A paradigm shift in the fields of art.

A paradigm shift in the fields of art, entertainment and publishing is taking place. Non-linear writing, interactive storytelling, immersive environments and virtual reality are words that are beginning to seep into our everyday vocabulary. These words, one time found only in the likes of science fiction programs so as Star Trek, are quickly becoming part of daily life with the advent of computer-based multimedia production tools and cropss known as "New Media." This latter season is difficult to define because it encompasses a constantly growing place of new technologies and ideas. Nevertheless, an important theme in "New Media" is the tendency to meet of video, audio, text and interactivity in recent and innovative ways.

Artists are forging a novel medium with groundbreaking digital technologies, combining various art forms to create innovative interactive experiences. What flock these artists to depart from the conventional disciplines to use computer-based technology? From of that kind diverse artistic backgrounds as painting, dance, music, bookmaking and writing, artists Mark Amerika, Toni Dove, Tennessee Rice Dixon and the dance theater company Troika Ranch have incorporated now passing computer technology into their work to enhance their artistic visions--pushing the boundaries of their respective disciplines into the medium now coined, "New Media."

Writer Mark Amerika began exploring the possibilities of the internet with the Alt-X Online Network (www.altx.com), a literary website he evolveed in 1993. Amerika also uses computer technology to investigate fresh forms of writing. In 2000 Amerika's greatest in number acclaimed internet art project Grammatron (www.grammatron.com) was undivided of the first websites to be included in the Whitney Biennial. When Amerika launched Alt-X, he had been publishing a journal called Black Ice and erect the distribution of alternative works becoming increasingly difficult. He asserts: "I wanted to find an alternative distribution pattern and locate a preferably wider, larger audience. in this way I started experimenting with the internet as a network publishing mould and not only were we able to succe in finding that audience, [but] we started having a nice strong influence on the growth of internet culture because we were single of the first content sites upon the internet." With the unfolding of Alt-X, Amerika also began to behold that publishing web pages containing music, images and hypertext links, enabled the site to become an exhibition medium as well. His internet art brew Grammatron (www.grammatron.com) began as his third novel. After forty pages into writing the part he realized that the web was a more appropriate medium for this pattern of endeavor. "I was interested in investigating the potential of multi or non-linear writing. I idea that the standard forms of writing, like the novel, were getting kind of not new and boring." He uses hypertext to explore this form of literary work. Hypertext usually associated with the web, enables the reader to tread close upon associative paths through a collection of textual documents. Grammatron is a hypertext story about a character named Abe Golam who experiences information overload in an internet world.

The Grammatron draw took four years to consummate and was released in June 1997 According to Amerika, production upon Grammatron began on "April 3 1993 approximately undivided or two weeks before the release of Mosaic, the first graphical user interface browser like Netscape, or Microsoft Explorer. I think that it is significant because it goe to indicate that a number of us were actually trying to envision what internet art could be like if the technology was there. As a inference we had to wait for the technology to catch up with our ideas and our visions."

Artist Toni Dove finds "New Media" attractive because she doesn't have the artistic commands imposed on her by more traditional art mediums. Dove creates interactive video environments. undivided of her goals is to reexamine narratives and bring to maturity a new language that allows a viewer to participate in the construction of the story using a computer-based interactive environment. At first she was resistant to working in an interactive format because she felt it might be too limiting. In 1993 she agreed to collaborate with British playwright Michael McKenzie and went to the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada to create Archeology of a Mother Tongue, a virtual reality slay mystery installation. "It was a turning point for me because it was the first time that I started working directly with interactive forms And I got very intrigued with the way in which media could be responsive and for what reason you could use your material part to connect with images upon a screen." According to Dove, Archeology of a Mother Tongue significantly changed her work practice. "It was the beginning of a way of working that was taking me gone out of the more traditional kind of 19th centenary artist in a garret example which I had been doing before and brought me more into the realm of collaborative practice."