Press Release for “The Transmission” (1 December 1992)
(Item #D11) (transcription)

KEVIN BEGOS PUBLISHING, INC.

Agrippa – the transmission

When did you last hear Hopalong Cassidy on his NBC radio program? When did you last read to your children around a campfire? Have you been sorry that your busy schedule prevented a visit to the elders mud hut in New Guinea, where legends of times past are recounted? Have you ever looked closely at your telephone cable to determine exactly how voices and images can come out of the tiny fibers?

On Wednesday, December 9, 1992 Agrippa – a book of the dead will be broadcast to dozens of sites around the world, all at the same moment.

This global fireside story hour will, of necessity, be a digital mutation of the original Dennis Ashbaugh / William Gibson project, a fragment presented in a form radically different from the usual ways we experience literature and art. Text and images excerpted from the book will be fed to museums, apartments, streetcorners, and various digital outposts, all via fibre optic and modem lines. This event will be an evolution of the most basic oral tradition of storytelling, via the computer/cyberspace world. Some electronic aspects will be captured by computer hackers, bootlegged, mutated further, or perhaps forgotten in a desk drawer to become an anonymous puzzle, of interest only to future anthropologists and linguists.

Agrippa – the transmission aims to go far beyond previous global conceptual events, and hasten a new form of tribal storytelling. Words and images, location, language, and weather will become equal parts of the experience. And high technology, built on precision and control, will be used in a manner that is certain to go out of control.

Agrippa – the transmission should in no way to confused with the published version of Agrippa. The book is an art object with weight, smell, texture, and the charm and weakness of paper, ink, cloth, and composite plastics. The transmission will be counterpoint, telling something else, another aspect of the story…

The transmission is available to a limited number of sites. Current locations include the ornate townhouse of the Americas Society in New York City, a streetcorner storefront on the lower east side, The Michael Carlos Museum in Atlanta, the Kitchen in NYC, a sheep farm on the Australian outback, and others. For more information, and a technical sheet detailing hardware requirements for the event, please contact:

Kevin Begos Jr. 1411 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021
Phone/Fax
212 650 9324
posted by editor on 09.06.05 @ 10:26 am | Comments Off on Press Release for “The Transmission” (1 December 1992)
(Item #D11) (transcription)