Throughout the production process, we asked ourselves Trinh T.'s
key questions: "Who is speaking?
Who is being spoken to?" They are fundamental questions
which one must ask about any intercultural exchange. We feel
ourselves pulled to the center even though we try to transcend
the boundaries. Our access to this technology puts us in a position
of privilege. Though we like to think that our colleagues and
friends in Ghana appreciate this rendition, most will probably
never get to experience it. We acknowledge the irony of this
project, for, while we believe we are serving their interests
by presenting their culture to an international audience of thousands,
they can never see this representation themselves. We seek an
ethical ecology of technology, with
equal access for all. Master artists from all cultures deserve
to have the tools in their hands and education in the associated
knowledge. Until, or unless, we are able to achieve such an exchange,
we bring their cultural expressions to a medium which excludes
them as subjects and even more so, from access.
What is signified by the code, "World Wide Web"? We include a link to a site, "The Virtual Tourist", which features maps of Internet access throughout the world. When we first found this map on the web in June 1995, the only African country with Internet access was South Africa. The rest of the continent was an unidentified expanse of yellow. This resonated deeply with the lines written by Andruid and chanted by Francis in the piece "Tele":
| Superhighway? We got no trunk lines here.
You can't reach me, I got no telephone. |
The "World Wide Web" presents as skewed a map of shared
culture as the map from 1200A.D.,
in which a thick circular boundary is drawn around the known Christian
world, and the space outside of it is empty. Christ stands above,
and monsters patrol the borders. Nine months later, while preparing
this article, we return to the Virtual Tourist map and the change
is minimal: Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Benin are now filled in (with
sites we have not been able to connect to), as are a few countries
in East Africa. A disproportionate number of countries remain
blank.
Copyright 1996 by Creative Media Cauldron.
All rights reserved.