'Opportunum Digitalis Electronicus'

• During 1972 I returned briefly to Europe after a three year period of travel which had finally landed me in Australia. Whilst in England I called to have tea with an old neighbour Mr. Webb, a gentle quietly spoken man who had long since retired.
• We spoke of change and things new. I answered questions about Australia, the new land of opportunities - a 'virtual' country far in distance and generally unimaginable to most Europeans.
• As my visit drew to a close, he asked me a salient question.
• Could I explain electricity?
• He admitted to having no comprehension of what it was or how it worked.
• The context of the matter was that Mr. Webb had by profession been a steam locomotive driver with British Rail. His retirement had coincided with the full electrification of the railway system in England and the final de-commissioning of those fire eating, steam breathing giants.
• I can only say that my attempt to explain this phenomenon was totally inadequate.
• How does one explain electricity to a retired steam engine driver?
• Drastic changes in modes of 'transportation', be it vehicular or communicative cause temporary ruptures in society. A selective 'we' of contemporary western society are evidencing the continuing battles between encumbered linear 'analog' structured mechanisms and the newer non-linear electronic 'digital' variety. A new dictionary of structured 'Super-words' have set the scene for change and our prime minister has now made the acceptance speech.
• As this new 'communications' revolution begins, we in the arts have a moral responsibility to 'stay' with the pace. We need to update our 'thinking' and 'doing' if we are to have any voice in the shaping of this parallel 'electronic virtual world'.
• Major disciplines in the visual arts have reached crisis point. Their effectiveness in a future dominated by electronic communication and virtual space can only be meaningful if this revolution is seen as an opportunity rather than an annoyance.
• Least troubled would seem to be Sculpture, a space based activity in the first place. Most troubled - are those painters who having worked from a position of superiority are struggling within the fabric of a self imposed vulnerability. Best positioned to take full advantage are those artists who have used printmaking, text or video as their major communication tool. The electronic arts sit ideologically close to the tradition of artists' multiples which have always been accessible through a wide network of parallel processing and distribution methods. A limited edition of thirty prints could for example be exhibited in thirty different world wide venues simultaneously.
• The very nature of the work allows this to be so. A topographical plan of such an event would closely resemble a model of the current satellite world wide 'Internet' communications system where individual contributions echo an interactive, sharing ideology where 'simultaneity' is the operative word.
• My own ideology within the structure of a contemporary arts practice is distinctly linked to a sort of global 'non fascist futurism' into which art can expand. My choice for the most efficient future mediums are the 'Internet' system itself and CDRom disks. Imagine being able to situate exhibitions complete with all necessary information on the world wide network or on a small CDRom disk. Accessibility by the way, is and always will be a problem, but then visitors to an art gallery have never been a perfect reflection of society anyway.
• I am sure that I am not the only artist with drawers full of editioned but as yet unsold prints. In my case printing large editions is really a waste of time, energy and materials.
• My images are today stored electronically and hardcopy printing is on a need to print basis via colour inkjet, postscript or laser printer. My work will soon be placed on the Internet and it will be available for electronic viewing complete with background information to anyone interested in doing so via 'MOSAIC' interface. MOSAIC is a freely available modifiable software package which can sit at all ends of the network. It acts as a host and guest translator processing incoming and outgoing graphics, audio, compressed video, animation, text, and a variety of interactive structures across the world from computer to computer in real time.
• I am at this stage not overly worried about possible copyright infringement (anyone with a computer and modem will be able to download my images and print them out). The worldwide shareware attitude introduced in the seventies by generous software authors has proved that it is better to be seen and used by many than ignored by a few. Remote accessing of artists' work can only assist in bringing the work to a wider audience and in the case of Australian artists that has to be a good thing.
• It is the emphasis on successful and transparent communication techniques that will eventually allow many artists and others to fully appreciate what they may find so difficult to appreciate today and that is Art need not be tactile, or object based, or physically present.
• The act of 'Arting' - The 'Articity' of, during or about Art need not be bound to a myopic tradition.
• The next significant art movement will project itself in a non-traditional, non linear form and will emerge from a 'new generation' of opportunities offered to arts practitioners through electronic transmission and interaction. New generations of Art Galleries will also exist electronically. Artists will navigate through a sort of MOSAIC interface in virtual space and as virtual reality comes of age, polysensoral art experiences will be common place. The exhibiting, marketing and curating of artworks will by necessity have to comply with drastic changes in modes of delivery.
• Large flat LCD screens will frame future art works until direct mindspace delivery can be established. Leased works will self destruct if not paid out on time and a new breed of artists will invade the CD territory traditionally occupied by 'pop stars'.
• The very first multi-media CDRom offerings by Peter Gabriel and David Bowie published in 1994 already point the way to new audience/user experiential possibilities. The interaction allows for direct user manipulation of music and video mixing. No longer just a witness to sixty minutes of linear activity the user is now able to become co-author in a further creative processes.
• 'He was a man to whom memories were an in-cumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His out-look upon time was as a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word for circum-spection, was foreign to Troy. With him the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.'

• (Extract from FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD by Thomas Hardy, 1874. From the Penguin edition, 1978) Douglas Sheerer 1994
• This short paper was published in IMPRINT Vol.29 No.4 Summer 1994 together with two images produced via computer interface. Douglas Sheerer is a Lecturer in Printmaking/Interactive Computer Image Processing at the School of Art, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. He is currently engaged in PhD research and is a Co-Director of Galerie Dusseldorf Perth.