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
Fisher [is] dealing with the creation of a set of icons symbolic of the instability
and expansion of meaning in contemporary culture.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">__________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Word.com</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">1996</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Bionic
Codes: the world's first biocybernetic ballet.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Coil Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">London, 1997</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Giles Lane's review of Ebon Fisher's Bionic Codes animation)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">The
Bionic Codes are a theological virus attempting to "link and seek links" with
a host culture becoming increasingly materialistic.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">RES Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">July/August 2001</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Who to Watch, What to Watch by David Alm, p. 10)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Feel
a wave of calm benevolence wash over you. Link and Seek Links, you tell yourself
silently. Bypass Common Madness… you transcend hostility… Zoacodes, are embedded
in your subconscious after encountering them everywhere, from T-shirts to
sidewalk graffiti to the Web…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Here It Is Now</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">University of
Oxford Webzine edited by Tom Anderson</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
Fisher's Bionic Codes -- the mother lode.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Now.com</font></font></b> <br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">London,September
2000</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Gallery: Bionic Codes by Aaron Paul)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">World-renowned
artist and digital art academic discusses his unique world of iconography…
Ebon Fisher is a media breeder -- or so he says. He is also the director of
Digital Worlds at the University of Iowa in the USA.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">For the best
part of the last decade he has been slowly but surely infiltrating the Web
with his 'bionic codes' -- a system of iconic representations evolving from
initial installation pieces… into the current Web-based interactive works.
In the past, visitors to the galleries where his work was exhibited would
trigger heat sensors which changed the 'behavior' of the codes they were
interacting with. However, it is no longer necessary to frequent the more
obscure galleries in New York City to experience the simple, yet effective,
language of the codes -- the Web is now a breeding ground…</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
has exhibited worldwide and is considered a primary figure in the evolution
of the Web as a means of art exhibition as well as contemporary installation.
His bionic codes have been seen in the most unlikely places, including Japanese
daytime television and the Wall Street Journal.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">__________________________________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Art History Seminar: Art of
the 21<sup>st</sup> Century</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From Prof.
Alison Hilton's Syllabus, Georgetown University, Spring 2000)</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">To grapple
with the 21<sup>st</sup> Century I suggest working within three major focal
areas or contexts: relationships between art and technology (or new art forms
and new technologies); the contradictions between multi-culturalism and the
notion of a global culture; and changing relationships between artists and
audiences or between public art and private art…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Suggestions
to begin looking: …Bill Viola, Gary Hill… Ebon Fisher, Tony Oursler,
Matthew Barney, Mariko Mori, Rebecca Horn…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Rhizome.com</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">February 1997</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Adnan Ashraf's review of Substation, a rave at the old Warhol Ballroom on
the 10<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Warhol's passing)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">After a drifting reconnaissance through the 5-story "Substation" - in and out of twin stairwells connecting 8 studios - I find
myself in a banquet hall. There's a café table waiting for me and I'm
happy to see Ebon Fisher's installation glowing nearby. A ceiling-mounted
projector fills part of the wall with images of finely-drawn, microcosmic
nodal structures, projected individually in a gracefully moving sequence…
All of them connect with a tide of neuronal recognition, but this last one,
Extend Languid Probe, really hits the spot, completing a narrative cycle.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">___________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Nettime.org</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(Commentary
by Heath Row on Bill Joy's article in Wired Magazine)</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">I think
Joy's article is of particular interest when read in conjunction with Vernor
Vinge's writing on the Singularity -- and Stewart Brand's work The Long Now
Foundation. At the SXSW Interactive earlier this week, Brand cited Joy and
Vinge within beats of each other. Also of interest is Bruce Sterling's Viridian
Green work -- add to that Ebon Fisher's Wigglism Manifesto -- and you've
got the foundation for something.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">___________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Cybergrace</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">by Jennifer Cobb</font></font></font>
</p>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(Crown Publishers,
1998, p. 236)</font></font></font> </p>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon Fisher,
a multimedia artist and former teacher at MIT's Media Lab, has been exploring
another form of cyber creativity. For the last year, Fisher's cyber manifesto,
which he calls Wigglism, has been circulating on the Internet, evolving and
growing as people attach comments and ideas to it. Fisher writes, "The essence
of the project is to abandon the discourse of 'art' (a humanist creature)
and redefine cultural activity as an act of coilings, creating vital lifeforms…
We nurture that which wiggles -- of flesh or steel, sinew or circuit, mud
or imagination; transmuting art into a zoology of spirit."</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">__________________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">How to Talk American</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">by Jim Crotty</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
the Cyberspeech section, p. 68)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Webjam:
According to media artist Ebon Fisher, a webjam is a "rhythmic event integrating
humans, technology and nature." Superficially similar to "raves," "happenings,"
or "be-ins," a webjam is actually more ecological at its core. In other words,
you have to be there to get it.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Netlingo.com</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">A Dictionary
of the Internet Language</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">Bionic
code: A problem-solving routine for human behaviour as it is exercised in
the realm of networks and cyberspace. The first bionic codes were developed
by Ebon Fisher based on a series of his theatrical experiments involving communications
systems amongst audience members. Fisher's bionic codes have been formalized
as a series of diagrams and statements which "float" in the infosphere in
a variety of media.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">Web
jam: A weblike layering of music, media, performers, audience and the surrounding
ecosystem into a rhythmic "jungle." The objective was to celebrate an expanded
sense of nature inclusive of culture and technology. With roots in African
American jazz and 1990s rave culture, the web jam takes an improvisational,
'emergent,' approach to cultural, political and ecological systems. The first
web jam, known as "Organism," was instigated by Ebon Fisher in the spring
of 1993 in collaboration with 120 artists, musicians and children from Williamsburg,
Brooklyn. Over 2,000 people attended -- jamming from 6 at night till 9 the
next morning.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">______________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Tony Millionaire</font></font></b>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From the
comic strip documenting the Brooklyn Scene, <i>Medea's Weekend</i>, 1991)</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><i><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Unblinking,
glossy Ebon eye.</font></font></font></i></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">_____________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">MUTE Magazine</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">London, Winter
1997</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(from
<i>Ebon Fisher's Media Organisms</i> by Peter Boerboom, p. 13)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">The
bionic codes act as moral operators on biological operands. They are modules
designed to hack into culture's core and rewrite some of its basic routines…
In combination, the codes feed off of each other's outputs and back into each
other's inputs, spontaneously tracing new patterns and encouraging reinterpretation.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Marvin Minsky,
the Artificial Intelligence pioneer, has advocated 'sloppy' corrective programming
when fixing bug-plagued computer code. The goal is that the program will
become robust in a wider range of circumstances. This notion of improvement
by accretion is characteristic of systems that grow, in contrast to those
that are built. Over the years of their development, the Bionic Codes have
grown to become an increasingly resilient network of meaning.</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">______________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">New York Press</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">March 6-12, 1991</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Brooklyn Unbound by Mark Rose, p. 10)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">…Ebon
Fisher's latest "Media Compression," where you gather to chew on, rip through,
blend and digest media -- "no information, medium or sensation is too trivial.
The audience brings their own art and media to the event"… Common space is
what the Williamsburg art-activist movement is all about; a heady experiment
to integrate into, defend, help build and somehow connect the community at
large… This involves subtle, non-confrontational shifts in how normally conflicting
cultures understand each other.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Take,
for instance, Ebon's "Weird Thing Zone" at last year's Grand Street Waterfront
Festival… six artists were invited to contribute "physical catalysts for participatory
culture," in a clearly marked area set off by orange cones and yellow tape.
These Weird Things, from which "various tactile, auditory, and visual signals
emanated," beckoned to be sat on, touched, stroked… Ebon, whose Weird Thing
was "The Pulse Box," also states flatly, "I don't do art. My work is a media
organism which protrudes into public space and exchanges unmentionable nutrients."</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">How
do the Latinos feel about these unmentionable nutrients protruding into their
public space? "Oh, the kids loved it. They crawled all over everything," says
Chris Lanier of El Centro Cultural de Williamsburg, sponsors of the Grand
Street Waterfront Festival. "That was a unique festival. Usually we exist
in parallel worlds, the Anglos and the Latinos. Something happened at that
festival. A coalition was formed."</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">______________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Waterfront Week</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, March 1991</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Media
Compression IV tackled the subject "Sex Codes in Media." There was lots of
heavy breathing throughout the crowd provoked by an example of gender stereotypes
specifically relating to women and Playboy centerfolds. The usual battle
between the sexes ensued. Pushing his own buttons connected to the slide
projectors, video screens and audio tapes, Ebon Fisher redirectied the forum
with yet another gender-coded media example. The evening was an orgy of electronic,
audio, and visual sensations concluding with a media blackout. In the darkness
at this point began the Media Compression’s subtle climax. The voices were
softer, physical gestures unseen, allowing the mind to explore an understanding
of sexuality that the mass media ignores.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">______________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Waterfront Week</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, Summer 1993</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Review of Organism Web Jam by Medea de Vyse)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Must
I Org? Yes, I Orged! I Orged! I was devastated! …Really the most thoroughgoing
environmental event in 'burg history. It was integrated, witty, cool… my faith
in empirical, exterior theater restored.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="+2">__________________________</font></font></font>
<br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">January 29, 1993</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Out of Town: The Williamsburg Paradigm by Gisele Atterberry, p. 20)</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">With motors
whirring, bells sounding, an interactive video display, and electrical cords
and mechanical equipment sprawling throughout the galleries, "Out of Town:
The Williamsburg Paradigm" is the liveliest show in memory at the Krannert
Art Museum [University of Illinois]… The exhibition, brainchild of University
of Illinois art history professor Jonathan Fineberg, proposes that Williamsburg
is a new model of artistic activity… Willliamsburg artists tend to take a
role in the political and social health of their neighborhood and city… There
is a collective awareness that art cannot shut itself off from the world…</font></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
Fisher combines his studies of the natural sciences with an attraction to
high-tech media. His "System for Equalizing Heterosexuals" is an installation
piece which is composed of small dark rooms connected by a narrow corridor.
The innermost chamber is dominated by a 6-foot-tall painting of a heart, a
realistically rendered image which seems to hover and glow within its nearly
blackened chamber. A crisp computer-generated image of a cell-like unit is
projected through a slide onto the floor and the room pulses with the echoes
of mysterious sounds. The feeling engendered by the room is strangely quiet
and meditative. The space is fully capable of rendering for its entrants
the emotion which Fisher considers to be the most precious of all --awe.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
noted that he wanted the Williamsburg artists to be understood in context.
He brought along a variety of posters and pamphlets of the type which one
normally could find posted on walls throughout the Williamsburg neighborhood.
This printed matter announces art performances, discusses recycling, addresses
political and health issues: the presence of this material successfully underscores
a major message of the show -- that art is issued from a culture as well
as an artist.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________________________________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Journal of the Fellowship of
Quakers in the Arts</font></font></b> <br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Winter 1997-98</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
cover story, <i>Virtual Morality: A Quaker in Cyberspace</i> by Esther Murer)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">...There
will always be artists who are led to explore new paths, even to invent media
for which we as yet have no words. Ebon Fisher is, among other things, a
meme breeder.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Ebon
prefers "media" to "art" as an umbrella word for a democratic, inclusive sphere
of activity. Both the art world and pop culture take art out of its cultural
context -- the former by focusing on the artistic expression of the individual,
the latter by focusing on the desires of the consumer. In both cases art
is divorced from its social functions. Ebon wants to find a third way which
involves mutual nurturing of whole systems of social-ecological organisms…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">The Des Moines Register</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">February 13, 1999</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(Associated
Press article by Greg Smith)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
was an easy choice to be PIXEL's first featured artist for its interactive
art gallery. "Ebon was chosen because he's very into community. He's really
interested in what people have to say"… Sherer said.</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
says his work is every bit as intense as his childhood days when he "made
maps of my toy trolls' worlds."</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">"You
keep developing worlds and ideas," he said. "Perhaps the only difference is,
in the past I worked in the medium of rocks and pine needles and plastic trolls
and today I am working in the medium of computers, interviews and books and
all the communications technologies that are available."</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Arial,Helvetica"><font color="#5d6d89"><font
size="+2">____________________</font></font></font> <br>
<b><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89">Performing Arts Journal</font></font></b>
<br>
<font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Johns Hopkins
University Press, January 1998</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-2">(From
Ebon Fisher's AlulA Dimension by Jennifer Dalton, p. 62)</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
has spent much of the last fifteen years breeding freefloating artistic entities
that he characterizes as neither installations, nor concept art, nor happenings,
but as "media organisms," artificial life forms cultivated in the plasma
of popular culture…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Fisher
is not as comfortable as the conceptual artists were (and are) with the restricted
space and audience of the gallery. Fisher wants his ideas to infiltrate,
pollute and alter popular culture at large. As he and other young artists
increasingly believe, "Fine arts is not culture, the culture is Walt Disney,
it's Viacom, it's MTV. If you want to be a sensitive, alert artist you have
to work in and around and between the pop culture."</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">It's
this earnest idealism that truly sets Fisher apart from most young visual
artists, many of whom are characterized by a cynicism which is near-crippling…</font></font></font></blockquote>
<blockquote><font face="Geneva"><font color="#5d6d89"><font size="-1">Rather
than smugly tearing down, Fisher's messages are solemnly building up. The
homegrown philosophy he calls "Wigglism" buoyantly circumvents deconstruction:
"Unlike art, which tends towards ruptures and dissolution, nurturing lifeforms
requires an active engagement with structure. Not the numbing structures we
often associated with the machine age, but rather, living structures, infinitely
flexible structures, wiggling structures." Such arguments are so unique and
charming…his endearing, sophisticated sincerity is terribly refreshing in
the context of all the annoying, unsophisticated irony of much contemporary
art.</font></font></font> <br>
<p><font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font
color="#29537d"><font size="+0">__________________________________________________________________</font></font></font>
</p>
<p><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="-1"><font
color="#6666ff">SCREENPLAY</font><font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay.html">NERVEPOOL'S WORLD</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><a href="screenplay_opening.html">THEME SONG</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay_episode_1.html">EPISODE </a></font><a
href="screenplay_episode_1.html">1</a><font size="-1"><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="screenplay_episode_2.html">EPISODE </a></font><a
href="screenplay_episode_2.html">2</a> <br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font size="-1"><font
color="#6666ff">EBON FISHER</font><font color="#ffffff">.</font> <a
href="Ebon_Fisher_Bio.html">BIO</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><a href="screenplay_resume.html">RESUME</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="Ebon_Fisher_People_Quotes.html">COMMENTARIES</a><font
color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font color="#ffffff">.</font><a
href="Ebon_Fisher_Media_Samples.html">PRESS</a><font color="#ffffff">.</font>|<font
color="#ffffff">.</font><font color="#6666ff">EMAIL</font><font
color="#ffffff">..</font><a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></font></font></p>
</blockquote>
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