Dear Be-In 8 Participants,
THANK YOU everyone who contributed! This year's Be-In was a remarkable experience. The content and venue came together beautifully. And our experimental global "netcast" worked, in spite of delays and the usual bleeding edge tech problems. In addition to the live audio and video feeds, our team of cyber-reporters posted live written reports with photos to the site. We will be organizing and uploading a bunch more of this great reportage in coming weeks, plus video and audio records of the live streams: the bands - Haunted by Waters and The Venusians, the visionaries - John Perry Barlow, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jerry Brown, R.U. Sirius and others, the poets, the blendo projections, the dancers, the demos, the digital art...you get the idea. So check back in from time to time and cruise thru the party.
WHAT JUST WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
Well, for one thing, we put together another strange/wonderful concoction of art and technology, people and ideas, coincidence and configuration. An annual one night concept-event, a high-tech jam session with new media for 7 hours. This was the 8th version of the Be-In, held each January in San Francisco during the Macworld Expo conference. Even though this year, for various reasons, we didn't have the support of major sponsors, the Be-In event horizon moved out a bit further again.
As in the past, we did our best to carry the flame of that '60s spirit to our '90s-style Be-In. Finding the right balance between "letting it happen" and following a blueprint for what has become a highly complex concert/exhibition/theater/forum. So "information-intense" that no one attendee can experience it all. So fleeting, so much coming, only to vanish in a few hours. Suddenly, banks of computers, projectors, production gear, stilts, teepees, artwork, dance troupes, congas, a couple of thousand people. Then it's over. The party is over. The people are gone. Most of the stuff is loaded out by 2:00. And the rest picked up later, in daylight.
What was that? The Be-In. See you next year.
This year, something happened. This was the coolest one since the 4th, in '92. This was something new. Very fun. It was a netcast. And the beginning of an ongoing, cyberspace Be-In.
Many of those participating in the Be-In - performing, reporting, speaking, attending, producing, whatever - have been quite accustomed to experimentation with digital media tools. Some of the truly innovative new media publishing projects, in print, video and CD-ROM, have been generated by this crowd. But this was a live netcast on the web. Of an event benefitting the Electrronic Frontier Foundation. With some new reporting/broadcasting methods in action. Here we have ex-Governor of California Jerry Brown, MONDO 2000 co-founder R.U. Sirius, futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, Wavy Gravy. Out on the net from the Be-In. Crude, brief, but often poignant interviews...broadcast LIVE, globally. These transmissions used a camcorder, an ISDN phone line, a couple of notebook computers, and RealAudio and CU-Seeme software. Low cost high-tech point-to-point planetwide reach. Available. Cheap. Now.
ALAS, A FEW DISAPPOINTMENTS TOO
Our netcast started one-half hour late. We left Ted Nelson in Sapporo, Japan and Paolo Soleri in Arizona sitting by their phones, because we didn't have the simple phone-tech together for the long-distance interviews. And our other big connection, with Timothy Leary via PictureTel from the Electronic Cafe in Los Angeles, missed due to our delays. As John Perry Barlow, the planned tele-interviewer, hurried up to the Bridge, he laughed, "If I know Timmy, he won't wait too long. He gets bored very quickly." Sure enough, when we tuned in to the EC, we found only Fiorella Terenzi, Brett Leonard and other LA cybertists gathered where the doctor had been sitting center stage for the past hour.
We arranged to do follow up interviews. But, we blew it. Reminiscent of the Fifth Be-In, when we beamed in musicians Jon Anderson and Thomas Dolby from a hotel room in London (at 6:00 in the morning their time!) via sponsor AT&Ts Picasso picture phones - without audio. One of our downfalls so far in these one day techart-jams, due to minimal "staff" (mostly volunteers), ridiculous timeframes and valiant-but-flawed planning, is neglecting our basic media forms: print ("what program?"), sound ("why can't we hear Scotty Page?'), signage ("I was here all night and didn't know there was a concert upstairs!").
THE INFINITE EXPERIENCE OF BE-IN
The Real-Time Be-In offered tele-attendees a virtual experience of the live happening. The collected pictures, written reports and audio and video clips from the evening offer a full multimedia archive of the January 11 event that can be re-experienced - again and again. Is this good? Well, we hope so.
So thanks again. Let us know what you think about this year's event, about the website, and about next year. See you at Number 9.
- Be-In 8 Producers
February, 1996
