TEL-SPAN Begins Live 24/7 Broadcasting

US Department of Art & Technology
Washington, DC
http://www.usdat.us
[email protected]


Press Secretary
For Immediate Release: August 22, 2003

TEL-SPAN Begins Live 24/7 Broadcasting
www.usdat.us/tel-span/

WASHINGTON, DC - The US Department of Art & Technology has activated
TEL-SPAN Live 24/7 - the telematic channel providing global access to
the artistic process in an increasingly cybernated society. The
channel's first program is Department Works, Mixologies, and
Transformations featuring politically-infused, socially-engaged
music-videos by staff members and artist-associates of the US
Department of Art & Technology. According to Kevin Teixeira, Director
of US DAT's Office of Micro-Technology and Virtual Realities, "We
project our illusions of the world into this formless void and it
comes back to us as light and sound."

From August 22nd to October 6th, TEL-SPAN is broadcasting live from
the Digital Media Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in
conjunction with the Department's Visitor Center at the Corcoran
Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Among TEL-SPAN's first offerings is the Pharmakopolis Broadcasting
Services (PBS) of Trace Reddell (Director of the Bureau of
Pharmakogeographical Surveying), an ongoing series of animated
political cartoons, amazing dope tales, and detourned superheroics.
Other Department artists include: Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky (Under
Secretary for the Bureau of the Aesthetic Hyperculture), whose 9-11
Saturation Engine, in collaboration with "47," immerses the viewer in
hypnotic media-driven imagery in which new meanings are constructed
on top of the ruins of the media's strafing; Rick Silva (Director of
the Joint Chiefs of Sound Warfare and Peer-to-Peer Defense) has
curated Overdub: The Remix of Politics, featuring cut-up works of his
own along with artist-associates Edo, Atmo, Haik Hoisingtom, Coup,
and Tim Jaeger; Andy Deck (Under Secretary of the Bureau for the
Transformation and Radicalization of Corporate Culture and
Militarism) presents Ad Infinitum, a fast-paced visual experience
involving the collision of expression, advertising and promotion;
Alex Galloway (Under Secretary of the Bureau for Rhizomatics,
Community & Generative Data) exploits bugs and glitches in the code
to create dirty, jolting game loops in RSG-THPS4; and Patrick Lichty
(Director of the Bureau for the Dissemination of Metastructures and
Media Metaphors) puts Socks, former President Clinton's cat, in the
center of the Lewinsky sex scandal with Haymarket's Riot Machine: -
The Engines of Truth.

"Citizens of the nation and around the world have an appetite for the
kind of high quality, socially relevant, 24/7 public affairs
programming TEL-SPAN provides," said Randall M. Packer, Secretary of
the US Department of Art & Technology. "TEL-SPAN provides media
artists who seek to influence the national discourse, public policy,
the political process and the future of art a direct conduit to its
audience without filtering or otherwise constraining their points of
view."

TEL-SPAN will also deliver comprehensive, up-to-the-minute
proclamations, remixes, rants, speeches, manifestos, Department PSA's
and more, drawing on the depth and experience of artists engaged with
the US Department of Art & Technology and its Experimental Party,
including: Secretary Packer, National Chairwoman Roberta Breitmore
(created by Lynn Hershman), avatar-candidate for President Abe Golam
(from Mark Amerika's Grammatron), WeTheBlog.org founder Jeff Gates,
and Jon Henry, Chairman of the USA Exquisite Corpse. TEL-SPAN plans
to provide its audience access to live, real-time distribution of
broad forms of cultural content, and to other forums where critical
artistic issues are discussed, debated and decided - all without
editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of
all radical points of view.

The Department acknowledges Drazen Pantic and the Open Source
Streaming Alliance for providing Quicktime Streaming for TEL-SPAN
broadcasting, and Joan Freedman, Director of the JHU Digital Media
Center, and Joe Reinsel, principal software designer of TEL-SPAN, for
overseeing the live broadcast.

********

TEL-SPAN: The Telematic Channel of the US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdat.us/tel-span

Tel-SPAN is a public service of the US Department of Art &
Technology. Its mission is to provide global access to the artistic
process in an increasingly cybernated society. Tel-SPAN provides its
audience access to live, real-time distribution of broad forms of
cultural content, and to other forums where critical artistic issues
are discussed, debated and decided - all without editing, commentary
or analysis and with a balanced presentation of all radical points of
view. Tel-SPAN is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Digital
Media Center and the Open Source Streaming Alliance. The Principal
Software Designer is Joe Reinsel.


The US Department of Art & Technology
http://www.usdat.us

The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States
principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend
aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real
action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of
all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity
from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.


The Experimental Party
http://www.experimentalparty.org

The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an
artist-based political party that has been formed to activate
citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists'
message to center stage of the political process. This is a political
awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major
political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force.
The Principal Artists are Roberta Breitmore (created by Lynn
Hershman), Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Jeff Gates, Abe Golam (from Mark
Amerika's Grammatron), Jon Henry (Exquisite Corpse), Randall Packer,
and Wesley Smith.

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