Natives, Settlers and Missionaries

Station Rose celebrate 10 years online

It's now been ten years since Station Rose, the artistic duo of Gary Danner and Elisa Rose, first fired up a modem and went online. Let no one ever say of Station Rose that they don't know how to celebrate an anniversary.

In 1998, ten years after the actual founding of Station Rose as a "multimedia art station" in Vienna, Elisa and Gary released a book, 1st Decade, published by edition selene. Now, even as they prepare to head off to Weimar to speak at the type =radio~border=0 festival, Station Rose nods to its ten years of connectivity with a new book from the same publishing house, private://public, subtitled Conversations in Cyberspace.

You don't see the word "cyberspace" much anymore. Every decade cycles through the faddish terms swelling up like the symptoms of its current technological infatuation. Space age this, atomic that. But the 90s were mercilessly speedy, picking up and spitting out a series of prefixes -- cyber, virtual, little eBig something -- before settling on a suffix: dotcom. Which the Noughts, the 200X years, did away with immediately, as if it were the very first item on the agenda.

Station Rose are perfectly aware of all this. Stamped on the covers of both books is the declaration, "Cyberspace is Our Land." It is, as Elisa says in the conversation with Josephine Bosma in private://public, "an aggressive slogan, which everyone can understand." Maybe. When asked about the phrase "Native Multimedia Art" on the cover of 1st Decade, Gary elaborates:

Or: We were here first. Then along came the hucksters on the one side, trashing up the place with their billboard banners, one-click ordering and what not, and on the other side, the smartasses, filtering texts, throwing theorists around and generally spoiling what was left of the fun. Speaking personally -- and when it comes to Station Rose, I have to speak personally because, one, Gary and Elisa are friends, and two, whatever remains of my integrity as a journalist obliges me to mention that I worked with them many moons ago at Electric Minds, Howard Rheingold's pioneering Web-based online community (pre-Slashdot, pre-Plastic, pre-MetaAnything), and interviewed them in 1997 and again earlier this year -- having camped with both the settlers and the missionaries, I have to say, now that both camps have been rained on all season long and are looking pretty washed out, it's refreshing to hear from the natives again.

But let's first take a look at the new book. The first thing that strikes you is that it is a very nifty thing to weigh in your hand and would make for a fine eye-catching, conversation-starting pocket accessory. The second thing that strikes you is that it's got two front covers and, depending on the one you're looking at, the other one is upside down. That's because the seven conversations gathered here, selected from well over a hundred, are presented in both English and German; this is, in fact, practically two books, back to back and head to toe. Hence, the two covers.

If 1st Decade was fit for the coffee table, with its vinyl LP cover, photo album aesthetic, private://public, with its handier, more readable design, is fit for the café, the beach or bed. The conversations vary in mood and required levels of concentration. Depends on who Station Rose is talking to: media theorist and activist Geert Lovink, who sets the pace of the first conversation by raising one hot topic after another; Frankfurt alternative radio and club personalities Petra Klaus and Hans Romanov -- here, by the way, I would suggest a soundtrack, Au Ciel, the latest musical offering from Station Rose; not only can you dance to it, you can stream it and even download one track for free -- the good Doctor Bazon Brock, an artist himself who, if Telepolis were a talk show, would be introduced with the phrase "needs no introduction"; Birgit Richard, another professor focusing on art and new media, but far less given to the whimsically abstract than Brock; "media epistomologist" Stefan Weber, whose session turns out to be half lecture, half chat; similarly, the more accessible Thomas Feuerstein; and the provocative journalist Josephine Bosma, who, by turning her conversation into an interview with Gary and Elisa, gets them to tell stories of their first days online and provides the book with its straightest narrative line. For those new to Station Rose, in fact, it might be good to start with this one.

All these conversations were originally Webcast live in a series that began in January 1999 and has now exceeded over 140 sessions. Putting RealVideo through its paces and interrupted with "Multimedia Jam Sessions," these Webcasts are a long way from the day in June 1991 when, having just returned from California, Station Rose first logged into The Well via a CompuServe connection that cost between $15 and $20 an hour.

That cost meant that Elisa and Gary would zoom in, send or check email, check out to see who else was online and maybe use the Well's "Send" feature, an early precursor to instant messaging, to say hello -- and then get out. When Station Rose received a live "Send" themselves on Elisa's Amiga, there would be a flash, and they immediately decided to incorporate the effect into their performances. Just two months later, in August 1991, they performed at the New Society for Fine Art (NGBK) in Berlin, the first of a series of Gunafa Clubbings.

Howard Rheingold, a frequent fellow performer an ocean and a continent away, describes these early sessions in 1st Decade:

What those logged into the Well "over there" couldn't see, though, was what Gary describes as the almost stroboscopic effect of the series of flashes set off by their "Sends." It all seems so simple and almost naive now, the sheer exhilaration of a flash of light tripped by a tap on a keyboard half a world away. But that spark, that connection, that "first time," is the barest essence of what has excited tens of millions since. It's a thrill that's hard for most of us to even remember. Still, with so many hopes withered, with so many settlers picking up and moving on, with the missionaries all talked out, having said too often already all there is to say, this, at the very least, is what the natives, new and old alike, are left with. A spark.