From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 94 08:39:06 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Doors of Perception 2: '@HOME' Conference (Very Long)
Message-ID: <199409051538.LAA06266@pipe1.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Forwarding mail by: HRL@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Howard Ray Lawrence 814 
238 9535) on    
-------------------
  - - The original note follows - -

From: willem@mediamatic.hacktic.nl (Willem Velthoven)
Subject: Doors of Perception 2: '@HOME' Conference
Date: Mon, 05 Sep 1994 16:51:31 +0100

Doors of Perception 2: '@HOME' Conference

4+5+6 November 1994
RAI Congress Center Amsterdam
the Netherlands


*Doors of Perception* is an important meeting point for all 
those  interested in the design challenge of interactivity. The 
first conference,  in November 1993, was attended at relatively 
short notice by nearly 700  people from 20 countries.

*Aim of the conference

The 1994 conference, which is organised by the Netherlands 
Design Institute  with Mediamatic Magazine, will further 
develop discussion about culture,  context and innovation. The 
subject's importance was well put by Terry  Winograd: 'major 
leaps only happen when someone has a new insight into the
larger picture, and can escape from the old context'. That is 
the aim of  *Doors 2*.

Speakers will focus on a particular context, 'home' - as 
market, as  metaphor, and as myth. Industry has great 
expectations for home as a site  for new products, as an outlet 
for entertainment and information services,  and as a place of 
work. But when a new technology enters a culture, the  culture 
changes. What does that mean for 'home'?

*Subjects

>From the multiple perspectives of marketing, technology, 
design,  philosophy, anthropology, and psychology, speakers 
will consider the  cultural impact of technology on work and 
play, home and school, learning  and entertainment. They will 
compare the qualities of telematic space and  domestic space. 
They will talk about real nomads and telematic nomads. They 
will analyse changes to our  sense of place, both public and 
private. They will look at the psychology  of belonging - to a 
family, group, or community. They will explore the  
architecture of information, and the creation of shared 
meaning, in  virtual communities.

*Debate

The point of this debate is that uncritical assumptions, and a 
crude use of  'real world' metaphors about the home, can 
actually stifle innovation. Vast  resources are being devoted 
to digital versions of existing human  activities - 
teleshopping, video-on-demand, telecommuting; but attempts to  
create entirely new uses for the technologies have been 
unambitious, to say
the least. Doors of Perception gives equal emphasis to thinking 
and doing.  It is not a trade show - neither is it exclusive: 
chief executives and  young creatives are equally 'at home' at 
this unique event.

*The organisers

Vormgevingsinstituut / Netherlands Design Institute  Tel: +31 
(0)20 5516500  Fax: +31 (0)20 620 1031
e-mail: doors@nvi.mediamatic.hacktic.nl
Mediamatic Magazine
Tel: +31 (0)20 6266262 Fax: +31 (0)20 6263793
To receive *Doors 2 electronic newsletter* send  e-mail to: 
listserv@mediamatic.hacktic.nl  The message should mention: 
'subscribe home'

*The Speakers

*Christopher Alexander
author of 'A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction': 
After a  ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his 
colleagues at the Center  for Environmental Strucure published 
a major statement in the form of three  books which will, in 
their words, 'lay the basis for an entirely new  approach to 
architecture, building and planning, which will replace  
existing ideas and practices entirely'. At the core of his 
books is the  idea that people should design for themselves 
their own houses, streets,  and com
munities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical 
transformation of  the architectural profession) but it comes 
simply from the observation that  most of the wonderful places 
of the world were not made by architects but  by the people.

Also author of: 'The Timeless Way of Building': The theory of 
architecture  implicit in our world today, Christopher 
Alexander believes, is bankrupt.  More and more people are 
aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the  power of 
present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, 
even  afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is 
happening, because they are  afraid to seem foolish, afraid 
perhaps that they will be laughed at. Now,  at last, here is a 
coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture 
as ancient as human society itself. Christopher Alexander  
presents a new theory of architecture, building, and planning 
which has at  its core that age-old process by which the people 
of a society have always  pulled the order of their world from 
their own being.

*John Perry Barlow
studied comparative religion, has been the lyricist for The 
Grateful Dead  since 1972, is an insightful writer, and 
co-founded, with Mitchell Kapor  and Stephen Wozniak,the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF pushes  ethical and 
political issues of the new media onto the international agenda 
 - freedom of speech, privacy, intellectual property, and other 
social  consequences of a network culture.

*Alfred Birnbaum
who was born in China and raised in Japan, is a noted 
translator in  Japanese (of such authors as Murakami), an 
artist with the Kyoto-based  performance group 'Dumb Type', and 
a highly original researcher of diverse  popular phenomena in 
contemporary Japan, which he compares to deeply rooted  Asian 
cultural traditions.

*'Breaking stories, eye candy and mental muesli'  as one 
journalist described 'Doors 1', will again feature in this 
year's  conference. How is interactivity to be designed? What 
methodologies and  management skills are needed for what is, by 
definition, a  multi-diciplinary activity? A keen reader of 
conference blurbs will also  appreciate that this paragraph has 
been added at artwork stage to replace  the cv of a key 
speaker, whose name begins with B, who has de-confirmed.  But 
we'll replace him.

*Amy Bruckman
a doctoral candidate at MIT, founded MediaMOO, a text-based 
virtual reality  environment designed as a professional on-line 
community for media  researchers.For her dissertation, Bruckman 
is creating a MUD for children  called MOOSE Crossing, designed 
to be an authentic context in which kids  can learn reading, 
writing and programming. Bruckman will explain what MUDs  and 
MOOs actually are in her presentation.

*Florian Brody
who studied linguistics and computer science in Vienna, 
investigates the  relationship between computers, memory and 
identity. He worked in the  Austrian National Library on 
automation management, and was technical  director of the 
'expanded books' project at Voyager Publishing in  California, 
before founding New Media Consulting. He teaches at Vienna  
University, and he is president of the Austrian Society for 
Virtuality,  Telepresence and Cyberspace.

*David Chaum
is managing director of DigiCash, an Amsterdam-based company 
that is a  world pioneer in electronic cash payment systems. Dr 
Chaum is also chairman  of CAFE, the European Union research 
consortium investigating the technical  infrastructure and 
equipment for electronic money in Europe. He took a PhD  in 
computer science at Berkeley, taught at NYU Graduate School of 
Business,  and founded the International Association for 
Cryptological Research.

*Manuel De Landa
a New York-based artist, is also the author of 'War In The Age 
Of  Intelligent Machines'. From a vantage point at the 
intersection of chaos  theory and post-structuralism, De Landa 
described how military technology  has altered the relationship 
between humans, their machines, and  information. In his new 
book Phylum: A Thousand Years Of Non-Linear  History, De Landa 
considers the cottage-industrialisation of the world, and  the 
global spread of a 'population of firms' .

*Thomas Dolby
is a pop-star-hacker-programmer who saw in immersive virtual 
reality a new  medium for musical expression. He created the 
audio studio Headspace that  allows the user to wander round a 
classic string quartet as it plays.  Currently working with Joy 
Mountford's group at Interval Research  Corporation in 
California, Dolby is also developing an interactive version  of 
Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation which will be released 
on CDRom.

*Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
a research and design partnership based in London, explore the  
inter-relationships between industrial design, architecture and 
electronic  media. Their recent work, which has focussed on 
what they call the 'poetics  of telecommunications', includes 
the Fields & Thresholds project for the  Netherlands Design 
Institute, an investigation into communicative and  design 
implications of a 'virtual institute'.

*Lynn Hershman
is a Senior Professor at the University of California where she 
initiated  the IDEA laboratory devoted to electronic arts. 
Among her award- winning  videotapes and interactive 
installations are The Electronic Diary and  Virtual Love, the 
latter a long narrative about breaking through the screen  that 
separates us from our media-derived fantasies. Hershman is 
currently  completing a sequel, The Twisted Chord, charting the 
telephone from Bell  through to the Internet.

*Peter Lamborn Wilson
was described by Erik Davis in the Village Voice this year as 
an  'underground anarcho-Sufi scholar (whose) work explores the 
historical and  mystical dimensions of Sufism and Islamic 
heresy, as in his latest book  Sacred Drift. His surprisingly 
virulent concept/buzzword 'temporary  autonomous zones' spread 
through the computer underground to Time magazine.  His 
lectures argue for the ultimate unity of imagination and 
intellectual  investigation'.

*Patti Maes
who received her PhD in computer science at the University of 
Brussels,  researches artificial life and artificial 
intelligence, and recently  produced 'Alive', an interactive 
installation involving 'virtual pets',  whose future in the 
home she will explain to the conference.Maes has worked  at 
MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and more recently as 
an  assistant professor at MediaLab, since 1990. Her research 
focusses on the  modelling of all kinds of artificial 
intelligence 'agents'.

*William Mitchell's
new book 'City of Bits': Space, Place and Infobahn, which 
addresses central  concerns of the Home theme,will be published 
in 1995. Mitchell, who is  Professor of Architecture and Media 
Arts and Sciences, and Dean of the  School of Architecture, at 
MIT, conducts research in design theory,  computer applications 
in architecture and urban design. His other books  include The 
Reconfigured Eye which deals with the social and cultural  
impact of digitally altererd photographs .

*Mitch Ratcliffe
as editor-in-chief of the influential industry newsletter 
Digital Media, is  well-placed to distinguish between hype and 
reality, and to explain which  technologies will actually work, 
and when, on the infobahnen. He is the  co-author (with Andrew 
Gore) of Powerbook: The Digital Nomad's Guide and is  now 
completing a book on the World Wide Web which analyses the 
economic,  social and political implications of software agent 
technology.

*Jeffrey Shaw
is director of the media institute at Karlsruhe Media Centre in 
Germany.  Shaw studied architecture in Australia, and art in 
Milan and London, before  working on interactive and virtual 
space projects from a base in The  Netherlands, where he also 
taught at the Rietveld Academie. He has shown  such 
award-winning projects as TheLegible City, The Narrative 
Landscape,  and The Virtual Museum at festivals and workshops 
throughout Europe, the  USA and Japan.

*Marco Susani
is a teacher and researcher at Domus Academy, the research 
centre and  postgraduate design school in Milan. An expert on 
the design of services,  Susani explores the relationship 
between dematerialisation - for example,  of communications - 
and scenarios for a sustainable economy in which  radically 
less matter and energy are consumed. His recent work focusses 
on  conviviality - the behavioural threshold that offers one 
route for  technology to enter the home.

*Philip Tabor's
doctoral thesis at Cambridge University concerned the limits of 
'automated'  architectural design. He co-founded the Centre for 
Land Use and Built Form  Studies (now the Martin Centre), and 
the computer aided design consultancy,  Applied Research of 
Cambridge, which is now part of McDonnell Douglas. For  ten 
years a partner in Edward Cullinan Architects, specialising in 
housing,  Philip Tabor was until recently Director of the 
Bartlett School of  Architecture in London.

*Shin-Ichi Takemura
teaches anthropology, international affairs and cultural 
design, including  ethnic arts, at Touhoku University of Art 
and Design. His trans-cultural  analysis of communication 
processes , media structures and design issues  includes a 
particular emphasis on an 'ecology of body and mind'. Takemura  
is convenor of the Asian Cultural Design Forum and Human 
Ecology Round  Table. His team is also involved in planning 
such public facilities as the  proposed Eco-Aesthetic Museum.

*Pauline Terreehorst
in her recently completed book Het Boerderijmodel - 'The Farm 
Mould' -  argues that the new communication technologies may 
help transform the home  into a 'farm' again. Terreehorst also 
speculates that the re-location of  home as a focal point of 
the electronic superhighway will and foster  positive changes 
in relationships between men and women. Home played such a  
positive role before industrialisation forced people to 
separate home from  work.

*FURHTER SPEAKERS and presentations will be scheduled 
continuously between  now and the conference itself:

* SPEAKER UPDATE: Confirmed speakers at publishing date are 
Hiroshii Ishi,  and Stephen Perrella ('Architecture at the End 
of Metaphysics' studio)


*Conference Programme

Friday 4 November
08:00-10:00 Registration
10:00-12:30 Plenary
15:00-18:00 Plenary
19:00 Reception

Saturday 5 November
08:30-10:00 Breakfast Round Tables
10:00-12:30 Plenary
15:00-18:00 Plenary
19:00 Reception

Sunday 6 November
08:30-10:00 Breakfast Round Tables
10:00-12:30 Plenary
15:00-18:00 Plenary

*Breakfast Round Tables

On both 5 and 6 November, about 25 different 'breakfast round 
tables' will  be held between 08:30-10:00. Each table will 
consider a different topic or  presentation - some programmed 
in advance, others decided on the day. Many  but not all the 
discussions will be led by a speaker or a moderator. An  extra 
charge of Dfl 25 per breakfast is payable for participation. 
Register  now to participate. If that day is fully booked by 
the time of your  registration, we will book the other day and 
notify you with your  confirmation.

*Registration and hotel service

For more INFORMATION about REGISTRATION, plus details of HOTEL 
service:  Sonja van Piggelen
Tel: +31 20 61 70 390
Fax: +31 20 61 74 679
e-mail: modam@xs4all.nl

REGISTRATION FEES (in Dutch Guilders, or 'Dfl') exclude 
accomodation but  include attendance at all conference sessions 
apart from the breakfast round  tables. The fees also include 
evening receptions, morning and afternoon tea  and coffee, and 
conference documentation. The conference sells out, and places  
are limited, so please do not come without a reservation. 
Applications are  processed in order received.

*REGISTRATION FORM*

Name:
Company:
Function/Profession:
Street address:
City:
ZIP Code:
Country:

Telephone:
Fax:
E-mail:

Student card number:
School/Institution:

Date:

PLEASE MENTION WHICH NUMBER (=OPTION) YOU CHOOSE: # ...

Standard rate to 1 October
1) Excluding breakfast round tables: Dfl 575,-  2) Including 
one breakfast round table Saturday: Dfl 600,-  3) Including one 
breakfast round table Sunday: Dfl 600,-

Standard rate after 1 October
4) Excluding breakfast round table: Dfl 625,-  5) Including 
breakfast round table Saturday: Dfl 650,-  6) Including 
breakfast round table Sunday: Dfl 650,-

Student rate to 1 October
7) Excluding breakfast round table: Dfl 225,-  8) Including 
breakfast round table Saturday: Dfl 250,-  9) Including 
breakfast round table Sunday: Dfl 250,-

Student after 1 October
10) Excluding breakfast round tables: Dfl 275,-  11) Including 
breakfast round table Saturday: Dfl 300,-  12) Including 
breakfast round table Sunday: Dfl 300,-

*I HEREBY REGISTER and pay via: #...

a) Diners Club
b) Visa
c) Eurocard/Mastercard
d) American Express
e) JCB

Credit card No:
Expire Date:
Card holder's name:
Card holder's address:
Zipcode:

f) (NL only): ABN Amro 43 36 80 407 o.v.v. DoP,  of per giro 
nr. 2391 van de ABN Amro t.g.v. 43 36 80 407 o.v.v. DoP

* PLEASE SEND an invoice (you will receive confirmation and 
your ticket,  after payment of the full amount)


CANCELLATION: refund in full only if you cancel in writing by  
21 October

--
Mediamatic
Postbus 17490
1001 JL Amsterdam
vox +31 - 20 626 6262
fax +31 - 20 626 3793