World Wide Jam - Social Web Project: Digital Archive Station Rose

Digital Zeitgeist - World Wide Jam

Virtual journalists: "Gunafa Twins" European correspondents for Howard Rheingold´s "Digital Zeitgeist".

the myth was here - in Mill Valley, CA
foto by Howard Rheingold in his house

:// notes
Besides being involved in countless multimedia-projects Station Rose found the time to write an essay about "The Aesthetics of Techno" earlier this year. The essay was first published in a book called "Techno", a collection of articles about the house and techno culture edited by Philipp Anz and Patrick Walder. A hypermedia-version of "The Aesthetics of Techno", including visuals and sound samples, found its way into Howard Rheingold´s new electronic magazine "Brainstorms".

Their latest contribution takes a look at the emerging artistic European Hypermedia scene. Rheingold, who is one of the first renowned authors to concentrate his entire writing on the Internet, has established "Brainstorms" as an exciting new platform for the world wide hypermedia scene and marks out new directions for electronic publishing. "The Aesthetics of Techno" in turn marked the beginning of Danner´s & Rose´s career as virtual journalists: from now on they will work as European correspondents for the "Brainstorms"-column "Digital Zeitgeist". Every two months they report on what is hot (and what is not) in the European multimedia-scene. Check it out! www.well.com/user/hlr/jam/gunafa/gunafa.html

:// notes

After we had started with the STR-homepage in February 95, we travelled to California as part of working on it. Our server, the WELL, was located there. We exchanged experiences with their WEB office, headed by 2 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 to be invited by Timothy Leary to stay at his house for several days in L.A. once more, 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, and decided to go. Everything was said, we had a great time, thanked our caring hosts, and wanted to go - when Judy Rheingold, at that time getting the news from 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 over Oakland by car to find our way back to SF would have meant more than 2 hours drive. This was too hard. We decided to wait & see together.

We got into another round of discussion, and then created the idea of editorial jam sessions, swapping html documents including text, sound and grafix. This later would become Howard´s BRAINSTORMS/DigitalZeitgeist project (1995), which should be the 1st step towards the later Electric Minds.

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, because it meant cooperating on 1 document, dislocated.