Electronic Neighborhood, ITP's interactive television show, goes out three times a week on Manhattan's Time-Warner cable system (Channel 37, MWF, 7pm). Essentially a multimedia bulletin board that cable subscribers need no new hardware to join, the show is about exploration. In its current incarnation, that means exploration of an animated green world studded with iconic "topic areas." By dialing the phone, a viewer can log on as pilot for all of Manhattan (only one pilot is allowed at a time, the rest of the viewers watch his or her explorations). The touch-tone keypad serves as a navigational device while the caller steers around the world.
By steering into a particular icon, the pilot sees whatever electronic files have been deposited there by other viewers: graphics, QuickTime movies, full-motion video, sound bites, documents in Hypercard and Macromedia Director. Current areas include the Buddhist Temple, whose statues are repositories for zen-inspired videoclips and prose; the Poet- tree, where each item deposited adds a leaf to the blossoming branches; God; Sex; and something that might be called Tough Questions (icon: a guy beating his head on a brick wall), wherein a perplexed O'Sullivan asks from the depths of television-mediated cyberspace, "Why are we here?"
ITP's answer to this not entirely rhetorical question is, according to program Chair Red Burns, "to find ways to reverse the flow of information - we want to see what communications frameworks can be designed to encourage users to contribute content. And underneath all this is the program's credo: to demystify the technology." ITP: +1 (212) 998 1889. Electronic Neighborhood, 721 Broadway, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10003.
ELECTRIC WORD
Ubiquitous Computing in Action
Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas
The Next Big Thing: Live Picture
Interactive Neighborhood TV
