Joana Meraja

patterns of cities and self

CM / NPR All Things Considered Interview Transcript, Jan 1985

FrancEyE aka Frances Dean Smith, an organizer of poetry events on Electronic Cafe ‘84.

The artists saw Electronic Cafe ’84 as a cultural commons, a platform through which people could engage in “the world changing power of creative conversation,” freely and (if they so wished) anonymously.

via Rhizome's Net Art Anthology
https://anthology.rhizome.org/mobile-image

CM / Electronic Cafe Network
Electronic Cafe Network
Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz
1984

Because their public would not necessarily share a language or literacy skills, Galloway and Rabinowitz led a ground-breaking effort to add support for images as part of Community Memory.

via Rhizome's Net Art Anthology
https://anthology.rhizome.org/mobile-image

At each node, innovative systems were installed that extended and combined available technological tools to suit community needs. Visitors could annotate still video images, draw or write together in any language with an electronic writing tablet, share their screen to collaborate with visitors at other sites, print hard-copy pictures, and send and receive slow-scan video images.

All of this visual output could be stored or retrieved on Community Memory’s videodisc recorder, which held 20,000 images.

via Rhizome's Net Art Anthology
https://anthology.rhizome.org/mobile-image

Electronic Cafe Network
Kit Galloway, Sherrie Rabinowitz
1984