Gunafa Peace Bed-In

GUNafa BED_IN_re-enacted media-installation & live i-pad A/V performance at Q21/MuseumsQuartier Vienna.

When we started with the STR-homepage in February 95, we had travelled to California as part of our working on it. Our server, the WELL, was there. We exchanged experiences with their WEB office, headed by two smart women, Cynsa Bonorris & Anna Couey. We met Howard Rheingold and John “Tex“ Coate again, even stayed at their homes for some time. And, we had the pleasure of being invited by Timothy Leary to stay at his house for several days once more in L.A., as well as meeting Terence McKenna in Big Sur.

One night, we were invited to the Rheingold Haus for dinner in Mill Valley. We were a little group of people, talking about the net. It was 11pm in the meantime, we were the last guests, decided to go. Everything was said, we had a great time, thanked our caring hosts, wanted to go - when Judy Rheingold, at that time getting the news from a TV in another room, shouted “Gunafa Twins, the (golden gate) bridge is closed! You can‘t leave now.“ So what to do ? We talked it over with Howard that driving through Oakland by car to find our way back to SF would have meant a more than two-hour drive. This was too hard. We decided to wait & see together. We got into another round of discussion, and there we created the idea of editorial jam sessions, mailing each other html documents including text, sound, grafix. This would later become Howard‘s BRAINSTORMS/DigitalZeitgeist project, which would be the first step towards the later Electric Minds, too. When we left that evening - the bridge was open again, and the myth was here!

Back in Frankfurt, we soon started the first jam sessions. It was, IOHO, a big step in online working, cause it meant cooperating on one document, dislocated.

– Elisa Rose, 1995 –