THE ALULA DIMENSION
Growing like a weed in the media, pixel by pixel, hiccup by hiccup, comes AlulA. She's a twisty, twisting place, swollen with wet tubers, numerous passageways, and supple beings. AlulA's architecture was grown by a flock of giant slugs who inhabit the outer perimeter, pushing forever out into the darkness. Humanoids like Zeep and Zoota hang out amongst the hypercuboid structures, sucking liquids from the gentle wells. Sometimes they debate whether or not AlulA is all there is, and whether the matrix of chambers they live in is icky, slimey, or maybe just sensitive.Whenever the denizens of The AlulA Dimension get tangled into polymers of tension, they resort to an assortment of ethical devices -the Bionic Codes. These are invoked in sinuous Alulian rituals like the "Slurm," and the "Web Jam." 
It is very likely that there is a link into The AlulA Dimension through Brooklyn, for occasionally the Bionic Codes leak out into the streets and appear on T-shirts, websites, and projections in Nightclubs and Museums. Sometimes things from Brooklyn leak into AlulA. It is rumored that strange parties take place there where people climb all over the hypercuboids and say scurrilous things. Sometimes cigarette butts get into the well of clear water adding further proof that humans are finding a way in.
Zeep, above, is hanging out in one of the chambers of the AlulA Dimension. Then again, this may in fact be Cynthia Rector from the East Village, New York. Zeep couldn't be bothered with the ambiguities as she is very busy confronting one of her toys.
SLUGS OF ALULA
VENTINGS
THE BIONIC CODES
"Ebon Fisher's "Bionic Codes" are like whirling digital dervishes let loose in a psychic field unleashing jolts of energy while gently caressing my soul to a relative calm." -Michael Lane, Publisher, Monk Magazine, 1995
Longing for the voices to cease, for the poof of all that prods and taunts us, we can neither block nor escape. Antagonised information only multiplies. In the foam of accelerated interconnection we fix no positions. Waves of electronic culture shall lap against our skin and bleed into our minds. Bolts of local and international thought shall ricochet through our web of tongues. And the waves shall gather into a furious noise. In the midst of such a vast turbulence our only recourse may be to ride our feral culture into small rivulets of illusory coherence.
And may we ride in a variety of ways, with no dominant method. May we merge with these fleeting illusions and form a sea of media organisms, mongrel codes, flexible semi-structures, and little gleams of symbiotic cheer.
We are witnessing the birth of a vast bionic culture, a nervous spirit squeezed between nature and technology. It is neither the real world nor cyberspace, but the interaction between the two. Bionic culture is a howling, sentient lubricant, growing, node by screaming node, somewhere between our bodies and the machine. It is becoming us.
VIRTUAL MORALITY
In a swirling confluence of fingers, neurons, and electricity, we witness a fundamental trust played out. We upload our tender memories into cyberspace, and download new memories from it. But the process may not always be conscious. Behaviour exercised in a symbolic fashion may unwittingly become a rehearsal for action in the everyday world. (Regimented schools are rehearsals for factory work. Boot camp is a rehearsal for warfare. The computer game, "Doom," can be a rehearsal for unbridled paranoia. It has already given this author terrible dreams). The crisis is this: the plethora of business-oriented software, and fight-oriented computer games, has begun to encode a rather narrow emotional bandwidth into legions of addicted users. Granted, the internet provides a new realm of open dialogue, and not all games follow the kill-or-be-killed formula. But for most of the top-selling games and applications, options for power-sharing, environmental sustenance, non-violent conflict resolution, and quiet reflection, are not on the menu.
In an effort to help expand the moral vocabulary within the wilderness of cyber-culture, I have codified a series of moral operations in the manner of circuitry. I am not inventing a language so much as attempting to liberate one which resides deep in the center of our scientific culture.
Although in the process of molding these codes I draw upon numerous spiritual and romantic traditions, it must be said that they are not meant to be prudish or to invoke sin, that abusive mind-bender of the middle ages. Rather they are fertilized by wild invention, and a need, in this cynical age, to unleash some positive disturbances. It must also be stressed that my Bionic Codes are not rules. They are as optional as any computer codes. They are a flexible system of social algorithms, problem-solving devices, to be utilised alone or in combinations. As the code above suggests, consider probing "beyond closed matrix." Leap free of this very pedagogy before you, and cultivate your own bionic conscience.
BIONIC POP On another level the codes are an experiment taking place in the petri dish of popular culture. Is it possible, I wonder, to "grow" these gentle mnemonic structures in the electronic media and the collective mind? Can morals be considered memes? Are they media organisms? Are the codes more alive by virtue of their electronic reproducibility -or their biological reproducibility via memory? Doesn't it require the coupling of a human and a computer to trigger a copy? And can any of these codes, in this bionically sexy manner, help subvert the new "Church," the vast tangle of corporations, museums, and advertising agencies, which manufacture our popular visions?
((Is that tangle too tangled to even worry about? What about the huge imbalance of power that is emerging in this union-weak era? The world's 358 billionaires have a net worth equal to the bottom 45 percent of the world's population -and a vast number of those 45 percent are quite thoroughly hungry. Hasn't the pyramid become too top-heavy? Shall we wait for the crash, or consciously induce a redistribution?))
And would these codes be considered "Third World" media since they're not generated by Bill Gates, Ted Turner, or Rupert Murdoch? And now that anarchy has become a blue jeans ad and Madison Avenue has stolen every sacred, anti-establishment hex out of the churning minds of surfers and hip-hoppers, how can traditional models of liberation subvert anything, not to mention the candy-coated libertarian selfishness of corporate culture? (You with the luxury car, I'm talking to you).
Instead of an emphasis on freedom as privatization, or its opposite, decadent disengagement, can we consider a third kind of freedom? How about one modeled after life-forms: FLUID SYMBIOSIS. Isn't that more ecologically sophisticated? Couldn't we nurture a complex variety of fluid, transformative agents within the system -within the bionic system of overlapping social, ecological, and electronic webs? Can we imagine the greatest expression of human freedom to be the cultivation of sustainable bionic ecologies? Human rights networks? Nonlinear hyper-unions? Symbiotic media viruses? Small, flexible businesses? Communal media rituals? Media-literate children? Hybrid families? Bionic love?
VIRTUAL SPIRIT Although my Bionic Codes allude to values I sincerely believe in, some of these codes are impossible to actualize. Like many ideals, they operate as theological teasers. They are an attempt to open a dialogue, and infuse bionic morality, and bionic spirit, with a necessary mad passion.
In communal media we breed our gods.
-Ebon Fisher-
A FEW CODES
EBON FISHER
alula@interport.net
I am NOT a cult leader, and I don't believe in art. And I don't say this to annoy anybody, but to build a soft shell around the only thing I really do have which is a nervous system, seemingly.
In any case, I'm taking Ruth's suggestion to transcend my puny mind ...which leads me to that which I think is really pungent:GOD is sleeping.
SCIENCE is sleeping.
ART is sleeping.
POP is sleeping.
What is awake is this perverse conflux of presences, THIS CONFLUX,
In other words, culture is about presence, about meeting. It is the living experience of numerous organisms and mechanisms working in concert. It is not about "important" objects, "significant" films, "relevant" issues. It is about an active coming together into undefinable entities larger than ourselves. Culture is an ecology of circumstances and emotions. It cannot be defined, objectified, elevated, or demoded -only participated in. Hence the divinity in communal rituals -of any persuasion. As a theoretical pillow for my swollen creative endeavours, cultural ecology is a bed of flowers. In that "culture" and "ecology" are terms from the very different worlds of art and science, we end up with a very kinky hybrid notion. This may not be so disturbing. Let us roll in that bed. Let us absorb terms from the sweat glands of every mental animal. Let us sink deep into the surrounding loam of metanutrients, inducing severe and continuous quasi-consciousness.
-Ebon Fisher-
"An artist like Ebon Fisher sees himself not as part of the art world but as part of something both much larger (the social, economic, political, ecological whole world) and more intimate (namely day to day existence in the neighborhood). His art expresses personality and emotion and yet he also seeks to transcend the insular topos of the bohemian artist..." -Jonathan Fineberg, Art Historian, Univ. of Illinois, 1993
In 1981 Fisher started spraying diagrams of neurons in Pittsburgh. This lead to other graffiti in Pittsburgh, Cambridge, and Boston -molecular diffusion, cell division, human reproductive anatomy -all of which has lead him to other kinds of guerilla science in nightclubs, handouts, faxes, videos, and his current series of media rituals and Bionic Codes. As an art student in 1981 he began studying computer programming, and to explore various methods of photomechanical reproduction -contorting and amplifying the diagram culture of scientists.
In order to understand the monkeys who generate "science," he went on to study media and meaning systems at MIT's Media Lab and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. In 1985 he began teaching a course on the creative uses of media at the Media Lab on its very first semester, and continued the course for two years.
The four month incubation of "Organism" was nurtured by a number of very active Brooklyn artists: David Brody, Colin Crane, Daniel Carello, Karen Cormier, David Dienes, Robert Elmes, Ebon Fisher, Yvette Helin, Anna Hurwitz, Jeff Gompertz, Gustavo, Dan McKereghan, Jessica Nissen, Gene Pool, James Porter, Kevin Pyle, Megan Raddant, and Jon Rubin. Numerous others came later to flesh out the creature. (Send email for a full list of the 120 collaborators.)
"For 12 hours, more than 2,000 people pushed into an abandoned mustard factory to see the work of 120 artists, featuring everything from exploding watermelons to performers rapelling down silos."
-Melissa Rossi, NEWSWEEK
Fisher's projects have appeared in Boston/Cambridge at The Rat, The Channel, Harvard, MIT, and The Institute for Contemporary Art; in Koln, Germany, at Kolnishcher Kunstverein (via "Blast"); at The Krannert Art Museum of the University of Illinois; and in New York at Keep Refridgerated, El Sensorium, The Limelight, The Kitchen, Gargoyle Mechanique, the Sandra Gering Gallery (via "Blast"), Exit Art, Test-Site, and Downtown Community TV. Fisher's codes, installations, and rituals have been discussed in The New York Press, New York Magazine, Wired, KGB Magazine, The Drama Review, Newsweek, and a recent Prentice Hall book, "Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being," by Jonathan Fineberg.
