The Songlines

We discover the Blue Lola collapsed in her laboratory, slain by a computer virus. The mystery of her reclusive life unravels as we take an intimate journey into the dark side of her soul as revealed in her dreams. We view a recording of her last dream as found on her memoriyer, a device she pioneered as a method of recording her dreams and downloading them to the computer. With these digitized dreams, the Blue Lola has created a revolutionary new art form The Blue Lola PETER KLUEGER that allows her to interact with the outside world as well as relive her most vivid fanDi @al Kdeo 7990 tasies. In dreams, there are no borders or limitations;there is no right or wrong, and no censorship. Lola’s dreams reflect the relationship between the subconscious mind and the world behind the monitor. The format Lola uses is QuickEmeDmam, and as with QuickTime VR,there are still bugs to be worked out. Imperfections are glaringly revealed skipped frames, dropped data, and glitches. Lola’s dream art is published on the “Hello World” net, an intravenous entertainment system that is linked directly into the physical system of the consumer. To dramatize the feeling of digital dreaming, the video of T h eBlue Lo& is produced entirely w i t h i n the digital domain, using the dreamlike elements of cut-andpaste , inversions, and loops. As an allegory of the broken promises of high-tech hype, The Blue LQ&represents the inability of technology to fulfill our deepest and most personal needs. C.G. Jung believed that modern man has lost his soul and must discover his own mythology, rituals, dreams, and individual fantasies in order to regain it. Clearly, nothing can replace the individual’s need to invent his own inner reality. The Songlines ANNA THOMAS World Wde Web The Songknees is about a journey, about the fascination and discovery of personal expression. Like most computer art, it stands in opposition to the traditional idea of art as complete and iconic. Art of the computer can be reproduced; it is sometimes interactive, and in this form it usually presents multiple possibilities at the viewer’s discretion. When I say computer art, I include computer literature and narrative. These narratives have no center, hierarchy, linearity, or conclusion, but rather a matrix of nodes and links. 7994 The World Wide Web is a perfect example of this model: Life on the Web is an almost endless journey that conveys you to Paris in an instant or directly back to New York. The virtual space that we travel is mapped by a web of lines. Yet the ancient Australian aboriginal people had already mapped their continent, creating a virtual web of their stories of creation and existence, similar in structure to the World Wide Web. Has our civilization finally attained their level of thinhng? Has technology brought us to this point? In irhe Songknes, I explore the unique structure of the World Wide Web. The experience of juxtaposing narratives from another culture and time to the present, mapping them onto a different terrain, led me to better understand both the medium of the Web and its impact on computer art. I see the Web as a unifying form where differences meet and paths cross. A virtual space to discover other cultures and enrich our own. A space where we put up our own h e s of self-expression and art, creating worlds and land forms for other travelers to dtscover. Just as the Australian continent became a canvas for the aboriginal people, the Web is a canvas for our own culture. Digital Salon, Artists’ Statements 4 11 ...