Wednesday September 3/97, 7:30-9:30 pm
InterAccess, 401 Richmond St. #444; 599-7206
$3 members / $5 non-members

Participants:

Tom Leonhardt (moderator)
sasha. (panelist)
Kevin Steele (panelist)

tomtom@interlog.com

The language of the web is young. It grows through a synthesis of creative experiment and evolving audience expectations; navigating over a turbulent sea of shifting technology. To become fluent creators of web spaces, artists and designers must become sensitive to the often abstract qualities of the digital material and interactive structures they mold. The challenge of creating content for the web: how to publish complex information across low bandwidth networks for display on low resolution screens. Two artist/designers bring us perspectives gathered from the unique paths that their media explorations have followed.

Tom Leonhardt is a Toronto artist, designer and cultural facilitator who works with interactive, computer-based media. He has been instrumental in the growth of InterAccess; recently active as a programmer curating several web art exhibitions. Through his company, tomtom interactive, he designs interactive media spaces. As an educator he has extensive experience teaching electronic media courses to all age groups. His most recent artwork (in collaboration with Steev Morgan), an interactive installation entitled 'The Gathering Space', was shown at the Centro Nacional de las Artes in Mexico City. He just shaved his head to begin a calculus course at U of T.

cr647@torfree.net

Purpose defines the medium: I never dreamt I would witness and participate in the birth and evolution of a new medium. As an artist and person of many fascinations I try not to define my boundaries and stay open to different ideas and aesthetic perceptions. I interface with life's circumstances, relating organically as the ultimate artist of on-going reality; myself being the creator and only audience. The web can be a toy, tool or medium. I use it, and other media, in various combinations of all three. I'm interested in the actual creative process and energy of working with other people .... working through collaboration, creating a web of aesthetic perceptions, a content of various issues and artistic ideas, utilizing whatever media are at my disposal.

sasha. was born in Moscow, spending most of the summers of his younger life in the Soviet pioneer camps and the winters in a big red building in Moscow, coincidentally called 'Internat'. At 10, he knew the streets and terrorized Moscow by night. At 16, his apparently rare ability to create funny noises lead him to one of the top music institutions in Moscow. In second year the Soviet Union began to crumble and all his favorite teachers left suddenly for a better life elsewhere in the new world. Fate found him following their footsteps, eventually landing him in Toronto. He now permeates TO's activist and cultural scenes; working as a web developer for organizations such as Channel Zero, Earthroots, The Toronto Free-Net, 519 Church and others. A glimpse of his world view can be found at not.torfree.net/~sasha.

ksteele@interlog.com

Techniques: The only things you really need to know about graphics formats for the Internet (don't get baffled by browser safe palette-pushers and pixel junkies).
Approach: Bandwidth conservation is everyone's responsibilty (every little bit counts).
Content: Interactivity begins with the audience (anything else is just TV).

Kevin Steele co-founded multimedia design firm Mackerel in 1989. He has helped make almost every flavour of digital interactive media during the eight years the company swam the uncharted and sometimes treacherous waters of the new media industry. Last fall Kevin led a Mackerel team in the re-design of Canada Trust's web site , the only major project that is currently online. Currently Kevin is working on a dynamic web site for Canadian farmers, promo CD-ROMs for high-tech companies, and is thinking about getting around to new business cards and a web site.