Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
maybe it was more about having extra space for visitors to SF! but I
met them all through the well. 
  

    
Now that I think about it, I met a few Well-folk because Debbie
played host and then would invite us to brunch.

When traveling, my Well connections often make for special
opportunities.  One visit to Paris included finally meeting
'invisible friends' from Belgium, Austria and Berkeley.  On a trip
to New Mexico, a Well-artist and book designer arranged for me to
use the guest apartment in her apartment building. At my last visit
to London I finally got to meet <miguel> who turns out to be a
fabulous museum companion. (Several months after the pandemic hit,
we launched virtual museum visits on Zoom that have turned out to be
far more interesting than I had expected.) 

Engagement on the Well can be almost seasonal for some people, with
people coming and going in their own rhythm.  In one of the active
periods of the <arts.> conference, a group in SF got together
regularly. (I can still remember the tasty vegetarian posole that
<verve> made during his residency at the Headlands Center for the
Arts.)  

Then there is the photographic self portrait that <tnf> made in the
window of a Palo Alto gallery where I had a show several years ago -
a photo that he may have used to publish some of his music.  That
must count for something. 
  

    
I have met up with well people around the world! South Africa,
Japan, Germany, Hungary, Australia.
  

    
I remembered right - this is the photo I mentioned for David's 'Solo
Electric' recording.
  

    
This photo right?

<https://davidgans.bandcamp.com/album/solo-electric>
  

    
Thanks, Debbie. I forgot to add the link.  
  

    
Ah, it's so cool to hear about all of this! And I love your
description of engagement with the WELL as "seasonal," Chris --
something that struck me when reading about the WELL was how it
seemed organically integrated into a lot of user's lives, and that
makes sense that different people would have different rhythms of
engagement with the space. But it's also really cool to hear how it
opened up different experiences around the world for you, that it
really isn't a space limited to the internet. Have any of you had
periods away from here and then come back (and if so, what brought
you back), or have you engaged with people on here consistently
since you first joined?
  

    
For me the Well supports/enhances real-world engagement.  It is not
a substitute for or compensation for the real world.

One example that comes to mind is being able to follow along the
path with someone as they enter a Zen monastery and undertake years
of practice - and then attending their ordination ceremony and
taking a few photographs of that ceremony to share with those unable
to make it.
  

    
I have been here consistently since 1993, back in the time of modems
and paying by the minute and learning unix to navigate around. It is
pretty wild to know some people here that long. A lot has changed
over that time.
  

    
Have you ever tried procreate or other digital art tools, Bix? Do
you ever take photos and then try out different colors digitally?
  

    
I have to say that I wouldn't be a playwright if it was from ongoing
encouragement from <soukup> and <brady>. They were both involved in
PlayGround (which I learned about through The WELL) and when I joined they
both took me under their wings. It was -- and still is -- great. So many
people on The WELL are involved in performance of some kind I've learned a
lot from them.

But I gotta say part of what is compelling to me about your paintings about
the early online world in the Bay Area, Bix, is how it seems to capture a
sense of connectedness and friendship -- and forgive me - femininity --
which is not a concept I often think about. There's nothing cool, glassy, or
metallic about the images, -- for me they're soft and rich and sociable --
and that really gets at the WELL and my WELL pals for me.

So I'd love to hear more about your experience as a young, woman artist. And
also about the cosy vibe in a lot of your art.
  

    
I’ve definitely had “fallow” periods on the WELL - I’m just coming
off of one, thanks to a gentle nudge by (chrys) - but I have been a
member since (Bast!) 1990, and it’s very much like my online home
town.
  

    
I really like the painting I Erased the Image and Began Again, that
you posted on instagram. I love the echo with Erased de Kooning
Drawing.
  

    
I confess to having repeatedly visited the Makeroom page referred to
in the introduction to this conversation and while I can appreciate
the images for what they are, I am unable to grasp the cyberspace
connection. It isn't necessary, of course, as the images stand quite
handsomely on their own. I wonder though, if I am missing something.
This line in the accompanying text, in particular brings me to a
question:

"...taking as a starting point the sensory metaphors utilized by
early computer users."

What sensory metaphors were you pointing to there? 
  

    
Ah, I think that's a little bit of a typo on the gallery's part --
what I was mostly looking at were spatial metaphors, but I suppose
"sensory" also works in that the spatial metaphors might denote some
particular kind of sensory experience (that you might see/hear/feel
particular sensations when in a specific place). So what I was
looking at, for the 2021 paintings, was writing or records where
cyberspace (broadly, or pockets within it like the WELL) was
described in terms of objects and spaces from the real world (for
example, as a vehicle, or as a letter on the kitchen table, etc.).
And I would actually agree that, on the surface, "cyberspace"
doesn't seem to be particularly present in the image, in large part
because what I was curious about was taking those descriptions of
cyberspace and grounding them back again in the real world, and
specifically in sites around the Bay Area. This in large part
stemmed from a desire to better understand the relationship between
"tech" and the Bay, because by the time I was really conscious of it
when growing up, it often felt like a largely antagonistic one. But
in reading about the early internet, I saw how people seemed to
experience it, as Evy just said, as a space of real warmth and
connectedness (and as many of you have just described, as a space
that enhanced your engagement with the real world -- in a symbiotic
relationship with it, and as something that generated a real
richness of experience). And so, back to the sensory question, I
suppose I wanted to capture some of that warmth.
  

    
What you say takes me back to experiences that for me had less to do
with cyberspace and more with just imagining the future we wished
for.  It was reading Co-Evolution Quarterly and encountering J.
Baldwin, Anne Herbert, Wendell Berry, Katy Butler and many others.  
It was listening to KPFA. It was wandering around Berkeley and
stumbling on a rehearsal with Lou Harrison and Kronos Quartet. The
extraordinary happened all the time and never became ordinary. 

There, you have kicked off a burst of memories.  
  

    
Yes to Chris’ point about The Well enhancing real engagement, moreso
in the past couple of years.

Chris is as stimulating and intelligent an art colleague as one
could find. As we’ve expanded the museum visit group a little it’s
become richer with Well colleagues.
  

    
(Apologies, a late reply…)
  

    
Chrys, Bix, I think part of the reason I'm so fascinated by Bix's approach
is I recently wrote a comedy about teaching on line where you see all the
characters in their own homes while they're on Soon, obviously a parody of
Zoom. Part of what make the online world so fascinating to me is not the
idea (forgive me, Barlow) of cyberspace -- but the kind of deep connection
we have in our homes while we're connecting with people all over the world.

In fact, there's away that connection makes the here and nowness of my own
in the moment sensory experience more alive. My desk, my cup of tea, the
throw on the rocking chair, the plants in the window, the books on the shelf
even as I'm reading something about Covid in Marin, or theatre in Chicago,
or others deeply personal experience with triumphs, illness, new kids, aging
parents (or being an aging parent) etc.  Your work gets at that for me.

A little drift here:  Steve Silberman just posted an old WELL poster on
Twitter and it was interesting hearing old WELLtrons who serviced in
response taking abou the warmth of their experience -- and of course there
was also <tnf> saying, "I learn something from it every day."
  

    
It's so lovely to hear all of these reflections!

I think that line of thought is so interesting, Evy, of how
connecting online ties into the physical space that we're occupying
when we're logging on -- what the relationship between our private
lives and the online world is, and how those boundaries have maybe
shifted over the course of the pandemic. Did the restriction of IRL
activities at the start of the pandemic change your relationship to
the WELL? I know someone mentioned virtual museum visits together,
but were there other things that changed? 
  

    
SingThings were put on pause.  SingThings were an irregular
gathering in the SF Bay Area hosts by wonderful Wellfolk. Musicians
and non-musicians gathered to play and sing. A Potluck event.  
  

    
I know that at one point different conferences were ZOOM because people
needed a deeper hit of each other.  David, Kayo, Reet and I hosted one for g
beat and it was fun to see who showed up and what a bunch of beatles fans
mostly stuck at home would talk about face-to-face. Other conferences Zoomed
a bit as well -- some still do, but I think it was a phase.

I found myself online more than usual and posting more than usual, needing
more of the ground that WELL provides.  I admit it, one of the things I like
about the WELL is knowing there are all these discussions going on -- the
Books conference for example or media or  . . . and I don't have to
participate -- or even lurk, I just like knowing people are hanging out,
talking.  But with the pandemic I definitely showed up a little bit more and
threw in my two cents every once in a while.

And I've definitely missed people who I usually see face to face and for two
years only saw on the WELL but thank god for the WELL.
  

    
That makes sense to me -- when the pandemic first hit, I found
myself wishing I already had places to join in on conversations,
etc. or participate in some kind of social life. Instead, I pretty
much spent all the time I would normally be with friends at home,
making paintings!
  

    <scribbled by jonl Mon 18 Apr 22 08:31>
  

    <scribbled by jonl Mon 18 Apr 22 08:32>