Following is a selection from the Workbook for Reinventing Arts Studios, an unpublished manuscript by Bill Ritchie. Reading it you will follow the trail of a character named Gayrord (or Gay) as he's led with a tour group on E'Studios, the island for expertise in electronic studios and art galleries. The group's guide is Techne, one of the four sisters in Bill's story, "Women Who Fell to Earth." There are ten chapters in the workbook, one he wrote for each of the islands on the lake in Emeralda Region.

Chapter 2

E’Studios

The Great Lake of the domains of expertise is larger than we thought. It took a long time to move from our first stop, ArtsPort, to E’Studios. Our guide told us that if you look at history as a line, moving from then--the past--to the future, and we are somewhere in between, then you could say E’Studios was created before ArtsPort. Only after the discovery of recording video on tape was it possible, indeed necessary, to have the electronic communications convergence  we call ArtsPort.

Historically, not only did videotape bring about ArtsPort, but also audiotape. And before that it was movie film, with radio and TV playing their important parts, too. At long last, after many instances of converging and mixing of media, all them--including ancestral printing and photography--seemed to overlay (as in geology) sedentary stones heaved up in a massive shift in the landscape of time. ArtsPort was truly “Home Port to the Arts’ World Navigators” because all the media were represented here via remote and local access. If ArtsPort was “home”, then Electronic Studios and Art Galleries--also known as E'Studios--was the work place for the art world navigator to show his or her souvenirs and treasures from their cybernetic voyages.

From the point of view of the historian and the sociologist, one medium had succeeded the other, like one layer piled on another, as science and engineering came up with new ways to communicate over space and time. Artists had a share in the process because human creativity (for which some forms of contemporary art are best known) cuts across formal disciplines. The old dichotomy of scientists versus non scientists did not stop the creativity of visionaries. They both were like miners, driving shafts deep into the virtual cyber world's crust.

An engineer might be looking for a better way to combine metals, for example, and turn to ancient artisans’ crafts for answers to the mysteries of metallurgy. He or she might look at sculpted metals, jewelry coins, and weaponry (such as swords, armor and firearms) for new ideas. The way in which an ancient metal tool had corroded, for example, or how the glaze on a ceramic changed. These might inform someone making an analysis today, using modern technology.

At E’Studios, the residents display the current state of collaborations between human creativity and machines. To call the convergence of electronics and studios an “art gallery” would be an unfair constraint to both sides. The arts may not adequately encompass the historic meetings of man and machine, but they are in some ways more interesting for people to see, hear and touch.

Art galleries themselves are an invention, one that is rooted in convergence. Electronic Studios and Art Galleries--E’Studios’ long name --brings together the electronic information and communication tools that are associated most intimately with the science of cybernetics. When you visit E’Studios, you might find yourself brushing elbows with scientists, physicians, engineers, teachers, business people and professionals from virtually every field. Politicians and professors, too, are found here, sometimes.

“If the introductions seem a bit dull,” Techne  was saying to the group, “it is because we have been looking backward, as we tend to do when we study the marks on ancient sedentary stone or images left in caves from 30,000 years ago.” After she said this, Techne seemed to change in her manner toward us. She abruptly turned and started leading us from one area of E’Studios to another, pointing out the wonderful video art here, or the computer graphics over there and at the graphics that are framed and hanging on the walls. Gay knew that if you want to talk with her about what happened, 30,000 years ago, that started all that you see at E’Studios, she would become tense and seem to be annoyed. He’d been through that experience and it was not pretty.

But another spoke: “What’s that about 30,000 years ago?” asked a woman. Techne ignored her; it was obvious that Techne did not want to elaborate on her reference to what happened.

“What did I say?” the woman who asked me, quietly, “I think that seemed to make her angry!” I wanted to tell her E’Studios brings up issues, sometimes. A confrontation like those with unfamiliar and difficult technologies have (for example, with the convergence of art and machines) has made trouble, sometimes. We may be impressed with the displays in E’Studios, but we don’t see the pain and frustration that people experienced in making their dreams--those images--come about. But all I said to her was, “Don’t worry. You didn’t offend her. She’ll get back to you.”

The dreams work, it is true; as we can see it all around us, hear it through the headphones we are offered at some stations (in binaural recordings the effect is amazing!). Why, then, does the mention of 30,000 years of history bother our guide, Techne? Her story began, the story goes, about 300 centuries ago--as a woman falling to planet earth in a great ship along with three other women, her sisters. This one, Techne--our guide on the islands in the Great Lake of the Domains of Expertise--remembers everything. She does not enjoy being reminded of her sisters, because arguments between her and them are part of almost every technological invention that followed in her path since then, and dissent continues to follow her and plague her. Like shadows, the ghosts of new machines.

“The path, the way, the locus of beauty,” as one the way the arguments go, “is between tradition and technology, lying in the middle.” Techne always bristles at this kind of talk; for she favors the side of skills that make things real, not dreams and hopes. “Middle is not good enough. We need measurable results!” she argues. “Get with it! Give me metrics. Give me a numeric equivalent.”

The galleries at E’Studios are full of real things, it is obvious to all of us. Monitors that are attached to video cameras, computers linking people to machines, machines hooked to other machines, are examples. When they are functioning correctly, these are Techne’s joy. But this is also a place of tension because there is disagreement. If not disagreement, then bad communications. Indeed, every object we see, hear and feel (sometimes smell and taste, too) is the result of a confrontation between human beings and technical things; or, put another way, technical and non-technical people! E’Studios itself, the convergence of art and technology, is the direct result of at least 100 years of arguments, you might say, a great demonstration but whose consequential values are not yet known.

No wonder our guide, Techne, is uneasy. It is never easy to be reminded of the difficulties that she faced when trying to reconcile human emotion with technical and scientific things. She’s called by many different names, but in her own defense she says we simply don’t understand. She’s not the hatchet-woman as the traditionalists and Luddites portray her to be. She’s not against tradition. She’s for it, as long as it is balanced with progress.

As we are leaving the Electronic Galleries and Studios, and our tour is coming to a close, she repeats that history may be seen as a line moving from the past into the future, but linearity is only one way of experiencing the present. We can be certain of nothing, it seems, except that the systems in E’Studios seem to reconcile the differences that may exist between people called “artists” and others who are called “non-artists”--or “scientists” and “non-scientists”. The quality we see around us--permeating the media  arts--results from tireless, forceful leadership and assurance of a human quality, the needs and wants that make peoples’ dreams work.

Gay thought about writing a postcard:

 “Dear Media : As we were about to leave, we found ourselves standing in front of a work of art that can only be viewed on what looks like a pile of discarded junk electronics. Used as we are to modern electronic communications, it looked like something out of a used TV store or surplus shop. An old video monitor from the 1970s--an Apple II+ --one of the forerunners to the famous Macintosh--and a cumbersome audio tape deck that is twenty times the size of our new compact DAT  systems . . ..”

“What is this?” someone asked, with a slight tone of ridicule.

“This is for a work of art that began in the 1970s on systems that were, then, the latest technology,” Techne answered with a slight grin. “It is an example of what is meant by Medium-Of-Origin. MOO, as it is also called.” She took a floppy diskette --the large, soft kind--inserted it in the disk drive and turned on AC power to the Apple computer. The drive clicked and whirred, it sounded like something broken! Our ears are accustomed to new silent computer storage  systems. The screen flashed and then, gradually, as the monitor warmed, numbers and text, all in an acid, ugly green glow, appeared on the screen.

In a little while, with some deft keystrokes on the Qwerty keyboard --many of which she had to try several times to input--and more clicking and whirring of the computer disk drives , an image appeared. “There,” Techne says, “An antique work in MOO.” It is someone’s face, broken into thousands of tiny green, lighted dots all in a dead-black background.

“Can you print it?” we ask. Techne smiles. With that question, as usual, the whole point of E’Studios is made--people always wanted to try to stuff visual communication into other forms besides the one that is here at hand, in the Medium-Of-Origination .

“Yes, we can, but why would we?” She doesn’t wait for an answer; she’s so sure of herself, here among the tools that artists and non-artists have used for two generations to collect information and communicate. “That’s the point of MOO, and its the main reason we have electronic studios--E’Studios--for the convergence of re-vitalizing our images and the assurance we can repeat it.” The quality of assurance, she went on, can be achieved by staying within the Medium-Of-Origination. The integrity of the human experience--its truth to the creative process and limited by the constraints of quality assurance--is what makes E’Studios a success.

“If I made a print of what you see on the screen, it would not be MOO,” Techne explains. “Yes, I can make a print, but it would be in the medium of print making, not digital medium, as you see it here, in the way the phosphors are lighted. This is the way the art was seen by the artist who created it, in 1984. Today we can print it, but it would not be the same. We would be performing a variation--no, a derivation--on his work, and perhaps a new work of art would result, but probably not. It would not be art of MOO. Do you see what I mean?”

There is silence, as no one is inclined to pursue the subject or argue with the one who seems so self-assured and who, minutes before, seemed upset at the mention of ancient history. The quality of MOO, some of us are thinking, seems to be subjective more so than scientific. We’re getting uncomfortably close to those arguments that seem to be behind every element in E’Studios: Can tools that were designed by engineers and scientists be used by non-scientific artists, crafts people and designers? Can poets create traditional poetry on non-traditional writing systems? Can electronically controlled printers present us with was in the poet’s mind and heart, define what is human about our experience in not-so-human communications systems?

MOO, it appears, is the quality standard at E’Studios. The goal of the artist in the reinvented arts studio is to re-vitalize art that seems to have died in the rush toward technological life. Natural laws and the environment seem to suffer when technology gets too big, too complicated for human understanding and use. “Man works best when his tools are in proportion to his goals,” Techne said at one point in our visit. Medium-Of-Origin is the quality standard that is practiced at E’Studios.

Artists sometimes fulminate at the mention of “standards” in their studios, but artists who are friendly with scientists and engineers have crossed over to the world of functionality. The Great Lake of the Domains of Expertise is always being traversed by artists, crafts people and designers who understand quality assurance and standards, for it is practice, practice, practice--not creativity--that is the important thing. And practice begets production, which makes communication possible. The sum result is thick knowledge , all that every creative person--artist or not--desires.

Teaching, research and production--or practices--are what makes Domains of Expertise possible. The convergence of electronic media, arts, technology and business (for here at E’Studios we can actually buy things!)--in an art shop or gallery setting--prepare us for our next scheduled visit, which, they say, originated at a hamburger stand. “Teaching, research and production--TRP --links all the islands of convergence,” Techne said, in a tone of authority that told us the tour was over.

Techne turned off the power to the Apple II+ and the screen went dead-black again. In my mind I was mentally prepared to see a new screen replace the old one in my imagined tour of the reinvented arts studio. E’Studios is not like ArtsPort, with its high-security firewalls. Yet E’Studio must have its rules, too, as Techne briefly touched on with the fact that standards apply here, too. And the quality of practice is essential, as those artists are not “playing” with new technology here (even though they actually prefer to use the word play and not the word work). It is too expensive, she said, to call these things toys! Quality assurance , QA , is the word that keeps the atmosphere of children's’ play out of E’Studios. For better or for worse, the systems themselves represent cold, objective science, engineering and business until--only sometimes--they are turned on to represent a work of art in the Medium-Of-Origin. Then, in the best of times and places, the artist and the poet’s dreams work.