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>  _____________________________________________________________________
>  CTHEORY          THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE       VOL 26, NO 3
>         *** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***
>
>  Article 131     03/09/09     Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
>  Speaking in Djinni:
>  Media Arts and the Computational Language of Expression
>  ==========================================================
>
>
>  ~D. Fox Harrell~
>
>
>
>  I. Introduction -- Speaking in Code
>
>  In the Djinni's lair they speak in code. Their Djinnish language
>  does not reflect a subservient nature as they announce "your wish is
>  my command." They have mastery over elements of our mortal realm,
>  their words cause events to occur. What people hear in their words
>  is their imperative language translated into our human tongues. They
>  speak in commands, power words with concrete effects. "Open sesame"
>  opens doors, a wish becomes tangible possibility. Humans translate
>  thoughts into operations using computational media. The languages
>  humans use to express these commands affect what they produce using
>  these media. The process of translating from ideas into imperatives
>  has profound consequences. Aladdin's tale narrates one example of
>  this process, the tale here tells another.
>
>  Computational media reflect the previous generation of media. They
>  also offer new characteristics unseen in earlier technological media.
>  What are these new characteristics and how can they be examined?
>  There are many varieties of computational media and it is quite
>  difficult to isolate a particular subset to begin investigation.
>  However, the tools used to present and create media art lie behind
>  every media artwork. The theory of programming languages is a useful
>  means by which to characterize these media. Formal languages offer
>  broad insight into the nature of computational manipulation and
>  specific organizational structures of imperative languages reveal
>  reflections of these structures in media software. This is a natural
>  reflection because the theory of languages expresses organized models
>  for executing algorithms and structuring data, which are the types of
>  manipulations human creators perform on media when treating it as
>  computational data. Finally, this is a means to characterize only
>  formal aspects of media manipulation, not the semantic. The ideas
>  here are not presented in a technological determinist vein -- stating
>  that it is programming language theory that caused this restructuring
>  of media. The influences of media and culture upon each other are
>  mutually dependent.  This will be shown by reviewing examples of
>  these concepts of formal manipulation from both art and computing.
>  The reflection of programming languages in computational media should
>  be no surprise, and using the tools of programming language theory to
>  consider such media provides illuminating insight.
>
>
>  II. Interfaces Influence Art
>
>  I sit now in an accursed palace, corrupted by the literal and
>  malicious nature of a Djinn. I am a humble man, made from earth as
>  we all are. Still, that the language of the Djinni, of those beings
>  composed of fire, should be so malevolent, is a fact that I shall
>  always lament. When he emerged from the lamp and acknowledged my
>  three wishes, when I wished for the fulfillment of my artistic vision
>  as a lavish palace of lacquered coral and gold, alas I did not
>  realize the venom dripping from fate's bite. Had I been a stonemason
>  and crafted this castle with my own two hands the ceilings would not
>  be so low that my back scrapes them as I shuffle, bent over, to my
>  throne. Had I been a carpenter my satin canopied bed would not be so
>  splintery that it takes thirty minutes for me to slip safely from it
>  at dawn. Had I been a master of the olfactory arts of oil crafting
>  and perfumery I would have been able to banish the aroma of sulfur
>  and replace it with myrrh laden zephyrs wafting through every
>  corridor. Alas, the tool I used was a contractually obligated, but
>  ungrateful and rancorous, Djinn. The words "make for me a lavish
>  palace" were made reality by the Djinn's language and all that I had
>  left unspecified was decorated by his cruel tastes. My consolation
>  is that my request was not spoken: "make me a lavish palace" (as the
>  colloquial version would have been worded) lest instead I would now
>  be the inhabited abomination rather than be inside of it!
>
>
>  Artistic works are related to the tools used to create them. The
>  mark of the tool is apparent, whether the work has an explicit
>  relationship to the tools as in tromp l'oeil painting which reveals
>  it effect only when the mark of the tool becomes recognized and the
>  illusion is broken, photography which in the past has been presented
>  by news media as a transparent tool that represented a window to
>  reality--an aura which continues now despite its double nature now as
>  a purveyor of false images, or Nam Jun Paik's cyborg materials to
>  evoke his "cybernated" art concept.[1] This paper considers
>  primarily screen based media artwork generated on a personal
>  computer. Typically these works are created using commercial
>  software such as Macromedia Director, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe
>  Premiere, etc. Of course some minority of artists also create their
>  own computational tools. Regardless, even these artists are
>  influenced by the medium of their art and it is important to
>  understand what this influence is when engaging their work.
>
>  A starting point in this examination is the recognition of the role
>  of the interface as being intimately tied to content. Douglas
>  Englebart was one of the early innovators of the contemporary
>  computer interface.[2] He designed a networked environment designed
>  to support collaborative interaction between people using
>  computers.[3] Englebart is known as the inventor of the mouse,
>  windows, email, and the word processor. In his times even the idea
>  of a computer as a monitor connected to a console with an input
>  device such as a keyboard was novel. It transformed the relationship
>  between people and computers in the fifties and sixties. Englebart
>  proposed "a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches,
>  cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human "feel for a situation"
>  usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology
>  and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic
>  aids." Echoes of the contemporary computer interface reverberate
>  from his speculative way of life. When describing a tool that an
>  architect could use to describe a working list of specifications and
>  considerations he wrote: "the lists grow into an ever-more detailed,
>  interlinked structure, which represents the maturing thought behind
>  the actual design."
>
>  Englebart describes the language of his augmentation medium as "the
>  way in which the individual parcels out the picture of his world into
>  concepts that his mind uses to model the world, and the symbols that
>  he attaches to those concepts and uses in consciously manipulating
>  the concepts ("thinking")." Process hierarchies represent the
>  hierarchical approach that humans use to solve problem. He viewed
>  symbol structuring as a crucial part of language, a new means by
>  which people could "begin experimenting with compatible sets of
>  structure forms and processes for human concepts, human symbols, and
>  machine symbols." The cumbersome acronym H-LAM/T (Human using
>  Language, Artifacts, Methodology, in which he is Trained) reveals the
>  connection between human work and machine symbols underlying
>  Englebart's work. The primacy of language as a structuring device is
>  apparent and the key idea of associating concepts and names within a
>  hierarchical structure is a main theme.
>
>  Another example of the connection between the conception of media
>  production and the user interface is apparent in the work of Alan
>  Kay.[4] He invented the object-oriented language "Smalltalk" and
>  many innovative features used in contemporary interfaces. Kay's
>  slogan is "Doing with Images makes Symbols." In this case, he
>  associates the symbolic with the imperative object oriented
>  programming language Smalltalk (the mouse is associated with "doing,"
>  and "images" are associated with icons and windows). Object oriented
>  programming means that objects know what they can do. In this model
>  it is possible to select an object and send it a message asking it to
>  fulfill the user's desires. The paintbrush knows what colors it is
>  allowed to paint with, all the user has to do is tell it to use one.
>  The concept of the symbolic is what allows manipulation of objects in
>  this way. Kay describes the symbolic as that which enables humans to
>  tie together long chains of reasoning. In this regard, the reasoning
>  process of the user of the interface is expected to correspond to
>  this symbolic model embodied in the programming language paradigm.
>
>  Working in a realm defined by what the program and its programmer see
>  as the user's mode of working influences the method by which the user
>  engages those using the tools. The user of a computational interface
>  can then ask "where lie romantic notions of art process?" "What of
>  inspiration and random or spontaneous methods?" "What of
>  non-hierarchical thinking and procedure?" Certainly conventions of
>  artistic production have not disappeared in media production
>  software, in fact artistic paradigms have been as hard-coded into
>  these tools as programming conventions. Adobe Premiere does not
>  force users to think in terms of frames and transitions that are
>  inherited from conventions of cinema or constraints imposed by
>  hardware in older media technology (such as frames and linear time
>  progression). Despite the fact that the influence of artistic
>  production and technology is a two-way street it is useful to examine
>  the direct influence of software upon artistic production. To
>  understand the assumptions made by user interface designers it is
>  informative to look at programming language theory. Then it is
>  possible to step back and look at how software such as Photoshop or
>  QuickTime leave their marks upon media production.[5]
>
>
>  III. Formal and Programming Languages
>
>  I do not wish to credit myself too greatly. I was a humble
>  fisherman, and a dabbler in algebra and alchemy, before my discovery
>  of the lamp. My knowledge of fish far exceeds my knowledge of
>  unearthly creatures. Still I cautiously praise myself that, in my
>  elaborate, if cramped, gardens I planned my next wish for months. I
>  crafted my language perfectly. I would be completely literal and
>  unambiguous in my next request for the Djinn. I invented a language.
>  It would specify first the number of requests and subservient wishes
>  embedded within my one wish. It was not an attempt to greedily
>  exceed the bound of two more wishes. My desire was only enough
>  precision so that I would not be thwarted and cursed once again
>  rather than finally granted boon. This language would translate my
>  clay human tongue to the language of spirits. My plan had grace and
>  elegance, it put my knowledge of the algebra to its greatest test.
>  In the end, I succeeded at that! Why then, reader, do you detect the
>  disconsolate tone in these words. Because as I prepared to say my
>  formal, refined, and completely specified wish for a bride that would
>  inspire clouds to gather and disperse, waves to roll more quickly,
>  and my heart to infinite joy -- I realized that in uttered word my
>  wish would take me four thousand and ninety six days to pronounce.
>
>  A formal language is defined as a set of finite strings, each made up
>  of atomic symbols.[6] Formal languages can be denoted by a
>  mathematical structure called a grammar. The main form in a grammar
>  is a "production" which describes a rule by which one string in a
>  language can produce another. Languages are classified according to
>  the types of productions allowed in them, and this is one way of
>  characterizing the power of a language. A very simple type of
>  grammar is defined by regular expressions. Regular expressions allow
>  for composition of strings in a few very particular ways. These are:
>  alternation, concatenation, and closure. To make an analogy with
>  natural language: alternation means choosing one expression from two
>  lists of expressions in English, composition means joining two
>  expressions together to form one, and closure means describing
>  expressions in part (e.g. looking at only expressions that contain
>  the phrase "media art.")
>
>  More complicated formal language systems allow naming of separate
>  parts of language and specifying the ways in which they are put
>  together. This is analogous to describing the English language in
>  terms of paragraphs, words, or letters. It is possible to describe
>  rules for how these pieces fit together. More powerful formal
>  language systems allow use of these rules to describe the function
>  of the language and actually make deductions using the language.
>  These types of languages are an abstract way to categorize
>  programming languages.[7] Taking a step back reveals that the
>  methods of composition used in formal languages are mathematical
>  descriptions of some processes humans use to think and create
>  artifacts. Making film consists of concatenation of frames or clips
>  onto one another. Editing music uses the principle of alternation as
>  clips are spliced together from different sources. Compositional
>  elements are often labeled to aid in the process of recombination.
>  Rules are defined for how these elements should be recombined --
>  personal rules, rules of convention, and physical rules limited by
>  the physical means by which the media may be assembled.
>
>  In computational media these rules can be automated and implemented
>  algorithmically. Moreover, it is possible to force compliance to a
>  particular set of rules to assure that a particular organizational
>  strategy is followed. It is possible to concatenate two film clips
>  using any of a variety of dissolves or wipes. One may pick images to
>  insert in word processing documents as easily as one can cut and
>  paste words from a variety of different sources. One can label these
>  individual segments, paste them in layers over one another, perform
>  searches through them, or substitute one element for another using
>  convenient thesaurus features. Formal languages provide a concrete
>  way to talk about these processes that people engage in with texts.
>  One can go further, however, and look at some of the constructs of
>  modern imperative programming languages. Nearly all commercial
>  software is constructed with these languages and the structure of the
>  languages is directly reflected in the structuring of the software.
>
>  Programming languages are designed to fit very particular criteria.
>  A good language is designed for: abstraction, orthogonality (features
>  should be free from unexpected interaction), simplicity, regularity,
>  consistency, and ease of translation.[8] Not every language fits
>  these criteria, but as abstract goals it can be seen that these
>  features also carry through to software interfaces. The goals of
>  regularity and consistency are evident in the means for cutting and
>  pasting provided in many user-interfaces. The method of selecting
>  "cut" from a menu is the same as the means for selecting "paste."
>  This may seem obvious, but another choice could have been to make the
>  means of cutting analogous to the real world of cutting and the means
>  of pasting analogous to the real world experience of pasting
>  resulting in different modes of interaction. Instead, however, the
>  mindset associated with the design of traditional interfaces has been
>  influenced by the design of programming languages since the early
>  days of Douglas Englebart's research in the fifties. Hierarchical
>  organization and categorization within lists of information are often
>  the underlying means by which media production software is forced to
>  structure artistic information. Despite the presence of a "cut"
>  command, there is no easy analogy using commercial software to the
>  cutting of a text into pieces, tossing those pieces into a shoebox,
>  and recombining them at random. There is no organizational feature
>  in Adobe Photoshop analogous to dumping a pile of photos onto the
>  floor and running ones hands through them until s/he finds the one
>  that "calls out to her/him." There are no commands to force a font
>  to forgo its natural irregularity and take on an expressionist
>  texturing or to become blurred by teardrops such as is possible when
>  writing a handwritten letter.
>
>  It seems unreasonable to expect such individualized features to be
>  available when working with computational media, yet it is far from
>  unreasonable to acknowledge that artists, scientists, and casual
>  creators of media work in extremely diverse and personalized ways.
>  It is far easier to achieve a lack of orthogonality when working in
>  paint (mixing in strange fluids to create unexpected interactions)
>  than it is in commercial software. It takes an extraordinary amount
>  of effort to create one's own software production tools that do not
>  enforce the features of a programming language. The argument being
>  made here is that these features of formal and programming languages
>  are not unique to technological media, but their enforcement and
>  implementation are. The restrictions imposed by these features and
>  the power of structuring information and media in complex patterns
>  and manipulating it algorithmically are not easily separable from the
>  creation of computational media or the experience of being an
>  audience of it.
>
>
>  IV. Characteristics of Programming Languages
>
>  I was happy for a time, I had forsaken my wish for a bride and was
>  married instead by love, providence, and whatever fortunate design
>  allowed my simple person to appeal to my mate. My second wish was
>  for a ring fit for her desires, and somehow divine predestination
>  allowed this simple request to be fulfilled. My final wish, I
>  concluded, would be grand. A wish for love, a wish for our future, a
>  wish for forever, a wish that would make each day as fresh as sipping
>  from a chalice brimmed with morning dew, fresh as new moments after a
>  rainshower. So I toil still, to make my perfect language more
>  concise, to let it be spoken naturally. I must let it be composed as
>  neatly as a fern's leaves, but it must be as infinitely expressive as
>  the conch's spiral. It must signify wonderfully like Mowlana
>  Jalaluddin Rumi's poems.[9] It must embody the clear thought of Abu
>  Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi's mathematics.[10] In these
>  words I realize that it is not the task of one man to create this
>  language. I do not pretend to be the superior of these thinkers and
>  feelers that loom across time. I am in their shadows. With the
>  diligence of women and men across many times, throughout many lands,
>  and with the proper blessings, I hope one day my dreamed language
>  will be expressed. Until then, I reserve my love-inspired wish and
>  ponder more the structure underlying the speech of the beings made of
>  fire whose words cause action and reshape our earthbound experience
>  of this world.
>
>  Following this account of programming languages and their appearance
>  within media creation tools it is possible isolate other relevant
>  characteristics of programming languages. Important characteristics
>  include: reference, control, abstract data structures, block
>  structure, and polymorphism. There are direct connections between
>  each of these concepts and computational manipulation of media.
>
>  Reference is the idea that informational elements and their names are
>  separable within a computer. Naming systems can be introduced to
>  describe a text in some media and fluidly change names and content
>  independently. In a trivial example, sections of a story can be
>  labeled as: "beginning", "middle", "climax", and "ending. " Then it
>  is possible to swap out the information labeled "climax" with revised
>  information, thus retaining the story structure. This example is
>  simplified but not far-fetched. Professional graphic designers use
>  such features in software regularly, as do professional sound
>  technicians.
>
>  Control means that it is possible to structure the flow of
>  information in a system. An example of a control structure in a
>  programming language is a loop. In both music and video processing
>  software artists can create explicit media loops. In a great deal of
>  modern popularized music computational media are used to create drum
>  loops as a basic unit of music composition. The video and
>  installation artist Bill Viola is vitally aware of this as he states
>  that "viewing becomes exploring a territory, traveling through data
>  space."[11] Control structures represent the means used to shape
>  these paths through media data space. Bill Viola continues his
>  description of computational media manipulation asserting that
>  "editing will become the writing of a software program that will
>  tell the computer how to arrange (i.e., shot order, cuts, dissolves,
>  wipes, etc.)"
>
>  Abstract data structures are the means by which data spaces are
>  organized. Lists and arrays of information are basic compound data
>  types, but one can combine base data types in any variety of abstract
>  ways to represent current needs. Circles become numbers: integer
>  coordinates for the center point and a floating point radius, dates
>  become several fields of integers. Basic programming structures
>  became revolutionary structures when introduced explicitly to media
>  art. This can be seen in work such as Luc Courchesne's "Family
>  Portrait" which uses laserdiscs indexed by HyperCard stacks to allow
>  users to respond to questions asked by members of a family to create
>  startling sensitive interactions. When describing ways to construct
>  video artwork, Bill Viola refers to "visual diagrams of data
>  structures already being used to describe the patterns of information
>  on the computer video disc." The medium of a videodisc can be seen
>  as merely a digital update of former videotape media, but when looked
>  at for the actual way in which the information is structured a quite
>  distinct nature is revealed. The structure of the computer
>  programming language has been used to restructure the information of
>  video data. Data types such as matrices, linked lists, and records
>  have become the status quo for the organization of media in digital
>  formats.
>
>  Block structuring allows for hierarchical organization of computer
>  programs. It also allows each block level to be manipulated
>  separately. This structuring is pervasive throughout media
>  production software. Text can change font or color at the letter
>  level, word level, sentence level, paragraph level, page level, or
>  document level with precision and ease. Photographs can change
>  onionskin layer at a time, affecting lower levels but not higher
>  levels. These levels are nested into hierarchies with ease and can
>  be imported into other such hierarchies at will. Whereas the nature
>  of a photographic manipulation could be seen as based in continuous
>  fluid and light when done using traditional darkroom techniques,
>  professionals using media software often work using block structures.
>  The software is structured in such a way as to discourage and
>  inhibit other methods of use.
>
>  Polymorphism is the idea that data or functionality can change
>  depending upon its context. The extension of this idea is that
>  structures for manipulating one data type can manipulate data of
>  another type. It is possible to use a jpeg image just as easily
>  within a word processing document as it is to composite the image in
>  a photographic document. The data here is not actually polymorphic,
>  but the concept of using the data in such a variety of settings is.
>  Cutting and pasting a graph is done using the same mechanism as
>  cutting and pasting a paragraph. The same "play" button on a
>  Quicktime player starts playing an audio file the same way as it
>  starts a video file. This software exhibits the traits of
>  polymorphism. This type of media fluidity, unknown in previous
>  media, is becoming an expected trait of the experience of
>  computational media.
>
>  It is certainly possible to look at various models of programming
>  languages in order to elicit more parallels in computational media.
>  Those listed here represent some of the most important
>  characteristics of computational media that are often enforced by
>  software. The idea behind such programming languages extended far
>  beyond computer science and in some sense are general concepts to
>  organize information. The concentration of all of these modes of
>  operation and ways of thinking, their rigorous enforcement by a
>  machine, and the compliance of media artists to their tough
>  strictures (by default of the tools they work with) is something new.
>
>
>  IV. Conclusion
>
>  The havoc unleashed by Djinni's granting ill-considered wishes by
>  humans reveals the Djinni's lack of concern for the environment in
>  which s/he is operating. The considerate Djinn probably could
>  understand that the human languages cannot properly express wish
>  fulfilling words. Likewise, humans should realize that computational
>  languages have effects upon what we create using them. This essay is
>  meant to use accounts from theory programming languages to reveal a
>  glimpse into the computational medium and the ways in which a
>  meta-medium is not a consolidation of previous media but has its own
>  recognizable traits and languages. No creation by any artist can
>  escape this chain and transcend the nature of its medium in a
>  material sense. The expressive, analytical, evocative, or otherwise
>  subjective interpretation or intent of the work can certainly
>  transcend the computer, but in a concrete material sense the mark of
>  the programming language as a primary characteristic of computational
>  media is always evident.
>
>
>
>  Notes:
>  ------
>
>  [1] Nam June Paik. "Cybernated Art," Manifestos, originally published
>  in _Great Bear Pamphlets_ (New York: Something Else Press, 1966).
>  Reprinted in _Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A
>  Sourcebook of Artist's Writings_, Berkeley, CA: University of
>  California Press, 1996) and _Multimedia: from Wagner to virtual
>  reality_, edited by Randall Packer & Ken Jordan, New York: W.W.
>  Norton and & Company, Inc., 2001. p. 39-43.
>
>  [2] Douglas Englebart. "Augmenting Human Intellect," originally
>  published in "The Augmentation Papers", Bootstrap Institute, 1962.
>  Reprinted in _Multimedia: from Wagner to virtual reality_, edited by
>  Randall Packer & Ken Jordan, New York: W.W. Norton and & Company,
>  Inc., 2001. p. 64-90.
>
>  [3] ONLine System (NLS). developed at the Augmentation Research
>  Center of the Stanford Research Institute and unveiled in 1968.
>
>  [4] Alan Kay. "User Interface: A Personal View," _The Art of
>  Human-Computer Interface Design_, edited by Brenda Laurel (Reading,
>  MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1989. Reprinted in
>  _Multimedia: from Wagner to virtual reality_, edited by Randall
>  Packer & Ken Jordan, New York: W.W. Norton and & Company, Inc.,
>  2001. p.121-31.
>
>  [5] Lev Manovich. _The Language of New Media_, Cambridge, MA: The MIT
>  Press, 2001. p. 140-41.
>
>  [6] Noam Chomsky. _Syntactic Structures_, The Hague: Mouton, 1957.
>
>  [7] Ryan Stansifer. _The Study of Programming Languages_. Upper
>  Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. 1995. Chapter 2.
>
>  [8] Ibid. p. 5.
>
>  [9] Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi is recognized internationally as one of
>  the world's great literary figures.
>
>  [10] Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi is generally
>  recognized as the "father of algebra."
>
>  [11] Bill Viola. "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space,"
>  originally published in _Video 80_, no. 5 (Fall 1982). Reprinted in
>  _Multimedia: from Wagner to virtual reality_, edited by Randall
>  Packer & Ken Jordan, New York: W.W. Norton and & Company, Inc.,
>  2001. p. 287-98.
>
>
>  --------------------
>
>  Fox Harrell is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the
>  University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on
>  developing new improvisational narrative forms. He earned an M.P.S.
>  in Interactive Telecommunications at New York University's Tisch
>  School of the Arts, and both a B.F.A. in Art and a B.S. in Logic and
>  Computation at Carnegie Mellon University. He has worked as a game
>  designer and animation producer in New York City. He recently
>  completed his first novel, "Milk Pudding Flavored with Rose Water,
>  Blood Pudding Flavored by the Sea."
>
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>  * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology and
>  *   culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews in
>  *   contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as
>  *   theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape.
>  *
>  * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
>  *
>  * Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Paul Virilio (Paris),
>  *   Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San Francisco), Siegfried
>  *   Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard Kadrey (San
>  *   Francisco), DJ Spooky [Paul D. Miller] (NYC), Timothy Murray
>  *   (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson (San Francisco), Stephen
>  *   Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross (NYC), David Cook (Toronto), Ralph
>  *   Melcher (Sante Fe), Shannon Bell (Toronto), Gad Horowitz
>  *   (Toronto), Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein
>  *   (Chicago), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough).
>  *
>  * In Memory: Kathy Acker
>  *
>  * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK),
>  *   Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Canada/Sweden).
>  *
>  * Editorial Assistant: Ted Hiebert
>  * WWW Design & Technical Advisor: Spencer Saunders (CTHEORY.NET)
>  * WWW Engineer Emeritus: Carl Steadman
>
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>                 To view CTHEORY online please visit:
>                       http://www.ctheory.net/
>
>             To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
>                  http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
>
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>  * CTHEORY includes:
>  *
>  * 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory.
>  *
>  * 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture.
>  *
>  * 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape.
>  *
>  * 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers.
>  *
>  * 5. Multimedia theme issues and projects.
>  *
>  *
>  * The Editors would like the thank the University of Victoria for
>  *   financial and intellectual support of CTheory.  In particular,
>  *   the Editors would like to thank the Dean of Social Sciences,
>  *   Dr. John Schofield and the Dean of Engineering, Dr. D. Michael
>  *   Miller.
>  *
>  * No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
>  *
>  * Mailing address: CTHEORY, University of Victoria, PO Box 3050,
>  *   Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W 3P5.
>  *
>  * Full text and microform versions are available from UMI, Ann Arbor,
>  *   Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale Canada, Toronto.
>  *
>  * Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/
>  *   Documentation politique international; Sociological Abstract
>  *   Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political Science and
>  *   Government; Canadian Periodical Index; Film and Literature Index.
>
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
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