Abstract

The “Open Electronic Book” critiques the notion of library and museum, creates an archive of different memories and many voices, and makes new histories possible by soliciting community involvement. “The Open Electronic Book” is an Interactive Computer artwork at three public places:

1.  an urban centre
2.  a college and
3.  a virtual site, on the world wide web

These sites are: discursive sites for gathering and presenting oral histories about a about a specific culturally diverse urban community; a consideration of different personal histories, memories, cultures; a process of making visible transparencies of meaningful articulations of presence and absences of cultural formations, of cultural mapping with meaning, of many complexities of aesthetic political and critical connections to the built environment of the urban space in the context of planning for urban and waterfront development. “The Open Electronic Book” is process — cultural situations — cultural articulations — construction of the image — transcription — possible text — possible space possible articulation for different cultural moments — spatial definition – organize text and Image – political, social, economic space/time manipulation — cultural space – public space – necessity of finding connection between place and cultural event – make visible cultural mapping – complex cultural situations — spatial definitions.

• Betty Beaumont (CA/US), born in Toronto, Canada in 1946, is an American intermedia artist, and planner whose work encompasses installation, film, video, photography, environmental projects, text and electronic imaging. After studying at the University of California at Berkeley, she began showing widely in the United States and Europe in the early 1970s. Her work is marked by deep-seated social and ecological concerns, especially evident in “Ocean Landmark Project” (1980), an underwater garden (and active fishing ground) of 17,000 bricks Beaumont cast from 500 tons of recycled coal fly-ash deposited 40 miles outside New York Harbor; “A Night In Alexandria… The Rainforest… Whose Histories Are They Anyway…” (1989), a 35 foot long wall of warehouse shelving with rolling library ladder, charred remnants of over two hundred books Beaumont treated and burned, and an 18 minute LED scanning text detailing the implicit genetic loss of the rainforest. Beaumont, a resident of New York City since 1973, has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; UC Berkeley; SUNY Purchase; and Hunter College (NYC). Her many group exhibitions include “Fragile Ecologies” (1992) at the Queens Museum in New York. She has had solo shows in England, Scotland, Sweden, Holland, and the US.