Letter from the Editors

Transitions: Letter from the Editors

A transition is a period of time in which something is not necessarily any one thing, and is on its way to becoming something different—a time of incubation, or a time of decomposition. ATA, having just celebrated its 20th anniversary in December 2004, is necessarily, like everyone else in our progressive culture, in a period of transition. The mission of ATA remains the same, but the language and tools have changed. Since the founding of ATA in 1984, the nature of media has changed considerably. At the time, video art was still an emerging art form and television was still the leading form of broadcast media. Since then, video recording and editing technology has evolved from analog to digital, and network television has morphed through several stages of infrastructure—from electromagnetic broadcast, to cable, to satellite to fiber optic. Consumers have been forced to keep up with the times by updating their equipment (and relationship to the equipment) at every new step along the way. Even so, communication tools, in their various guises, have become ubiquitous. More than ever, individuals (of means) can be found with a laptop, PDA and/or cell phone. It is near impossible to get away from communication tools. But that doesn't mean that the content of communication, whether person-to-person, or in mass communication, has evolved accordingly. It seems that damn near everyone has a website for something or other these days and on any given urban street you will find 85% of the people gabbing on their cell phone—but what kind of information are these people really transmitting? Have you listened to any of those street corner cell phone conversations? How different, really, is the standard website on the internet from an advertisement in a magazine?

The ATA webzine was founded two years ago with the mission of providing a new communication platform to media artists. Not only is it our idea to document the work and ideas of media artists, but also to push the boundaries of communication media. This fourth issue of the ATA webzine, "Transitions," looks at the elusive and changing nature of things. The contributions range from the topics of culture, identity, economics, psychology, and visual interpretation. By coincidence or fate, it turned out that each of the contributions elicited strong points of connection to other contributions in the issue. There is an invisible, conceptual infrastructure which runs through the issue like an underground labyrinth. This should become apparent as you make your way through it. This issue provides a multi-panelled lens through which the nature of the internet and those who use it can be viewed.