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Section 1 - Virtual Split

THIS IS THE POINT IN www.fieldartwork.co.uk WHERE YOU CAN CHOOSE TO VISIT THE WEB BEYOND.
REMEMBER TO USE YOUR BACK BUTTON ON YOUR BROWSER TO RE-ENTER www.fieldartwork.co.uk.

The web is an impermanent way of working – a non updated website is DEAD. Imagine a book that changed every time you opened it. A film that was always fresh and never repeated. For me, the web is the closest non human media that is like performance. Ephemeral - here today and gone tomorrow - "sorry BT are aware of the problem and sorry for the delay". (1)

Over this summer (2002) I have been working on the doo-cot website - I get to work rarely on the site in more than a piecemeal way. Realising that in one site - www.doo-cot.com - I had the whole history of my web development – it was littered with tests and trials - it therefore needed clearing out and reorganising. So with Julie Parker doo-cot’s Technical Manager, the task began to catalogue the virtual doo-cot venue.

The voices in my head told me to split the website in two. These voices came from the numerous people who are in someway engaged with doo-cot – and at sometime or another I have asked for feedback about the website. For simplicity they can be split into 2.

Group 1 - The Non Updaters Group 2 - The Updaters
These people do not know much about computers but they do have some kind of internet access. Via modem dial up. They use an older version of a browser and get scared if they have to download plugins. These people know or think they know a lot about computers – they often have very good access to the internet via broadband and have no problems updating the latest browsers and plugins – probably because this is done for them by technicians.

Therefore after you enter the doo-cot site you come to www.doo-cot.com/crossroads.html and you are greeted by Constance Viola Weber (or is it Fanny?) offering you a vegan chocolate truffle (2). You have to make a decision at this point of the website – you are split into sheep and goats – do you follow the basic route or do you indulge? Are you a Non Updater www.doo-cot.com/home.html or are you an Updater - can you go on stage @ www.doo-cot.com/stage.html? The former takes you on a route where you will encounter only html with animated gifs (no plugins necessary) – as accessible as possible with this medium – which is obviously not greatly accessible in the first place.

I am assuming all you reading this are part of an academic institution - part of an elite – so go to www.doo-cot.com/stage.html and you can click on the future development part of the stage (that’s at the top when you rollover the site) and see:

www.doo-cot.com/lol1.html
www.doo-cot.com/lol2.html
www.doo-cot.com/lol3.html
www.doo-cot.com/lol4.html

4 pages of 4 mini QuickTimes (3) san controllers – looping and downloading irregularly. The ‘problems’ of the download being used as a means to randomise the reproduction of a live performance of doo-cot’s…

LIFE<on>LINE represents and realises the culmination of the experiments and innovation
of many of the company's previous shows and will become
a benchmark of the real/virtual interface in live performance. (4)

Of course I can do animated gifs of the performance (and I have - see page www.doo-cot.com/RandD.html) but to see actual video clips is what brings an event to life – even with the drop outs and pauses. The moving image needs to - move!

It is rare in the theatre or performance world for an artist who actively engages with the live event to know how to produce the company’s website. Well there are those artists who sit at a computer – there are those that engage with an audience. I think the future is with artists and artists' organisations who can do both. This takes the computer beyond the insular - the shut in tool - to a collaboration between artist and audience, art and science. This is my mission and it's about joining the body to the mind – the hard to the software – its about the possibilities inbetween and its time to jack in…

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