i3 at EITC'97

i3 at EITC'97

Helen MacLean
(text)
Odense University
email: helen@mip.ou.dk

Marco Susani
(graphics)
Domus Academy
email: susani@domac.it

EITC ´97 and my own introduction to i3net are inextricably bound up in my mind. I had just arrived in Denmark for a holiday, and then I would do some research work. As soon as I set foot in Odense, however, I was introduced to a very anxious i3net coordinator. Niels Ole Bernsen had that day - June 27 - just received a letter from Jakub Wejchert from Esprit LTR containing an invitation to all the thirteen i3 projects to submit proposals for a joint exhibition to be mounted at EITC '97 in Brussels, on the 24-26 November 1997. But the deadline for the receipt in Brussels of checklist forms in response to this invitation was Wednesday, 9 July. Would I help?

It was a challenge - and one I could not resist. "Get them all in by the deadline in a week's time?" I laughed, and thought of all the hundreds of medieval English exam papers I had just been marking, "..it's a piece of cake!"

So I was bundled into the University by 10.30am on Monday morning and enrolled as a visiting consultant from England, given an office, a secretary, a hydraulic desk, a Power Mackintosh, a new phone, a fax machine, a photocopier, a printer, an email number, and every other kind of mechanical aid known to science .

And then I began to understand the full implications of the situation.

Imagine the prospect of trying to convince so many people from so many different countries at the beginning of July to give up their precious time in order to confer, brainstorm and deliver in just over a week ideas for the EITC '97

Now try to imagine a worse prospect - how to contact them. Not one of the i3 members was as yet aware of this deadline. And because it was at the at the start of the holiday and conference season, the project partners were not spread neatly all over Europe, which was normal, but they were now scattered randomly all over the world. One of my favourite emails is the rather stilted one I sent on my first day to John Bowers when I was trying to make contact with eScape. It ran, without a comma, "An emergency has arisen which involves all the i3net group of projects and Tom Rodden is in Australia".

Other quotes stick in the mind..."Alberto from Siena is a bit late with his forms as he is getting married in ten days.....we have probably ruined his prospects with his future mother-in-law, not to mention his wife..." .

And then there was the premature nature of it all. Attempting to exhibit the results of projects which were hardly out of the cradle was, to say the least, somewhat ambitious.

We thought we might perhaps get four or five projects to respond.

But the chance to showcase the work of the thirteen projects, even if in an ongoing and "potential" state, to a wide and interested audience was too tempting to pass up.

We got a total, amazing, overwhelming, 100% response. Everyone rose magnificently to the challenge. The enthusiasm, co-operation, hard work and sheer good humour which radiated from everyone through the whole of that busy week lightened our task tremendously, transformed hard work into pleasure for us, and taught us all the real meaning of cooperation.

By the exact deadline date of the 9th of July I had on my windowsill a line of folders (one for each project) all with golden yellow stars on them signifying that the forms had been delivered safely to Brussels. I was able to release the "Gaudeamus" email to everyone at 16.45 pm. Danish time.

Now we waited with bated breath for the eventual choice of the Selection Committee. And when it came it was obvious that they had been very impressed by our concerted effort. Eight projects out of our total of thirteen were chosen as exhibitors. Those who were not chosen will of course get their chance next year. And we were allotted the central stand!

Postscript. But something else was happening - to me. This new job was a revelation . I felt as though I had been lifted out of the Middle Ages and transported into the twenty-first century. I was conversing daily by email with people who talk quite naturally to electronic birds, live in Magic Lounges, and build surreal things called The World Generator and THE ZW@MP. This was taking me back to my early childhood - when I used to dream of multimedia in art , theatre and dance before the term was ever invented. All those "misspent" years of my youth spent reading fantasy and science fiction, watching futuristic and animated films, dreaming about transforming sound into colour , drawing ambitious plans for Buckminster Fuller domes, suddenly all began to make sense. And I was back where I belonged.

I remember exactly when this revelation came to me. It was when I was trying to decipher a handwritten checklist form describing the COMRIS project. I couldn't read one particular word on the description of the installation. The word turned out to be "parrot". Not a collocation that springs to the mind of any normal person when reading a practical form describing how many PCs and plugs etc one is using on an exhibition stand...but, somehow, a perfectly natural one in the wonderful world of i3. The subsequent COMRIS parrot emails between Walter and myself would make an article in themselves, but we will let that pass...

Dear Reader. I threw away the other half of my airline ticket back to Manchester.

I stayed.

home + about i3net + services and publications + CI projects + ESE projects
esprit + european commission + IST