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Title: Technological Rituals, Stories from the Annenberg Dialogues by Rosanna Albertini ISBN: 0-9674127-0-6 Publisher: Ram Pubns & Dist Pub. Date: 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback List Price(USD): $29.95

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Summary: Technological Rituals
Comment: Technological Rituals is a sequence of stories from the Annenberg Dialogues held at USC in 1996 and 1998. It's presented as a dialogue between Rosanna Albertini, the moderator/author, a group of outstanding artists, individually and collectively; and the reader. Conceived as a rumination rather than a series of polemics, Albertini works in a classical mode that reflects her background as a scholar in 18th century philosophy. At the root of her questions, poetic associations, and analysis, is the "same self" that has always been the focus of philosophical inquiry. That priority makes her work simultaneously old fashioned and cutting edge.

Nine West Coast based artists were invited to participate with interdisciplinary scholars from USC, and later by an invited anthropologist, neuronantomist, biological engineer, mathematician and others in more related fields. The goal was to join as a collective unit to explore the sensory and instinctual potentials of an intensive conversation in which presence and distance are integral to the exchange.

The artists' stories and pictures are followed by Albertini's reverie. The book changes the order of presentation to develop an intriguing continuum that begins with Harry Gamboa Jr., an LA based artist, who works with photography, performance, video, fiction, and fotononovelas. He thinks of the artist as a "social criminal" and works regularly with a small group of artists performing evocative and symbolic public theater events that originated as an attempt to move the mural off the wall into the street. Since much of this work was done in East LA, there is a strong religious and cultural content. The book includes powerful examples of his "living sculpture." The second artist, Sara Roberts, is a pioneer of interactive installation art. She discusses how she is trying to illuminate emotion through multimedia art tools that are activated by the presence/participation of a visitor. Like Gamboa, she collaborates with other artists to create her complex dramatic electronic sculptures. Their themes interrelate, hers are more personal- her work is conceived through active interpersonal relationships, marriage, memory. The rituals of everyday life.

For Pat O'Neill, an experimental filmmaker, the rituals are even more inward. He is a sculptor of the self, multidimensional, fluid, always changing. O'Neill is the most abstract of the nine artists, an enigmatic, cinematic poet, avant-outsider. He is followed by perhaps the most controversial choice, a penultimate insider- Hollywood filmmaker John Dykstra, who (Albertini reports) repeatedly denies being a "fine artist", preferring to call himself a "supervisor" because he recognizes the collaborative nature of his work. Perhaps he should be called an inventor. Like the others, he designs and builds his own tools, but they are specifically designed to accomplish the script based needs of commercial products, for example, special effects for a car commercial. Dykstra appears to be most involved in the conceptual, processoral phase of projects, in his words, "tinkering" in order to create animated or digital analogs that correspond to common realities, the apex of illusion. He moves decisively from the real world themes of previous artists into a virtual world that causes what he calls "suspension of disbelief." Speaking shortly after the release of "Batman Forever," Dykstra showed the 15 minutes of special effects he directed sparking Albertini's contemplation of Batman as a new myth "about a human being trying to be the machine he has created..."

The next in a triad of filmmakers is Tomlinson Holman, an inventor of sound systems for digital mastering programs, motion picture theaters, and the technical director of the design phase of the Lucas studio at Skywalker Ranch. He plays a role in the creation of sound at the stage where the engineer/artist is more concerned with expanding the structural elements of the medium than in making a statement about physical or pixilated reality. Here Albertini is pushing the question that still buzzes around academic and professional gatherings- is the artist the programmer or the one who uses the software? Albertini's impulse is to accept them all.

Woody Vasulka brings us back into the realm of pure spirit and the use of artmaking tools as sacred rituals. More than any of the others artists, his story is about the ritual process- where it belongs in our consciousness, philosophy, and way of living. He calls himself a machinist, "I am trying to look at all this as product of human thinking within the dimensions of art." Vasulka scavenges surplus systems and uses them to explore operatic themes in three dimensions.

I'm not sure why Alexis Smith is included. Her work is of a very different technology and space. Vibeke Sorenson, on the other hand is an excellent choice. Her background as an architect and consistent political activism, motivated her decision to build and use tools in very personal ways that would resonate with common lives. Like Woody Vasulka her story is about bridging the scientist and artist into a seamless unity. The ninth artist Hirokazu Kosaka is a Zen Buddhist and visual artist. His work is based on ancient ritual of target shooting, the arrow is released (in space or metaphorically in time), between the breath, during the gap between heartbeats.

I like the book very much. All of the artists and Albertini are a joy to read- erudite, sensitive, and insightful. Albertini is the first art historian who understands and conveys the ecstasy of electronic transformation. She has written extensively in scholarly and popular journals about technological imaging in ways that reflect the poetic and spiritual communication obvious in the work of a plethora of serious artmakers. She provides a critically needed new perspective and has a strong grasp of the technical components of video and computer based media. This important book is a major contribution as we move from postmodernism into a prerobotic age when questions of art, culture, spirituality, and the ways that we build and use machines are key to understanding the future of our species.