General Introduction
The core of Silicon Rally consists of hundreds of links to sites that are relevant to the project's exploration of the Internet as a public space for cultural production. The top hierarchy consists of four sections: Arts, Spaces, Media and Spheres.
Whereas the agenda of the project is directed at offering an introduction to Stroom, its public and others interested and participating, of the Net/Web as a cultural public space, Stroom, by commissioning the project positions itself as a player in the Dutch and European arts community. Which could be expected from an institution that since 1991 stood out with its international Art and Public Space program. Silicon Rally takes a ten week period to investigate the Net/Web as an extension of a material world in which Stroom decided to particpate with the organization and production of a significant program of public projects. Silicon Rally is just the consequent next step in the series.
The four sections
Arts, Spaces, Media and Spheres are the titles of the four sections that
we subdivided information in. The first two being basically grounded in material reality, 3-dimensional space, a haptic environment. The latter being realms of the immaterial, the conceptual, the theoretical -- but also the relational, the social, the metaphysical. These four categories should not be regarded as absolute -- they are contexts in which links are presented. Some links will occur in several contexts. Some contexts will lead you into another without noticing.
When bringing together so much new loci of cultural production it would be pretentious to categorize. This is no disclaimer of some sort, just a recognition of the fact that this sphere is alive and changing and challenging our imagination.
Arts Not to be Missedäda web: The first, or one of the first, at least the best known, always in favor when things are ordered alphabetically -- the äda web contemporary art site. No gallery or museum, just site (and some retail). Enjoy the Holzer and Scher and other stuff. äda web
Art Crimes: In an order where nothing's crime since van Gogh died, this site's claim-to-fame is a bit premature: but all the world's best graffiti outside museum walls is here. Art Crimes
Irational: Talking about graffitti -- these strong black/white pushing graphics tell you stories that were scraped off the walls of Brittain to be gif-ed and html-ed for narrowcasting. Heath Bunting cs.
Club Moral: Belgium's oldest 80's garage art avant-clique opened a website for its idiosyncratic research. Club Moral
Dia Center: An official and well thought out part of its program, the Dia's website presents special projects by among others Tony Oursler and Komar and Melamid (commitedly not our Most Wanted Artists). Dia Center
Failure Institute: 'On January 25th, 1968, when I first began my creative work, I felt sure I had something to offer, a vision, something to put into the world. Now, some 28 years later, it has become clear that what I must offer is my sincere apology.' Some statement by Peter Santino -- well put and anti-designed at the intruiging Failure Institute
Fileroom: Artist Muntadas took the initiative to bring together these files on censorship and the abuse of intellectual property. File Room
FSOL: Ambient as ever the site of these media artists gives the look and feel of state of the art media and mythology. Future Sound of London On Line
The Forum for Experimental Typography: in an environment so limited typographically as the WWW, this Forum aims at the improvement of on-line conditions for our best friends: the Fonts and their critical properties. FUSE95 - The Forum for Experimental Typography
jodi.org: if you want to read mirrored Dutch teletext and experience all kinds of halucinatory effects: high-HTML, and the best screensaver the Web can buy. Stay on-line. jodi.org
Kaapland: another site by an individual artist, who gave new meaning to the word real time, by just staying behind his machine 24/24, alternately html-ing and ftp-ing. But he doesn't want to be congratulated anymore being Mr. Web incarnation, and rumor has it that now his assistants ar up 24/24 to shuffle it up. Still a primary example of narrowcasted public/private storytellling. KaapLand
L'affaire Wolfram: Young Dutch artist and webdesigner Taco Stolk's 1996 goodbye-to-art-school piece. A modest guy and sometimes too modest font size. But he's into information processing at the conceptual level. l'affaire wolfram
Leonardo: MIT's art(?) magazine that gained interest now that new tools are spammed all over the world. Leonardo
Mediamatic: The best the Netherlands have to offer in new media, all concentrated at one single hotspot. Magazine since 1985, website since 1994, publishing house and consultancy -- with leader of the pack Willem Velthoven kicking ass when-ever and where-ever he can. Mediamatic
Metamute: `Proud to be Flesh' (Meta)Mute's unique content and style are reflected at this young London based site. Their other product, the paper, is proud too. Log of and go get it at your local drugstore before you continue. Metamute
Museum in Proggress: Museums get you better through times of no Art, than Art gets you through times of no Museums. Especially when they're in progress and on line. museum in progress
NWHQ: NWHQ
Martin Sjardijn WSP: VRML pioneer integrates the Stijl and later constructivist elements into his virtual objects that simulate the real stuff designed to be sent into outer space -- definitely the final frontier in Dutch traditional avant-garde constructionism. Martin Sjardijn Weightless Sculpture Project WSP
Skeptic's Dictionarry: when Infognosis spreads like oil and all join in this dictionarry should be at hand. the Skeptic's Dictionary
Sonicnet: wild design and weird music. Sonicnet has both to offer. Sonicnet
Take me, I'm yours: Left overs of the exhibitions of the same name. It's not easy to shift media. See for yourself: it's all yours. 'Take me, I'm yours' Exhibition
The Thing: this artists' community's long time media pioneers have just started their own Palace: ThingWorld. Check into this community or one of its many European annexes. The Thing
V2: Long term artists' space V2 devoted its program to the `unstable media' quite some years ago. Now the Netherlands' most forward alternative institute and Rotterdam's hope for a piece of the new media pie. V2onW3.......Main
7th Museum: Originally conceived and realized with Stroom hcbk as the organizing partner, its curator Waling Boers took his baby on-line in order to continue the good work and expand its possibilities. the 7th museum site
Arts Sources Minneapolis College of Art and Design Bookmarks ArtSource Yahoo - Arts Arts More Arts ¶Art We're Only In It For Symbolic Order ¶the Artist/Agent The Artist as Mediator and Information Agent Spaces Not to be MissedArchitecture, Engineering and Technology: Are you ready....? This is a site by Bob Schultz that is focused on research about how the activities of design and construction in general, and the practice of architecture in particular, can be improved by incorporating advances in computing and information technology into the processes of the architecture, engineering and construction industry! Architecture, Engineering and Technology
Busstops: International Design Project: Nine designers created nine bus and tram stops for the city of Hannover, Germany. Completed in 1994, the EXPO 2000 city now has a collection of pretty hefty shelters. Busstops: International Design Project
Centre for Landscape Research: A site by the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (University of Toronto). Activities, projects and digital libraries on site. Projects undertaken by the Centre for Landscape Research seek to improve design thinking through the addition of computational technology to professional design and public decision-making. Centre for Landscape Research
Cybercafé: Temporarily claiming the realm of the public, Cybercafe will not be showing people the web or talking about Veronica, nor shall it be theorising about the future of the Internet. Instead it aims to promote or create spaces and situations in which people can behave in ways unavailable in currently existing places. Cybercafé
Disneyland Paris: Reinhard Schaffner collected all there is to know about this fenced in "who's dream is this anyway"-scape. Disneyland Paris
Internet 1996 World Exposition: No more towering brutal cast-iron constructions in the centre of elegant French capitals! As we leave the industrial age and enter a new age of information, it is time for a new kind of world's fair. Internet 1996 World Exposition
Palace Home Page: Time Warner's The Palace is way beyond the text-based MUD's! Download the shareware, and find yourself physically projected in the avatar-packed luscious rooms of this semi-gothic residence.
ParkBench: Tony Hey and Jack Dongarra founded the PARKBENCH (PARallel Kernels and BENCHmarks) committee in 1992. ParkBench
rachitecture: RACHITECTURE is Charlie Cannon's view of architecture on the internet. As a 'net based newsletter, its only function is to get you out there to have a look around. Of course, what is out there is always changing, and what seems interesting does too. rachitecture
T_Vision Project Home Page: The world being a mouse click away is this time not a metaphor, but it is actually so! T_Vision is an earth visualisation project. It provides a virtual globe as a multimedia interface to visualise any kind of data related to a geographic region. T_Vision Project Home Page
the Urban Institute: Established in 1968, the Urban Institute aims to sharpen thinking about society's problems and efforts to solve them, improve government decisions and their implementation, and increase citizens' awareness about important public choices. the Urban Institute
Yesterland: Yes, there is an entire land beyond the "who's dream is this anyway" dreamscape of Disneyland! Also-Rans, Never-Weres, Total Flops, and even Onetime-Favourites, are delighted in each other's company within the borders of Yesterland... Yesterland
ACM, The First Society in Computing: Can anything in the world connected to computing celebrate it's 50th birthday already today? Yet it can! ACM (founded 1947!!) is an international scientific and educational organisation dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering, and application of information technology, serving both professional and public interests by fostering the open interchange of information and by promoting the highest professional and ethical standards. ACM, The First Society in Computing
Hakim Bey was almost forced by his anarchist readership to blow his cover but still exists as the highly succesful pseudonym of Islamics-scholar-of-fame PLW. Bey's heretic pamphlets, among which Temporary Autonomous Zone (also available as audio CD -- listen to that spellbinding voice) and Immediatism are best known, have a deep and lasting influence on the avant-media/arts Clique. Thank God for Hakim and his crypto-counter-Infognosis. Hakim Bey
Bootstrap Institute: Boost Collective IQ! Make Strategic first steps for Aggressive Improvement! Be Bootstrapped for the 21st Century! Improve the Improvement Cycle! This is what the Bootstrap Institute has got in store for you and your entire company. You didn't expect one of the most modest and forward thinking oldtimers of the computer industy to be leading this institute? Listen carefully to what Doug Engelbart has to say. Bootstrap Institute
BosniaLINK: Send Your Greetings andary activities in Operation JOINT ENDEAVOUR, the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. BosniaLink contains operations maps, fact sheets, news releases, biographies of key commanders and leaders, and transcripts of briefings, speeches and testimony. BosniaLINK
CMC Magazine: Asked what the Computer Mediated Comunication Magazine could be all about, John December comes up with this possible analogy: 'Scientific American can appeal to a broad range of readers with a diverse set of interests, yet provide each reader with a perspective of the substance and value of knowledge for some scientific topic. I hope that CMC Magazine can play a similar role in CMC Studies: to address the reader who has an interest in CMC and some background in one or more of many related fields.' CMC Magazine
CNN Interactive: President of CNN Tom Johnson le at CNN to keep excellece in journalism as their number one priority as they bring you the news. He also states that the very words "World Wide Web" embody the mission of CNN... CNN Interactive
Computer History and Folklore: The definitive dictionary of Hacker slang, Legendary Usenet characters, Pictures of notable old computers, a brief history of the Internet from 1956 to the present, the great renaming in 1985 and numerous other issues related to computer history and folklore... Computer History and Folklore
CTHEORY is an international, electronic review of books on theory, technology and culture. Sponsored by the Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, reviews are posted periodically of key books in contemporary discourse as well as theorisations of major "event-scenes" t> CTHEORY
Digital Future Coalition: The Digital Future Belongs to Us All! The Digital Future Coalition's 27 members represent virtually every segment of the "information economy" and include creators, consumers and distributors of information. DFC believes that any changes in intellectual property laws must be carefully crafted not merely to protect copyright proprietors and existing business models, but to foster broad public access to information, innovation in industry and education, and the privacy rights of all. the Digital Future Coalition
Firefly: Music and movie recommendation is what MIT Autonomous Agents Group's Pattie Maes and her commercial partners at Agents Inc. offer the on-line world. Dig up the old 45 and 33rpm vinyl and join the conversation and ratings in this community of melomaniacs! firefly
Foresight Institute: the Foretions, connecting all sorts of epiphenomenons and you've got a picute of Hobbes' Internet World... Hobbes' Internet World
Hotwired: The 900lb gorilla of online publishing. Do not upset these people, they can and will destroy you! The undisputed clipper ship of the digital seas, unless they don't stop sucking corporate anus. "Hip" is relative, but in this case mandatory. HotWired
i on Visual Computing: Silicon Graphics' online magazine about people & technologies making history in the visual revolution. Editor in Chief Wendy Govier says she is glued to a computer all day. Come to her rescue, or read the current issue about Computer Aided Designing. i on Visual Computing
Internet Society Home Page: The Intercooperation and coordination for the Internet and its internetworking technologies and applications. The Society's individual and organizational members are bound by a common stake in maintaining the viability and global
scaling of the Internet. Internet Society Home Page
Irresponsible Internet Statistics Generator: There are 27,000 Web sites, and this number is doubling every 53 days!! (feb. 1995) Use the statistics generator to get a non verifiable irresponsible prediction of the number of people using the internet at any given date. Internet Statistics
ITP: You are welcome to the Interative Telecommunications Program at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University where students are seeking ne Media History Project: From petroglyphs to pixels, this site offers access to media history-related archives, syllabi, lectures, essays, and additional educational material, incorporating text, images, and audio clips. the Media History Project
MIT Media Lab: The MIT's charter is to invent and creatively exploit new media for human well-being and individual satisfaction without regard to present-day constraints. They employ supercomputers and extraordinary input/output devices to experiment today with notions that might be commonplace tomorrow. The not-so-hidden agenda is to drive technological inventions and break engineering deadlocks with new perspectives and demanding applications. MIT Media Lab
Agents in all kinds of guises will envade software, hardware and wetware with equal opportunity... MIT Media Lab, Autonomous Agents Group
Bill set it up -- you bet! Microsoft Network
Netherlands Design Institute: Established in 1993 the institute has the following mission statement: it considers itself a 'think-and-do tank' which identifies new ways by which design may contribute to the economic and cultural vitality of the community; it develops scenarios about the future, and undertakes research projects to test them. The Institute's end-product is ideas, knowledge and relationships: these help companies, designers, and researchers improve their capacity for innovation. Home of the famous Doors of Perception conferences! Netherlands Design Institute
Nettime Net Criticism: Forming an impressive bouquet, the texts gathered on this site protocol a potlatch culture of information exchange, as they are also part of a 'little practise' which tries to avoid the pathos of the giants, in face of immense streams of dirty data trash, and look sideways for examples of an art of living in the nets. Nettime Net Criticism
New Hack City: What happens when 200 of the most notorious computer hackers get together on New Year's Eve? Rodney Palmer travels to Austin, Texas to discover the truth about digital outlaws. Featuring: HoHo Con, Drunkfux, Death Vegetable, and other utmosts of the Alias-Universe. New Hack City
The Niche--Toys, Tools, Technologies: Bryce Wilcox' site of tinker toys for the Information Era.the Niche -- Toys, Tools, Technologies
NRC Handelsblad: Een internet editie van het laatste nieuws is iedere dag vanaf vier uur `s middags beschikbaar. Daar naast de vertrouwde katernen, en links naar aan het nieuws gerelateerde site's. NRC Handelsblad
Online Bookstores: Home of the first full-text "distributive" book on the Internet (Tracy LaQuey's The Internet Companion) in December 1992, Open Book Systems implement new publishing strategies to offer readers customised access to the ideas and information of each book, WWW server of the Principia Cybernetica Project (PCP). The Project's aim is the computer-supported collaborative development of an evolutionary-systemic philosophy. Put more simply, PCP tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies. Principia Cybernetica Web
Project Gutenberg: Heritage of the book and the author in this long term digital research and distribution project. Project Gutenberg Home Page
Project Xanadu: Throughout a controversial career, Ted Nelson has pursued his dream of Xanadu (his trademark), originally intended as a writing and intercomparison console, then expanded to a software design for the global delivery of connected documents. The World Wide Web you are using now, is explicitly based on Nelson's work, but beyond the WWW still lingers Xanadu... Xanadu
Razorfish: In their own words: Razorfish, Inc. is a digital media design, development, and production corporation based in New York City. Dedicated to creating compelling and memorable media experiences for the new millennium, Razorfish currently offers a wide range of createws specifically solicited from many other individuals identified during the process. Research Agenda for Cultural Heritage on Information Networks
the Santa Fe Institute: Since its inception, the Santa Fe Institute has devoted itself to the creation of a new kind of scientific research community pursuing emerging syntheses in science.The mission of the Santa Fe Institute is to conduct and foster scientific research aiming at the Transdisciplinary, Excellent, Fresh and Catalytic. the Santa Fe Institute
Silicon Valley History: Christening the Project! Rooting the Name! Mother of all Valleys! Eponym of all Rallys! Silicon Valley History
Suck: Shit makes great fertiliser, but it takes a farmer to turn it into a meal. Suck does just that, considering the internet a slurry pit. In doing so they abide by the principle which dictates that somebody will always position himself or herself to systematically harvest anything of value in this world for the sake of money, power and/or ego-fulfillment. Suck
tO Institute for New Cultural Technologies: '(...) The channels are crammed with sticky corporate entertainment and th minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.' The frustration of this guy's #3 position drove him to letter bomb scientists and put him on the list of the Agencies. The manifesto was published in the New York Times in a blackmail construction. Unabomber's Manifesto
the Utne Lens: For over a deca
The web as a cultural phenomenon: Prabhakar Ragdes' talk at the Computer Science Club on the Social Imapct of Computing in june 1995, has a life of it's own as a web document. Let Prabhakar tell you all about it... The Web as a cultural phenomenon
Web enhancement project: The Foresight Institute works on a way for hypertext to become a true dialog -- more enduring than speech, more interactive than print, and better connected than anything we've had before. It can help us deal with world-wide issues. Foresight's goal is to get the required fream Gallery and much more in this Shockwave and Real Audio enhanced E-zine, under inspiration of New York's self-declared Queen of HTML, Jaime Levy. Word
World 3 - the ezine for web designers: World 3 is about many things but, fundamentally, it is a space about how to use space to communicate. In it you'll find the thinking and experiments of some of the brightest hypermedia theorists and practitioners on the Internet.>
Media
More Media
¶Information Media
A Public Sphere in its Own Right?
¶Out There
Beyond W3
¶Site Specificities
Who's Who and What Did They Do to Our (and Other) Sites?
Spheres
Not to be MissedSpaces
Sources
Spaces
More Spaces
¶Architecture
Mother of the Arts meets the Mother of Computer Networks
¶Public Space
Urban and Open Space, the City, Being There
¶Local Color
The Hague the Netherlands: Local Expertise
¶On Site/On Line
Some Choice
Media
Not to be Missed