A fax installation curated by Lilian A. Bell

Renshaw Gallery, Linfield College, McMinnville, OR, USA
September 30th to October 25th, 1996

The installation "MEGALITHS & OFFICE MACHINES" was a collaborative fax and internet event with transmissions from 95 participants in 17 countries and 6 continents. Responding to a theme that explored the relationship between rocks, tools and information technology, their visuals and texts told us that the stone is a gate to our silicon dreams, with its own memory acting as a messenger of the universe. Here alchemy combines ancient ruins with faxoliths and tele-stones into building blocks of the future, while meteorites harbor DNA, energy and pebble goddesses.

Mounted on keyboard sized stepping stones, the images encircled the gallery, surfing stone to stone, through cliff notes of monuments, landscapes and transposed marks with mythological beings. These icons, with their references to cosmic levels of reality and boulders as both obstacle and opportunity, reflect the paradox of our existence: within these strange states of equilibrium are links between our spiritual and technological environments at the intersection of art, science and philosophy.

Out of the ditch, into the gallery, a site briefly occupied. Has the event occurred, or has it yet to begin? From among the ruins of ancient stones to the newly built sites of cyberspace: dead paper, still life and tablets of stone. Step by step, we are all linked together as inputs of energy dissolve a closed system to create an open one. Near-to and far-from EQUILIBRIUM. Help us create a new state of BALANCE, particle to particle, one step at a time.

Explore the relationship between yesterday's and today's technology. In the development of communication from clay tablets to the world wide web will the computer outlast the megalith? Is any technology really obsolete? Our journey from megaliths to office machines and cyberspace is a time compression of paradoxical extremes. The former represent permanence, and indeed still stand, exuding states of power within circles of stone while absorbing new marks of graffiti and lichen. The latter offers an impermanence of swirling electrons and shifting images, as electronic alchemists distill thoughts that evolve as ideagraphs and connect mind to mind. Whether you are tapping out code on clay or keyboard, the intent is the same: the mark making of communication. What we do today is coded into the symbolism for the future.