... on display in New York!

ALI's webcam (http://walkin.albury.net.au) has been chosen as one of 20 web camera sites around the world to participate in an "art piece that Dia Center for the Arts" (548 West 22nd Street, NYC) "is commissioning from artists Elizabeth Diller and Richard Scofidio for Dia's website at http://www.diacenter.org."

The work, titled "Refresh", involves taking a still picture from each web cam - taken at a time when there was "no one in the picture, so as not to implicate any actual persons". Artists Diller and Scofidio will then subtly alter the picture in some way, and add a fictional narrative, with a window linked to the live webcam.

"Diller and Scofidio have chosen to playfully examine the effects of live video technologies on everyday life. All the sites selected for the project are office environments with multiple workstations. A few waiting rooms, kitchen areas, and water cooler areas are added to the mix. The web cams are distributed around the U.S, Europe and Asia."

ALI considers this an intriguing and exciting opportunity to be involved in an emerging Web distributed art movement. It is another example of how the 'net is reaching out to all fields and walks of life.

"Refresh" is expected to be launched late August, and to run for a year.

The Dia Center for the Arts is based in New York City. Their web site can be found at http://www.diacenter.org

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The Wrinkle in Time take 2
by Kathy Wheeler

On the Friday morning of the 20th of March, I stood on the receding shoreline of Lake Hume, tripod and camera at the ready, waiting for an approaching wave. Not a wave composed of water, but a global photographic wave that started in the Pacific, some dubbed it a "tsunami", and spread around the world in 24 hours. At 11am photographers local time on the 20th March photographers local date over 100 participants shot 360 degree panoramas depicting in one way or another the beauty and power of Mother Earth.

Then we lined up to do it again, twice! But this time it was for two global synchronous shoots. At two pre-arranged times, at the same instant all over the world, more than 100 photographers clicked and spun their cameras through 360 degrees again and again. For us on the eastern side of Australia the sync shoots worked out as 9am and 6pm, Saturday 21st March.

This extraordinary event was conceived, planned and implemented entirely on the Internet. Coordinated through email (mailing lists) and a support web site hosted by the Wrinklemeister himself, coordinator Mr Robert Abbett, of Hawaii. It is a follow-up to the successful first Wrinkle in Time - spontaneously suggested, shot and published on the web in December last year.

Once our Wrinkle 2 shoots had been completed, we had the task ahead of us to complete our panoramas, write our stories, edit our sound tracks and ftp them to the coordinating site in Hawaii. Then, over the next few weeks, the entire site was put together ready for launch on the 20th of April - "Earth Day" - and we made it!!

The Wrinkle in Time (2) site can be found at http://www.wrinkle2.lava.net with mirror sites in the US (mainland) and Europe. It is a multimedia showcase of 360 degree panoramas and their associated descriptions and sound tracks from over 100 participants from all over the world.

Australia has a fairly good representation, with 6 panographers (panorama photographers) including yours truly.

Part of the magic of the event was the camaraderie of the participants, and the stories and experiences that flooded into the Wrinkle Producers mailing list throughout the shoots as panographer after panographer reported back in. Tales from the lava tubes in Kalaoa, Hawaii; stories from the deserted night woods near a village in Europe; mudslides in Canada; a treetop walk from Western Australia and on and on around the world.

With the web site and mirrors on-line, CD production is now underway. And with the dust barely settled on Wrinkle 2, there is now talk of Wrinkle 3. Ideas are still being exchanged, but there has been a suggestion to encourage school participation, a new generation of "spinners". Any regional school that would like to find out more is encouraged to visit the Wrinkle 2 Web Site, and invited to contact ALI's editor editor@albury.net.au.