SITO SYNERGY collab projects

The SITO Project has arranged and sponsored several collaboration projects via which artists from all over the globe used Internet to interact visually, create themed exhibits and generally get aquainted with one-another. These projects, from the very beginning, took place under the flag of SYNERGY.

List of SYNERGY IDs
CURRENT ADVENTURES:
- HyGRID
- IMPULSE FREAK
- PANIC(neverending)
PAST FUN:
- GRIDs
- INFINITE GRID
- REVOLT
- CROSSWIRE
- ARCANA +Un+
- CORPSE
FOLLIES AND REVAMPS (stuff that didn't doesn't quite work):
- COMIC (mucky scheme)
- MONGOCOSM (too much)
- OTHERWORLD (not enough interest, perhaps with VRML?)
Some SYNERGY material webbed up by...Harlan Wallach.

The INFINITE GRID

By constructing multiple pieces for each piece of grid, the grid has (near) infinite proportions. A variety of grids can be called into existence merely by exchanging the arrangement of available pieces. The construction of fragments from common templates insures that any one piece will fit with any neighboring fragment (relatively speaking). The project began in June of 1994 and tapered off when SITO moved its base from SunSite. It is currently closed to submissions and most likely is closed for good. There is now a VIEW-ONLY INTERFACE.

REVOLT

The first SYNERGY project was SYNERGY:REVOLT. REVOLT, which took place during May and June of 1993, was built around the base curiousity and experimentality of it's participants. One person would create a starter image, another would manipulate that starter, and another would finish off the image for final display.

CROSSWIRE

Later in the summer of 1993, SYNERGY:CROSSWIRE rattled it's way into being, a marked evolution of it's predecessor. Though structured similarly to REVOLT with starter images and such, CROSSWIRE, in response to popular demand, allowed participants to manipulate and finish any images they found interesting or stimulating, providing more freedom than did the first SYNERGY project. This resulted in quite a few more variations and more of an evolutionary aspect to the images' survival. If no one liked it, no one manipulated it. If no one manipulated an image, it never made it's way to becoming a third generation, final, mutation/image.

ARCANA

Winter of 1993 brought SYNERGY:ARCANA, a project to design a collaborative deck of Tarot cards. As of late January 1995, ARCANA is still missing a few cards.
Participants were given a list of Tarot cards and their popular interpretations to work from. Dicussions were held via the SITO Mailing List regarding the meanings and interpretations of cards. In fact, the mailing list was the birthplace of the entire ARCANA project.

PANIC

In Jaunary of 1994, a computer consultant and entertainment organization called CYBERPLEX asked for SITO's help in creating an interactive art-gallery exhibit at a 2-day event referred to as smartBOMB 1.0. Because of smartBOMB's intent to show the power and usage of the Internet, Ed Stastny and Robert Stephens (of CYBERPLEX) set up a live collaboration project called SYNERGY:PANIC. This project would gather artists in real-time to manipulate images grabbed at the Rogue Nightclub (where smartBOMB was taking place). Things turned out far from perfectly hardware-wise at the club and far fewer than expected images were generated from the event itself. This didn't stop the artists involved, they quickly took initiative and began exchanging images with each-other (a la REVOLT and CROSSWIRE) via IRC and FTP, generating over 480 manipulations over the weekend of January 28th-30th. The results of that weekend are STILL being sorted out.

Every week since that original PANIC, participants have been meeting on the weekends via IRC (channel #OTIS) and collaborating, socializing and making art history. They've also developed several interesting new forms of collaboration and interaction for computer/network artists including GRIDs, exquisit corpses, Zyg0tes and Masks.

CORPSE

About the same time that PANIC got started, SYNERGY:CORPSE got underway. CORPSE, instigated by Harlan Wallach, is a revamp of the classic "exquisite corpse" drawing exercise in which participants all draw parts of a body which is, in the end, put together (or unfolded if drawn on one sheet) into a vision of often bizarre disjunction. The final version of these net-based corpses were displayed at the Kopi Cafe in Chicago, Illinois during April and May of 1994.

If you have any ideas or comments about these or future SYNERGY projects, feel free to write email or send strip-o-grams.