status quo
the oudeis news

The February 1997 First Edition

February 1997

Everything Changes
"One can never bathe in the same river twice", said Plato because the water flows past and so the river is constantly changing. Not to compare it to a river, but our website is changing, too / by Georg Leyrer

February brought good news and new ideas...

Plato´s Cave as a simile for the representation of our ideas in our new web sites brings some (far fetched?) Greek culture to this edition...

Oudeis´ Odyssey for money brings ... praise.

Public Internet access and cultural events at t0.

Computer and culture currently combine inCreasingly.

Plato continued from thereon and formed his philosophy. He found that the world is but a shadow, without reality. What we see and hear is not what the world is really like at all, but made up by our senses, little more than imagery. ”Behind” that and impossible to percept is the world as it really is, the noumen or the ”Idea”. This is illustrated best by Plato´s Cave, where tied prisoners are sittting in a cave with their faces turned to the back wall of it. They do not see anything but the shadows on the wall of the cave, the shadows of the prison guards sitting around the fire place at the entrance. What little the prisoners can percept they take for reality, as they will never be able to see what the world outside the cave really looks like.
The noumen of Oudeis - A World Wide Odyssey, i.e. what it really is, is the creative process through which it is formed. It is the discussions on the three lists and the MOOudeis meetings. Oudeis is constantly changing, too, whenever anyone comes up with a good idea and the group takes it up and works with it. So, little by little, more stones are added to the mosaic of the original idea until the picture of it will be perfect and the performances will show the result of the progress to an international audience in RL and via the Internet.
But another important part of Oudeis is this progress itself. This project tries to break new grounds on international collaboration via the Internet. This is documentated not only by our newspaper, which gives news on Oudeis and articles dealing with computer arts, but also by our websites. The initial concept was put into the net by the first team of Oudeis and updated ever since. Things which were added to the concept were also included in the websites, making them grow just like the project.
Recently, though, the need for a complete restructuring of our websites grew because of a sum of changes and developments. A choros was added, giving the Internet audience the possibility to comment on the play. Furthermore, the stages for the performances are beginning to get fixed and so a reassigning of the tasks which will have to be performed to ensure the
performances can take place became necessary. Oudeis Vienna created an Organigram showing this distribution of tasks and opening it to discussion. Many more little things and adaptions of all kinds had to be included. So now the result of this restructuring process is available in the net. 
Approximately 35 new websites illustrate the progress Oudeis has gone through since the first sites were put up. A new net structure tries to make the use of the pages easier to the casual surfer. The pages are divided into three subcategories (The Arts of Oudeis, Technical Oudeis and Organising Oudeis) which mirror the respective mailing lists. Like the shadows on the wall of Plato´s Cave, these pages try to give an impression of what Oudeis really is about, well aware of the necessary shortcomings of trying to represent a process by static and set web pages. 
To make it clear that our work is in progress, the complete old web structure was retained and is still accessible.
 So, comparisons can be made and the progress be judged, which will be of interest even after the performances will have taken place. Scholars, teachers and students will find crucial data on the mechanisms of international cooperation and theater in the Internet which our team explored first during making the idea of Oudeis reality.
Visit the new sites at http://iguwnext.tuwien.ac.at/˜oudeis.

Unfortunately Interesting
On ist Odyssey for sponsors and money, Oudeis was presented to many companies which deal with computers or communication technics. Sadly, though, most of them rejected sponsoring our project for various reasons. Monika Wunderer went to ask the person responsible for sponsoring in one of the companies we contacted for the reasons of the rejection and about the situation of sponsorship in Austria.

Status Quo: Brigitte Herdlicka, as the sponsoring interests of Kapsch lie in visual  art you had to reject giving support for the production of Oudeis - a World Wide Odyssey. You did this with the words ”It is the most interesting project I was offered to support”. What prompted this statement?
Brigitte Herdlicka: This project uses a new medium for making theater, which was, as far as I know, never used in this form before. Both parts can and will reap the benefits of it, even if it turns out that this is not the right platform for this purpose! One cannot be in a position to judge that before it has been courageously tried, so we need innovative projects like this.
SQ: What do you think of the worldwide aspect of Oudeis?
B. H.: I see a possibility to open the new media to a culturally interested audience. Especially in Austria people interested in art show a great fear of the Internet. These people might know the Internet only for providing information and are only familiar with cultural aspects outside the net. For the further development of the media it is important to cut down some barriers. I see the count of this project on my own doorstep. 
SQ: Cultural sponsorship in Austria - do you think this has a future here?
B. H.: There is a social responsibility for Austrian companies to support art in addition to the governmental supply. A company has to establish an alliance that points to the outside. But for sure the situation is not going to get easier.
SQ: What about the money a company invests in sponsorship? Which profit does it get of it?
B. H.: Sponsoring does not save the firm any investment into advertising. It has to be used as an additional means of communication with our target group. That is a point a company has to regard in their sponsoring concept, to avoid probable disappointment. It has to make sure that the sponsoring project fits into its usual way of communicating and maybe decide to form longer lasting relationships with artists.
SQ: Did you notice an increase of requests conferring financial support of artists recently?
B. H.: During the last years I got more and more applications for support. I get from 300 to 350 per year now (not to count some nebulous faxes I get from now and then). The increasing use of sponsoring in Austria results on the one hand from the financial situation of the public hand, on the other hand from promotions of innovative ways of sponsoring. A good example is the Maecenas price. Yet, I think that if the economic situation gets worse, sponsoring investments might be skipped first by the companies.
SQ: Can you compare Austrian sponsorship to American sponsorship? Did it become more popular in Austria because of having an American model?
B. H.: For Austria I can’t see the American model leading the way in this case. I think this would be not typical for the Austrians. Here, sponsoring has it’s own strategies and ways to go.
SQ: Thank you for the interview.

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Contact us at
oudeis@iguwnext.
 tuwien.ac.at

A theaterproject that shows Odysseus´ journey all around the world on RL stages and one Cyberstage - at the same time, connected via the Internet. Work in progress. 
Scheduled for Oct. 16, 1997.

A Monthly Internet Publication providing background information, news and links concerning the progress of 
oudeis. 
A World Wide Odyssey.
Responsible for the contents: Monika Wunderer and Georg Leyrer

kis.productions
 1150 Vienna, Austria, EUROPEHolochergasse 34-34a tel. (++43) 1/982 95 25 fax. (++43) 1/983 49 35
 mailto:kispro@ping.at

Public Internet Access
Since March 17, 1995, the Institute for New Culture Technologies t0 offers public Internet-WWW access in Vienna / by Monika Wunderer

Computer Culture Calender

 Their innovative attempt to provide public access is groundbreaking here. And beside their Public Internet Terminals and the t0 WWW Server Public Netbase also houses various artistic projects and a forum for theoretical discussion. 
You are invited to visit http://www.t0.or.at for more detailed information. 
On February 28th 1997 they opened their new buero in Viennas MuseumQuartier in the presence of Peter Lamborn Wilson and Viennas Vice Mayor Laska with a grand opening party. 
Public Netbase Media˜Space shows how to successfully link culture, youth and new communication technologies.
•	
Rick Sack´s Kafka play MetaMOOphosis sees its grand opening on March 12, 1997 in the ATHEMOO.
•	Our very own Twyla Mitchell-Shiner premieres her play A Place For Souls, also in the ATHEMOO. Dates are set from March 18-20, 1997.