What a pleasant surprise this is, mostly because, until the random number generator picked it out of my database, I would have flatly denied having ever known of the existence of this CD-ROM, let alone owning a copy. However, there it was in the draw amidst the other CD-ROMs. And the other reason it's a pleasant surprise (given that today is probably the first time I've actually 'played' it) is that it turns out to be a remarkably satisfying and interesting piece of multimedia.
But before I enjoyed it, I had to work out where I'd got it. It was made for the Balie Foundation in Amsterdam. Now I visited De Balie first in November 2000, when The Magnetic Fields played there as part of the Crossing Borders festival, but my database tells me that I got the CD-ROM on 8 July that year. Then I remembered that D and I spent a weekend in Liverpool at that time, three weeks into our relationship, and realised I must have got it in the shop of the Liverpool Tate. What a great New Beginning that time was, with the double whammy of an exciting new commitment followed a fortnight later by a life-changing gig. It was in the wake of that period that the uncontainable desire verging on pain somehow got sublimated and re-directed in a more socially acceptable direction: absorbing new music, fiction, performance and art as fast as I could. And sometimes faster, which is why I didn't get round to viewing Permanent Flux until now.
Enough about me. The CD-ROM features new lectures by the four principals, with little clips from their other work — in Laurie Anderson's case these include live pieces that I haven't heard before, and bits from her Puppet Motel CD-ROM (good enough to make me wish I'd bought it). This is all surrounded by a multimedia archive of other performance and art pieces from Dada and Futurism to the Fluxus movement from which the CD-ROM takes its title.
Laurie Anderson's talk is 25 or so minutes of her discussing alter egos, scale, narrative and ego. It might not sound that great to you, but I found it fascinating and packed with insight. Among other things she refers to her plans for what was then the forthcoming Meltdown Festival, which dates the talk to 1997. I only dipped into the other talks: at least one of them seemed to be that lifeless theoretical discourse, but one 'hit' is good enough for me.
The worrying thing about CD-ROMs like this is that they are close to being unplayable and dead media. I inserted it into my seven-month-old iMac and it told me curtly "The classic environment is no longer supported". End of story. Except that my 2003 iMac is still hanging on in the corner of my office, behind the laser printer, so I was able to play the CD-ROM on that — for now, but not for long.
Here's some stuff about Permanent Flux that Google found for me (don't let the video put you off too much, it's not all like that):
Official Launch of the CD ROM Permanent Flux - past, present and future of multimedia artDe Balie, Amsterdam,
Friday September 17, 1999In the CD-ROM Permanent Flux four multimedia insiders (Laurie Anderson, Siegfried, Paul Garrin and Frans Evers) render their perspective on past, present and future of multimedia art. A favourite and crucial episode from the history of multimedia art is the starting point for each presentation. Their lectures, originally spoken in front of a live audience, are supported by audio fragments, radio broadcasts, absolute film, technotrance clips and many other examples and highlights. The texts are accessible as linear text, but also as a semantic architecture in which a lecturer picks up a subject where the other one has left it. From the musical and theatrical innovations between 1850 and 1917 to experimental film and radio during the twenties, from Fluxus, video and synthesisers from the sixties and seventies to Laurie Anderson talking about her performances and computer art in the nineties, Permanent Flux offers a wide range of perspectives on the various explorations of multimedia artists during the last century. It shows what has remained the same and what links for example Wagners Gesamtkunstwerk to the VJ's of our days: the desire for new worlds, new ways of expression and experience. Among the examples from the history of multimedia that are presented on Permanent Flux are works by Nam June Paik, Knowbotic Research, Andrej Skriabin, Luis Bunuel, Fernand Leger, Oskar Fischinger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Dziga Vertov and Richard Wagner.
The CD-ROM Permanent Flux is, however, much more than a mere documentation of the lectures and the historical materials, presented here in image and sound. Permanent Flux is above all an investigation into the dynamics of multimedia-interfaces. The design team explored four different trajectories of how the information flow contained within the CD-ROM can be navigated.
On Friday September 17th the CD-ROM will be launched with a special public program at De Balie in Amsterdam. During the evening a series of multimedia reviews of Permanent Flux will illustrate the opinions of Jaap Drupsteen, Heiner Holtappels, Ine Poppe, Edwin van der Heide, Willem de Ridder, Willem Velthoven, and others, about this production.
Permanent Flux was made for De Balie by: Yariv AlterFin, Bastiaan Lips, Marjolijn Ruyg, Jaap Verdenius, Nirit Peled, Dave Hemminga, Alfred Rademakers, Nobby van Grinsbergen, Peter Kroon and many others.
About our protagonists:
Laurie Anderson: multimedia artist
Siegfried Zielinski: media-archaeologist and founding rector of the Academy
for Media Art in Cologne
Paul Garrin: media artist & activist, and former assistant of Nam June Paik
Frans Evers: professor at the Royal Music Academy in The HaguePermanent Flux, past, present and future of multimedia art
Laurie Anderson, Siegfried Zielinski , Paul Garrin , Frans Evers
ISBN 90 6617 220 7
NUGI 912
Cd-rom (Mac & Windows)
Price: DFL 39,95
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