I N T E R N A T I O N A L T E L E T I M E S ***** * * ** * * *** **** * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** ** * * * **** * ** * * *** * * * * * * * * * * * *** * * *** * * ¥ Vol. 3 No. 1 January 1994 ¥ ------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Features -- SLEEPING WITH ELEPHANTS "In 1990 over 90% of screen time in Canadian theatres was taken up by foreign films. So why is it that the Canadian film scene was and is so dominated by American imports?" - by Dr. Euan Taylor WHAT'S THE IP ADDRESS OF MY TV? "The television industry provides information and entertainment to the people. What is lacking is the availability of entertainment or more information on demand." - by Prasad Dharmasena X-PRESSING OURSELVES "This universalization of our generation across racial, sexual, class, cultural lines -- lines that matter -- erases and marginalizes profound human differences." - by Johnn Tan -- Departments -- KEEPERS OF LIGHT "This month we visit the Station Street Arts Centre to view Female Nudes, and exhibition by Vancouver artist Skai Fowler." - by Kent Barrett THE WINE ENTHUSIAST "With the end of apartheid, international trade barriers are being lifted, worldwide. This means that South African wines will be available in many parts of the world for the first time in many years." - by Tom Davis NEWS ROOM "It has become quite fashionable of late to attack political advertisements. Some decry the corrupting effects of televised political manipulation, while others fear the advantage they bring to more affluent parties. Both, however, are wrong." - by Jon Gould "Because political commercials are produced by the same advertising agencies that spew forth corporate commercials, they provide politicians with the opportunity to control the image seen on television fully and completely." - by Paul Gribble THE QUILL "The Beast has a hypnotic eye. When it stares at me, into me, its thoughts become my reality, and I can't discriminate between my own consciousness and the trance. It's not unpleasant, really. The Beast is gentle when it has my mind, but persistent." - by David Fitzjarrell DEJA VU "One cannot imagine a situation more primed for social explosion. It was with little surprise, that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, stormed the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, and officially proclaimed its armed insurrection." - by Andreas Seppelt CUISINE "This bread is very easy to make, sounds very weird, but is a true delight in my own opinion." - by Markus Jakobsson ------------------------------------------------------------ EDITOR'S NOTE ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Belated February Issue -- Of all of the issues of Teletimes published yet, this must have been the slowest one yet. We had a series of delays due to my absence (fencing competitions out of town) and to delays realted to the new graphics (which, I'm sure you'll agree, are quite lovely.) I was planning on writing an article about Schindler's List to coincide with this month's theme, TV and the Movies, but unfortunately I couldn't find the time. Perhaps for the next issue... On to more exciting news...International Teletimes is going to be hosting its first annual Photography Contest! All photos submit must correspond with the theme for the April issue, Travel. The first prize photo will be displayed on the cover for the April issue. Extra goodies will be handed out to finalists (see next month's issue for details). There is no entry fee, virtual fame and fortune await, so send us your photos by the March 15th deadline! Ian Wojtowicz Editor-in-ChiefÊ ------------------------------------------------------------ MAILBOX ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Reader Comments -- Excellent publication! Would like to see more articles on computers and maybe politics. How about adding more graphics? - Kenneth Cheuk, Hong Kong YOUR WISH IS OUR COMMAND. MORE GRAPHICS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE DEPARTMENTS SECTION. CHECK THEM OUT AND TELL US WHAT YOU THINK! Very nice graphically. Only read some of the articles, but they satisfied. In all an impressive journal and an expample of what can be done. As they say, Keep up the good work! - Raul A. Zaritsky, Chicago, USA -- Help! -- Hello Ian, I just received the January '94 issue of Teletimes, and I would love to read it, but I don't have "BinHex 4.0" to translate it on my Mac. I wonder if you could 1) send me a version of Teletimes that requires no translation, or 2) tell me where/how I can get hold of BinHex? Thanks for your assistance! - Rick Cooper RICK, THERE ARE PROBABLY QUITE A FEW PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE USE OF BINHEX, SO I FEEL I SHOULD EXPLAIN IT OUT HERE IN THE OPEN. BINHEX CONVERTS BINARY (10101) FILES TO ASCII (TEXT) FOR TRANSPORT THROUGH E-MAIL AND TO AVOID PROBLEM WITH MACHINES WHICH CAN'T HANDLE MACBINARY. BINHEX 4.0 IS AVAILABLE AT MOST LARGE MACINTOSH ANONYMOUS FTP SITES (LIKE SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU) AND IS ALSO BUILT INTO MANY UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAMS LIKE STUFFIT, COMPACT PRO, EUDORA AND FETCH. IF YOU CANNOT, FOR SOME REASON, DEBINHEX THE MAC VERSION, I SUGGEST THAT YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THE ASCII VERSION OF TELETIMES. ------------------------------------------------------------ FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Sleeping with Elephants -- "Living next to the United States is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even- tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." That was how Pierre Trudeau, former Canadian Prime Minister summed up the country's relationship with America. That relationship has been especially evident in the movie industry. For example in 1977, of 970 films distributed here, only 2.5% were of Canadian origin, and about 50% were imported from the US. During 1979 almost all royalty payments went to copyright holders outside of Canada. In 1990 over 90% of screen time in Canadian theatres was taken up by foreign films. So why is it that the Canadian film scene was and is so dominated by American imports? It has been suggested that Canadians just like American films better, but that is only part of the story. In a 1978 poll about 40% of Canadians said Canadian films were inferior to others, but about 35% said they were the same as or better than those from elsewhere. In any case, many Canadian films have received critical acclaim around the world, and been supported by audiences here in Canada. Part of the reason is the generally American flavour of Canadian society and hence the similarity of individual expectations and so forth. In 1950 the American author Horace Sutton noted how Canadians had "adopted American commerce and culture." For this reason the flow of information between the US and Canada is fundamentally much easier than in many other cases, the English speaking portions of the Canadian and American populations share both language and culture. The significant linguistic, cultural and religious obstacles which might act as a barrier to foreign penetration of the market elsewhere do not operate here (outside of Quebec at least). Another reason is simply (or perhaps not so simply) commercial competition; TV, radio and film can be provided more cheaply by outlets of American networks because they can recoup their costs in the US market and thus run their foreign operations more cheaply and profitably. Certainly they own a huge proportion of the Canadian cinema industry. According to Dave Barber of Winnipeg Film Group, one of the biggest problems in Canada is publicity. Hollywood does excellent publicity work for its releases, Canadian films are relatively poorly advertised. In fact Barber says it is difficult to get air time and media space for Canadian films at all. He has to "hound" the media to get any kind of coverage for many of the films he deals with. The result is that people are far more likely to know the names of the reviews of Hollywood films, than they are of Canadian ones. That is probably one reason the cinema chains use so few Canadian films. In fact Barber feels that Canadian films are more appreciated outside Canada than inside Canada. [There is an argument that the overwhelming influence of the US media is not merely due to good business. Some in the US have viewed the expansion of the media as a duty "a sacred duty," a part of the "worldwide ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of men."] The debate about foreign influence in the film (and other) industries is an old one in Canada. The Liberal Trudeau government took legislative steps to regulate foreign ownership and influence, the Conservative Mulroney Government negotiated the Free Trade Agreement. Both were aimed at promoting the best interests of Canadians and their industries, working on different assumptions of what these were and how they would be best served. In fact even the outlook of individual Canadians has been different depending on their circumstances. For instance years ago Cineplex (a major cinema chain) appealed to the Restrictive Trade Practices Commission for help against the power and practices of foreign interests (i.e.. US based film production-distribution companies) which kept them from prospering in the Canadian market. With this help Cineplex- Odeon became a prosperous company and a major circuit for American films. The same entrepreneur who had courted government intervention some years earlier, now talked about government measures to help the indigenous film industry as "alarming", "unethical", and generally a bad idea. If you are looking at the balance sheet for a large vertically organised and foreign based corporation that makes, distributes and shows films, then to maximise your returns you don't want other film makers and distributors taking a slice of your market. (Hollywood has strongly resisted the idea of a quota system for Canadian films - such systems do exist in some countries). If you can exclude them from your cinemas you do, and if you can keep some sort of monopoly over showing major films you do that too. (Which is one of the reasons Cineplex originally sought government help to defend and strengthen itself in the market). If you are a small independent film maker, then making films is much more of a gamble than for a large organisation which controls both production and distribution. You might like the government to impose on the distributors a quota of independent films, so your products would reliably make it to the screen and some of the financial risks of film making would be eliminated. Not only that, according to Barber the funding situation for independent film makers is relatively very poor here in Canada (in the US for example there is more private and foundation money which can be accessed). Some put the dismal showing of the smaller independent companies down to the issue of competition, access to a market which is effectively controlled by a powerful oligopoly. In that view the "free" trade model, simply maintains the dominance of a powerful segment of the industry (meaning the large scale, vertically integrated corporations in this case). On the other hand we do have the National Film Board, set up by the government in 1939. It is the best known producer of Canadian films. But Barber told me about some outstanding independent film makers you might want to check out. Sharon Jennet (from right here in Winnipeg), John Cozak and Guy Madden. There are, in fact, Canadian films around, many of them are excellent, but a fair proportion of them never make it into the public eye here in Canada. --- For what it's worth this is a list of some of the better Canadian films (in no particular order). Try a few. Decide for yourself if like Canadian films. Jesus of Montreal Who Has Seen the Wind The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz I Heard the Mermaids Singing My American Cousin Ninety Days Careful, Archangel, Tales From the Gimli Hospital (Guy Madden) Dog Stories (Sharon Jennet) - Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada Sources: Embattled Shadows, A History of the Canadian Cinema. Peter Morris, 1978. Canada's Cultural Industries. Paul Audley 1983. Canadian Dreams and American Control. The Political Economy of the Canadian Film Industry. Manjunath Pendakur, 1990. My very special thanks also go to Dave Barber, Programmer and Co-ordinator at The Winnipeg Film Group (running the independent cinema Cinematheque here in town). He provided me with much valuable insight and information. -- What's the IP Address of My TV? -- The television industry in the United States can be broadly classified into three categories. "Commercial network television" is available free of charge to everyone, non- commercial "public television" is also available free to everyone, and "cable television," which is not free. Let us examine each category and understand their differences. Network TV is free for the viewer. Since it relies on the revenue from the advertisers on the medium, and since there is a big competition between the networks over the ratings, all the networks constantly try to improve their services. Public television (PBS channels in the US), on the other hand, does not compete with other stations and, therefore, does not worry much about the ratings. It relies on the support from viewers who find its programming valuable. The inherent, non-commercial nature of this service has its own advantages and a lot of viewers find an alternative taste in this category of broadcasting. Cable TV, contrary to the other two, is not free and is provided only to paid customers via a dedicated line. Since cable TV is a package deal, there are more specialized channels. As a service to the customers, most cable TV service providers carry the "free" Network TV and PBS channels on their "basic" package. The television industry provides information and entertainment to the people. Although there is a broad range in the supplied services, it is only a one way street. What is lacking is the availability of entertainment or more information "on demand." (There are certain movie and music channels on some cable TV services that do provide a selection from their choices for a fee.) What it lacks most is the ability for the viewer to find out more details about a certain piece of information given on a news oriented program. New technology is being applied to patch some of the short comings of television and to combine other communication mediums with television technology. There are two distinctly different trends in the television industry. One is to provide all the "on-the-air" programming via a dedicated cable to the consumers with several hundred of other cable-only channels. The other trend is to provide competition to the previous type of dedicated services via direct satellite broadcast of several hundred channels. The Cable trend has the advantage of being able to implement with very little initial cost to the viewer. The satellite trend has the advantage of being a free service once you make the initial purchase of the required equipment. It is estimated that the next generation "dedicated" satellites will be able to broadcast 500 or so TV channels to relatively small receiving antennas with the picture and sound quality comparable to that of a dedicated cable connection. The initial equipment purchase would not exceed a few thousand dollars. If this trend is continued, most people will opt for the satellite connection over cable connections which tend to charge a monthly fee. However, this has not discouraged the cable TV industry. Since a dedicated wire to each and every customer can carry more than just a few television stations, the cable TV giants are now teaming with other service providers such as local and long distance telephone companies. Providing TV and telephone services is not their only intention. The next step is providing data, interactive television, Internet services, paid dedicated computer connections to specialized data banks, and other services over the same connection. The satellite industry will not take this lying down. It is also experimenting with the idea of providing certain Internet services such as the Usenet via "regular broadcasts" to receivers scattered around the country. Before we gaze into the crystal ball to see what the future holds, let's look at the main fault of today's TV industry. The fault, as I see it, is that the TV dictates what and how much of it that the rest of us should receive. Most TV programs lack a contact point for us the viewers to provide a feedback. Most of the time, it involves writing to the TV station or the parent network station. This means, we are faced with the problems of finding out addresses or phone numbers to contact the "right" person. Most entertainment programs do not have a feedback point other than their ratings. For instance, a recent NBC sitcom "The Good Life" episode ridiculed Buddhism. I wanted to convey my strong opposition to distasteful use of a religious faith. However, there was no quick and easy way to do this since the local TV station that carried the program was not responsible for the creation and neither was its parent network. The production staff and writers are not easily reachable by the average Joe viewer. Another aspect of this lack of feedback is the inability of the viewer to get at information that he or she needs in a timely fashion via a TV news broadcast. This is best illustrated by an example. After the recent earthquake in Los Angeles I spent few hours in front of the TV, switching between network and cable news channels to finally see the map of the badly damaged areas. The first thing that I wanted was to find out if the area in which my family lives, which is less than 5 miles from the epicenter of the quake, was effected badly or not. What we need is interactive television. Being able to go deeper into the stories that we are interested and disregard other stories that the television people think that we ought to know. There is only one TV program that I know of that has made this feedback a little easier. Now you can reach NBC Nightly news via e-mail at . Hopefully this is a step in the right direction and other programs will also be easily reachable via phone or e-mail without us having to dial a 900 number. In the development of cable TV service providers giving us everything but the kitchen sink via a dedicated line, Bell Atlantic and the cable TV giant John Malone have indicated that they will wire all the schools, kindergarten through grade 12, in the Bell Atlantic service areas to be able to be "on the net" within this year as a donation. PSI, another giant commercial Internet provider in Northern Virginia, has made plans to combine its services with a cable TV giant. This leads us to the question of "as consumers, are these mergers of service providers in best interest to us?" Some analyst see it this way. Information, entertainment, data transfer, and computer services are fast becoming a one giant industry. Therefore, there should be a cooperation between the major players in order to develop this massive "information super highway." Only after this cooperation of commercial companies can this information highway be established. Others see it differently. Information should be free to everyone. If the information providers merge with each other to give us a "selection" of just one company, they will be the masters of information. The consumers will not have any option but to pay outrageous service charges to get at the information. It is believed that this proposed information super highway will have toll booths at every intersection. It is true that there should be a certain cooperation among the industry leaders to agree on a standard. However, agreeing on a standard is vastly different from being partners and agreeing not to compete with each other. On most areas of this country we have a "selection" of one cable TV provider and one local phone company. If we are going to put all our eggs in one basket, then we'd better safeguard that basket like our freedom depended on it. Because, our information freedom WILL depend on it. This means, that the "one stop service provider" will have to be well regulated by the industry, the government, and the consumer groups. Some people will wonder what the connection between television and data transmission is. The connection is that even in today's TV broadcasts, it is possible to send data between vertical blanks between the pictures and sound without expanding the broadcast bandwidth. (It is possible to get plug-in boards, for even PCs, to decode this information from experimental broadcasts. If you are interested in more information on this, please check the anonymous FTP site :/pub/sun-info/sunergy/) The proposed information highway will have a much more broad bandwidth to carry a lot more information such as data, sound, pictures, etc. Moreover, digitizing everything in sight seems to be the trend these days. Hence it will be possible to transfer everything via a data network. Also, interactive television will need a much more computerized network than the cable TV network of today. What this all will come down to is that one day our computers, televisions, VCRs, telephones, video-phones, stereos, and even microwave ovens will be somehow or the other tied to the "net." "Document transfer," "going shopping," "working from home" and "going to the movies" will all have different meanings when the TV comes with a built-in ethernet card. - Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA -- X-pressing Ourselves -- Generation X. The Twentysomethings. The 13th Generation. Who are these people that sound like they come from another planet? And why are they so talked about these days? Watching and listening to mass media, particularly television, I get the impression that this generation, which has been put up for national consumption, is some monstrous group of young people who all think, dress, and act alike; who want to discard the "liberal" values of their predecessors (another strange monolith of people, called the Baby Boomers) and restore things to the way "they ought to be;" who spend all our time jamming to music with their girlfriends, boyfriends, or both; who whine constantly about societal problems but ultimately don't give a fuck about solving them. Listening to myself and my friends, however, it dawns on me that this outerworldly mass of people that the media is talking about is none other than ourselves. Why do we, as youth between the ages of 18-30, feel so out of touch with this commodified "Twentysomething" crowd that's supposed to represent us? As with most questions, there isn't just one answer, but there are a number of possibilities. Maybe, just maybe, this very diverse group of young people cannot be so easily clumped together across race, gender, sexual practices, class, and, yes, even age. Maybe some of us actually disagree with both Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton. Maybe some of us avoid corporate goods that seek to uniformize us and choose, instead, products that enhance our statement of who we are, as unique individuals. Maybe some of us don't prioritize being able to buy our own three-car- garage homes in white suburban neighbourhoods for our families and material gadgets and widgets -- maybe some of us don't even buy into the traditional, western nuclear family (you mean, there are people who still believe in *gasp* FreeLove??) Maybe some of us care about other human beings, about the Earth that we tread on, about nonmaterialistic values -- and maybe we do have legitimate ideas about what to do about these, what to do to make society better. Who are we? Where are we? Why hasn't mass media talked about "us"? In a capitalist world, the role of media is not to tell us about ourselves and about each other, but rather to sell mass audiences to client corporations. An idealistic and diverse audience that deeply cares about the Earth and its inhabitants (including the human kind) is a hard group to sell to businesses based fundamentally on growth, overconsumption, and "the bottom line," at the expense and misery of humans, animals, and the environment. On the other foot, it's much easier to sell an audience that is concerned with buying homes, buying cars, buying computers, buying TV's, buying music, buying clothes, buying images, and, ultimately, buying people. No matter that media has to first create this image, fictional as it is -- after all, in a self-fulfilling manner, they will eventually be able to sell this image to (i.e., force it on) the very group that the image is supposed to represent. This universalization of our generation across racial, sexual, class, cultural lines -- lines that matter -- erases and marginalizes profound human differences. Some of us have resisted this lumping. Now we need to progress beyond that and, in the space of resistance, create ourselves anew, define ourselves, in all our myriad and unique ways. If media cannot accept us in all of our glorious diversity, then we must leave it behind too, and create our own media, our own images -- images that truly reflect us...every single one of us. Let us, not the television, decide who we are. - Johnn Tan, Ogden, Utah, USA ------------------------------------------------------------ DEPARTMENTS ------------------------------------------------------------ -- Keepers of Light -- Greetings, Cyberfolk, and welcome to the February Keepers Of Light. If you are reading the Mosaic version of Teletimes, you will probably see the colour images in fairly high fidelity. If you have the downloaded version, you are unfortunately going to be seeing dithered versions of the colour works, though the B&W's should be fine. We here at Keepers Of Light Quality Control are at work on overcoming the limitations of the software involved, and if any one out there has any bright ideas in this regard, we would love to hear them. This month we visit the Station Street Arts Centre to view Female Nudes, and exhibition by Vancouver artist Skai Fowler. Right. Off we go. --- The Station Street Arts Centre A note for the theatre's front-of-house personnel reminds them to keep a look out for late arrivals, just to make sure patrons don't trip over the junkies in the alley. Station Street Art Centre is a strange place to meet the Masters. Located behind an infamous biker joint, tucked in between the CN Station and the American Hotel lies Station St., from which the art centre, located in a converted pickle warehouse, takes it's name. According to Sherry McGarvie, the theatre' s feisty marketer/general manager, the building was first converted for use as a theatre by the Fend Players Theatre Company, a group of ex-convicts who somehow decided that theatre was a good idea, and also that it would be a good thing to name their troupe the "Need To Offend Players." Unfortunately, the name offended people, and it was shortened to "Fend" in the interests of getting along with funding agencies. "Since 1988, Fend has produced over fifty plays, over thirty of them Canadian," says McGarvie, "and of those thirty, twenty were local." The group's output has been impressive. The last production mounted by Fend was "Open Couple", a play written in Italian by the husband and wife play writing team of Dario Foo and Franca Rame. The play was translated into Spanish, French, English, and Cantonese, and the performances ran concurrently. Alas, the Fend company is currently out of production, this season having been canceled due to a lack of funds, which McGarvie attributes to past mismanagement of resources. However, the 130 seat art centre continues to operate profitably as a commercial venture, and the revenue will insure a production season next year. As a visual arts venue the art centre needs attention, and it's good to see that it's finally getting some. There has always been work displayed on the walls of the lobby and bar areas of the theatre, and usually with some attempt made to match themes between the art and whatever was playing in the theatre, but the displays always had the feeling of an afterthought. It was a defacto gallery, but until now it has never been considered as a stand alone resource with a spine of it's own. Female Nudes, in fact is the first exhibition to get it's own opening event, complete with wine, cheese, and printed invitations. It will not be the last. The walls have been painted, and I understand they will be refinished and the lighting will improve as funds permit. (Donations are accepted). The Station Street Art Centre is located at 930 Station Street in Vancouver. The hundred plus seat facility is available for booking for arts events of most types, though it is booked up until the middle of May (at time of writing). Interested parties may call Sherry McGarvie at (604) 688-3337 for rates & dates. --- Female Nudes Photographs by Skai Fowler Presented at Station Street Arts Centre, January, 1994 The Station Street Arts Centre is a strange place to meet the Masters. Yet, there they were. Rubens, Michelangelo, all the big guns. You would instantly recognize the subjects: Paris; Pan; Aphrodite; Diana, Venus; and...hey! Who's that goddess there? No, not that one, the one with the curly hair. Was she always in that painting? Hey! She's in this one, too...and this one... Skai Fowler has approached the study of the female nude with a unique perspective. Using herself as a model, she has composited her own images with photographs of reproductions of famous paintings. The results, printed at heroic sizes (about 4 by 6 feet), are fascinating. Fowler drew on her own experience as an art school model (a "cultural stripper", as she puts it) and wondered how her counterparts two hundred years ago felt when they were posing for the paintings we now enshrine on museum walls. Did they go through the same emotions when they removed their clothes? How did they deal with being exposed and positioned and draped? And what, furthermore, might they have to say today after hanging in the Louvre for all those dusty years? Might they not want to escape from the over- heated dramas they have been painted into? Do they tire of standing coquettishly? Do the models come to life at night when no one's around, to sit and drink tea, smoke cigarettes, and gossip about the painters they worked for? I expect so, after seeing Fowler's pieces. From these and other musings Fowler has created a series of enchanting and whimsical images through which she floats like a knowing ghost, sometimes brazenly engaging the viewer, sometimes peering off into corners. Her presence is sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle. It's a remarkably versatile device. The simplicity of "Curtains", for example, is deceptive. The skintone match between the painted model and the one photographed is nearly perfect. The graceful curves of the painted model's back are echoed equally as gracefully in the photographed. The imposition of the second figure, so close in form to the first, gives the image a fourth dimension of time. We see a time lapse double exposure. Our twentieth century brains interpret a sequence of events. We are watching a movie, we feel, we know what's going on. And yet, it is the painted model who stares boldly at us, asks "Well, you've had two hundred years to think about it. Why did you never ask what was behind the curtain?" "Secrets" has secrets. The skin tones have not been matched. The photographed model has quite clearly escaped from another work. An upstart has stolen in here to stand in the light on the freezing floor with information to covey. And, thoughtfully (and possibly against union rules), she has brought a chair for her colleague's back. Lumbar support. Modeling is hard work. In "Bacchainal", the photographed model is integrated smoothly into the painting. Detail appears and disappears in the darker transparent areas, giving a dream-like glow, and the model fades into history and memory, a participant there, not here, and quite lost to us. With Untitled, Skai has made a flawless juxtaposition of images. The painted drapery whips around her hips as she turns to the satyr, and she shares one leg and a breast with her painted counterpart, introducing an odd cubistic note. This careful compositing is particularly noteworthy since it is extremely difficult to accomplish. All of the images in this show were shot as "in camera" double exposures. Fowler would expose an entire roll of film, shooting images of paintings from art books. Then the film was rewound to the beginning and the camera placed on a tripod. Fowler then arranged the lighting to match that in a painting and posed in front of a black background. She re-exposed the film frame by frame, and the results are what you see here. No additional darkroom composting techniques were used. The large colour prints were produced by a commercial lab, and Fowler produced the black and whites herself. Goddess Of The Water is at once the most direct (and obvious) manipulation, and the least accessible of the pieces (at least to me). The model is superimposed on a painting, and looks directly at the viewer, holding up for approval the very image into which she has been placed. Not an infinite recursion, for it stops after one iteration, but strange. The cumulative effect of the show was quite pleasant. I enjoyed the feelings they invoked, and the images have stayed with me. I have not had the opportunity to view all of the pieces at their intended sizes. The Station Street Arts Centre is not a large enough venue for the 4x6 foot prints to be displayed, so smaller prints of most images were shown on this occasion. I would like to see the large originals some time, in a proper setting for their scale...perhaps at the Louvre... Next month: The annual "Eye Of Eros" exhibition at Exposure Gallery. --- Profile: Skai Fowler Skai Fowler did her first nude modeling job in 1975. At the time, she says, she was eighteen and convinced that the only real reason nudes were used was to lure students to art schools. She's thirty-four now, still modeling, and still convinced. She started practicing art while modeling part time, and eventually, by 1985, was using herself as a model. Being both artist and model solved for her the unsettling issues of objectification and misuse. In her artist's statement she says, "Some years ago I became interested in my historical counterparts. Every time I disrobed I had the sensation of this very same action having been done for centuries; in doing this I become aligned with all the female subjects of the old masters. It is in this perspective that I started my series on the nude." We talked while I was making the scans of her prints and Jasper, her dog, amused himself yanking out cables. SF: I use myself, partly because I was the handiest person, and I didn't have to translate for someone else what it was I wanted, I had the luxury of just using myself...you know, if you use somebody else, what does that mean? Especially because I used a lot of nudity in my photographs. I'd go into all the questions in terms of using some one else's image or abusing it...I'd ask people (to model nude), and they would be uncomfortable with it, or they weren't sure about it. People are quite protective, it's...it's somehow different if you draw them, you know, but if you photograph them they're much more reluctant. Originally I wanted to do this series using all different kinds of body types, so I asked my friends. And they were well, they don't know if they wanna be in a photograph, hung on a wall-- KB: I always used a kind of a Tom Sawyer thing. I'd say, "Yeah, I'm doing this series of images and I need a nude model for this shot...," you know, and look at them for a second or two-- SF: (Laughing) Yeah. KB: --then say "nah..." and they'd say like "Hey! What's wrong with my body?" SF: Yeah. This new series that hasn't actually distilled in my mind. I really don't want to use myself for this. I feel like I need to use other people, to explore that, the relationship between the photographer and the photograph and the image and the person...and using myself is sort of an excuse now. It was fine for a time, but now I need to stop using it as an excuse to not photograph other people. KB: OK, what's this [photo]? SF: Oh, that one's...Untitled...there's got to be a great title in there somewhere... KB: So, this new project, will it be more of the same kind of-- SF: No!! It's getting away from this kind of imagery altogether. I've been working on this whole series, this whole Female Nude concept for...quite a while now, and I'm quite tired of it. I really wanna venture off into something else. KB: But will you be using this collagey kind of-- SF: Probably...yeah...yes, in fact. I like putting different realities together...like these, though I also view these as historical advertisements, in the sense that even though many of these are allegories, they're selling a concept of that time. You'll see the Judgment of Paris reproduced again and again, and you can see the change in the body styles, in the things that they choose to represent, so all of that is used to sell a social concept, which is what advertising does. Now you have the tall, thin model, that's the body style of our contemporary period... KB: This [photo]? SF: Um, Goddess Of The Water. KB: Which way does this one go? SF: It goes the other way...I have a list of all the painters...somewhere here... KB: Never mind. If they wanna know they can write letters. SF: Right...and as you can tell, they're all from reproductions, they're all taken out of art books... KB: No. I thought you were prancing around naked in the Louvre... SF: (Laughing) Yeah...that would be nice. KB: That would be fun. SF: Yeah. And I do wonder, you know? I've been meaning to see if I could get a grant to do it. Go through the channels, write to the Louvre, see if I could do it using the originals... KB: ...the expression "a frosty day in hell" creeps up...but you never know, fill in the forms, and... SF: well, exactly. Skai Fowler may be reached at (604) 253-2510 - Kent Barrett, Vancouver, CanadaÊ -- The Wine Enthusiast: South African Wines -- In April, South Africans will hold their first true general elections in its history. South Africa is a wealthy, industrialized nation and despite its history of racial injustice and factional violence, it has, more than any African nation, the best odds at peace, prosperity, and social justice in the coming century. With the end of apartheid, and the move to full democracy, international trade barriers that helped to enact this change, are being lifted, worldwide. This means that South African wines will be available in many parts of the world for the first time in many years. This may bring down the price of entry level varietal wines significantly, for though South Africa only produces about as much wine as Rumania, about 8 million hectoliters, the reputation of South African wines are very high indeed, and we should see fierce competition. South African wine production is almost twice that of Australia, and its history of wine production dates all the way back to 1659, when it was a Dutch colony. Constantia, a rich dessert wine made from the Muscat of Alexandria, was famous the world over during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Like California, South Africa's wine regions are blessed with very reliable, moderate climates. Poor growing seasons are very rare. There are two main wine regions in the country, the cooler, moister, Coastal Belt, northeast of Cape Town, and the Little Karoo, further eastward, past the rain shadow of the Drakenstien mountains. As with California, the coastal regions produce the finest table wines, and the Little Karoo, like the San Joaquin Valley of California, is a great, overly-fertile, irrigated, inland region best suited for dessert wine production. The main sub-appellations of the Coastal Belt are: Constantia and Durbanville, Stellenboch, Paarl, and Tulbagh. All of these regions are moderate in climate, have good soils and topography, and produce South Africa's finest table wines. The main noble grape varieties used in this Coastal Belt are, starting with the reds: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Carignan, Merlot, Shiraz, Hermitage (Cinsault), Gamay Noir, Pinotage (a cross of Pinot Noir and Cinsault!), Pinot Noir, and even Zinfandel. The main noble white varieties include: the ubiquitous and versatile Steen (Chenin Blanc), Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Kerner, and the Semillon or Greengrape. Oddly, or perhaps thankfully, Chardonnay is not grown in great quantity, though this is quickly changing. In 1973 South Africa enacted a system akin to Appellation Controlee laws called Wines of Origin. Wines with the W.O. seal on their capsule, or W.O.S., of Superior Origin are to be sought after. This system has been successful in encouraging the existence of many smaller, quality producers. These wineries are pretty well up to date in their winemaking equipment and techniques, as well as their use of oak cooperage and sound viticulture. I recommend taking Hugh Johnson's Pocket Encyclopedia of Wine along with to purchase South African wines, as you will need to familiarize yourself with the regions and their best producers. This writer has admittedly no experience of tasting South African wines, but I look forward with great anticipation to experiencing them in April, when these wines become available here in British Columbia. I also look forward to toast to the success and potentially bright future of the new South African nation. - Tom Davis, Vancouver, CanadaÊ -- News Room: Political Television Ads -- -- PRO -- It has become quite fashionable of late to attack political advertisements. Some decry the corrupting effects of televised political manipulation, while others fear the advantage they bring to more affluent parties. Both, however, are wrong. Much has been made of the American experience and especially the ad campaign of George Bush's 1988 election. I remember it well, for I was on the national staff of his opponent, Michael Dukakis. George Bush's ads were manipulative. They were cynical, pandering ads that preyed on the worst impulses of the American voters. They also worked. But they succeeded not simply because of their craftiness. Rather, George Bush had some help. Not only did a nominally independent group direct its own attack ads against Governor Dukakis, but Dukakis himself failed to respond effectively to the ads' assertions. Neither of the problems stated at the beginning should necessarily spell the doom of political advertising. In the first case, televised ads can be limited to candidates and political parties, and in the second, televised advertising should be kept in perspective. Even the infamous "Willie Horton" ads could have been neutralized if Governor Dukakis had challenged them early on. Voters are not so manipulable that they cannot chose between competing versions of the truth. If we're worried about people being taken in by simplistic messages, then we're pointing the finger at the wrong culprit. No one is forced to watch political ads; if we cannot distinguish fact from fantasy, perhaps the problems lie deeper in our educational systems. More importantly, in the right hands televised political advertising can be an effective educational tool. Putting aside all of the objections -- that television is shallow, that it can manipulate -- no one can deny the power of televised advertising to bring new political ideas to people who have not previously experienced them. So what holds back political ads? Listening to the opposition rhetoric, one divines a fear of televised ads. With their visual imagery, televised ads are a more potent tool, and because they are more expensive than radio or print ads, they are likely to benefit wealthier parties and candidates. But even this can be overcome. In fact, one need look no farther than Nicaragua. In its last multi-party election, the Nicaraguan Election Commission set up a central clearing house for all foreign contributions to the country's political parties. Half of these contributions went to the parties designated, and the other half were used to finance the expensive process of new elections. Similarly, other governments might harness interest in their electoral processes -- whether foreign or domestic -- to provide a baseline of financial resources to the various political parties. I do not suggest that governments equalize resources among the parties, nor should the parties be granted funds without demonstrating some minimum level of support. But if high-rollers are allowed to contribute towards an election's result, some of that money should be used to finance real multi-party elections. Alternatively, governments could grant parties a certain amount of free televised time to do with as they wished. Assuming that the parties stayed within the bounds of libel and slander, they would each have a chance to make their own case to the electorate. This, of course, would require public funding, for the free time would undoubtedly substitute for otherwise paid programming. True as it is, each government has to set its spending priorities. And therein lies the crux of the issue. If a country's political leadership is serious about holding free and fair multi-party elections, then steps have to be taken to ensure that voters are exposed to the breadth and implications of their choice. Televised political ads should be a part of this process. Warts and all, they are the efficient way to convey easily understood information to the broadest possible audience. In short, rather than seeking to curb televised political ads, they should be embraced. - Jon Gould, Chicago, USA -- CON -- In the last 30 years the ways in which political candidates solicit the public vote have changed drastically. In today's campaigns corporate media plays a larger role than ever before. In the past, coverage of political candidates was largely composed of news stories and interviews by experienced and respected journalists. When top-flight journalists had opportunities to grill presidential candidates, the results were often unexpected, and sometimes irreversibly altered the course of campaigns. Today political party manipulators are often able to dictate the image voters see in the media. Tight deadlines and shortages of resources can leave journalists with no option but to fit their words around pictures sent directly by party manipulators. In addition, increased competition between television news channels often forces news editors to accept party initiated stories just to get good headlines. People in today's society are becoming more and more apathetic about voting; voter turnout in recent elections has hit an all-time low. In addition, people are becoming increasingly disinterested in spending time researching the various candidates and their platforms. Why exert effort to seek out independent information when one can simply turn on the radio or the television and get barraged with all sorts of political rhetoric? People in today's society are watching more television than ever before; A recent TV Guide poll reported that one in four Americans would refuse to quit watching television, even for one million dollars. Because political commercials are produced by the same advertising agencies that spew forth corporate commercials, they provide politicians with the opportunity to control the image seen on television fully and completely. These agencies are in the business of manipulating people by implanting a desire for their products using "marketing messages". More often than not these "marketing messages" are composed of innuendo and exaggeration rather than factual claims about a product's virtues. Advertising agencies conduct "market research" so that they can produce particularly effective "marketing messages" that "target" various demographic groups by playing off the fears and desires associated with that group's interests and lifestyle. A good example of this is the advertising war between Coke and Pepsi. Pepsi ran television ads portraying a group of college-aged party-prone young adults who inadvertently drank Coke instead of Pepsi, and turned into bridge-playing invalids. The Pepsi destined for the dorm ended up at an old-folks home, and inspired the elderly residents to behave like raucous adolescents. It is clear how these "marketing messages" are designed to win you over using unsubstantiated and clearly ridiculous claims. More often than not, today's political commercials are negative, designed to malign opponents rather than to communicate positive information about the party's political platforms. A poignant example of this in recent Canadian federal politics was a television commercial produced last year by the Progressive Conservative party designed to lure voters away from the Liberal party by focusing on Jean Chretien's facial disorder. The commercial contained little or no positive information about the Progressive Conservative party's platform policies. Instead, a collage of close-ups of Jean Chretien's face focused the viewer's attention on his abnormality. At the end of the ad, a voice- over accompanied a close-up of Jean Chretien's contorted face frozen in time and asked the viewer something like, "Do you really want this man to be your Prime Minister?" This commercial turned out to work against the Progressive Conservative party, who were publicly reprimanded for the extreme maliciousness of the ad. This kind of negative advertising creates a campaign environment in which the voter is encouraged to vote not for the best candidate based upon objective positive information, but for the least evil candidate based upon what the voter perceives to be true claims about the other candidates - claims designed and produced by advertising agencies skilled at manipulating people using negative innuendo, not positive facts. In this kind of campaign environment, and in an advertising world where commercials are astronomically costly, the most wealthy candidate who slings the most mud at other candidates has a greater chance of being elected by "reaching" the voter population through these "marketing messages". I don't disagree in principle with the idea of a "decent" political commercial. The electronic media of today offers an unprecedented opportunity for political candidates to disseminate positive, accurate information about their platform policies. Unfortunately in today's society, this is the exception, not the rule. Part of the blame has to fall on the shoulders of the apathetic voter. People need to actively research political parties if they expect to be able to make a decision based upon facts. Unfortunately, today's "sound-bite" society doesn't promote that kind of independence. People have forgotten that democracy isn't free - for it to work, people have to actively support it by making a sincere effort to vote based upon independently gathered facts. Until then we will continue to be taken advantage of, and unfortunately we won't realize that it's happening. Such is the nature of corporate advertising - it's so much fun you don't realize that you're being manipulated - and that perfect manipulation is exactly what pays the bills, undermining democracy in the process. - Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada Sources: "And now, a word from our manipulator." Shepherd, Rob. Times pLT7(1), March 18, 1992 Prisons We Choose To Live Inside (CBC Massey Lecture Series; 1985). Lessing, Doris (1991). Concord, Ontario: House of Anani Press Limited. "TV Takes Us To A New Level Of Democracy." Urschel, Joe. USA Today page 14A, October 13, 1992. "TV Political Ads To Start Showing Viewers Who's Paying." Rabin, Phil & Myles, Carolyn. The Washington Times page C3, March 18, 1992. "Voters Getting The Campaign They Want." Phillips, Leslie. USA Today page 3A, October 30, 1992.Ê -- The Quill: Cyclops -- The Beast lies sleeping, its one evil eye closed. Somehow, even in its sleep it still has power over me, and I feel poisoned, infected by its influence. It has my family hostage, of course, and it sleeps comfortably with that knowledge. But here I speak of it as though it were merely human, with human limitations like knowledge and consciousness. That must be part of its influence, a remnant of the trance. Maybe it wants me to think of it as human, a part of the family. Ha. The Beast has a hypnotic eye. When it stares at me, into me, its thoughts become my reality, and I can't discriminate between my own consciousness and the trance. It's not unpleasant, really. The Beast is gentle when it has my mind, but persistent. When it finally releases me, I wake up almost reluctantly, for then I must face the surface, I must rise up and take a breath, when it would be so much easier to just... drown. Easier to sink, effortlessly, than to surface and face the turmoil of choosing, differentiating between my real thoughts and the insidious, subtle influence of the trance. Easier. After the trance, easier seems important. It knows my dilemma, my pain, and I imagine it laughing. But I don't need to imagine it, I hear it laughing. I see it smile. I know it laughs to disarm me, but it still leaves me open. Then, when it strikes, it twists me in slow imperceptible ways that I can't stop. It tells me wonderful stories. Fascinated, I listen, I watch, and all the while, relentlessly, patiently it molds me. It tells me I must conform. Of course, it doesn't want just me, it wants all of us. The more we change, the more power it has over us, and it is already very powerful. The Beast awakens, fixes its stare upon me, and once more I am lost in the sea of its perverted thought. My attention is focused, yet diffused throughout a world of ostentatious artifice. Reality is now outside of my experience, and I exist in a universe of synthetic imagery and illogical relationships. On some level I know this, but it doesn't help. It is not complex, the way it manipulates me. It is just carried out on such a broad front. It fills my head with inane trivialities and cliches. My values are devolving to primal urges and egocentric callousness. I hate the person I am becoming, but I am loosing control... Control. Somehow, just now, that word seems important. Control. Something draws my attention to my own hand, I see it there, and I remember. I raise my hand, I push the button on the remote, and the Beast closes its evil eye. - David Fitzjarrell, West Jordan, Utah, USA -- Deja Vu: Not So Sudden, Not So New -- ANDREAS SEPPELT HAS BEEN REPORTING FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS FROM MEXICO. THIS MONTH, HIS ARTICLE ON THE CHIAPAS REBELS APPEARS IN THE DEJA VU COLUMN, HOWEVER STARTING NEXT MONTH, HE WILL HAVE HIS OWN COLUMN ENTITLED, THE LATIN QUARTER. - IAN Carlos Fuentes, one of MexicoÕs leading writers and often its "voice of political consciousness" recently spoke about the political problems in Chiapas. "With a state that could be prosperous, with fertile land, abundances for the majority of men and women, it is only because of the local government and its collusion with the powers of exploitation, and the indifference of the federal government that we see such poverty. Cocoa, coffee, wheat corn, virgin forests, and abundant pastures -- only a minority enjoy the rent of these products and if someone protests this situation they are grabbed, imprisoned, violated, killed and the situation continues." One cannot imagine a situation more primed for social explosion. It was with little surprise, that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Zapatistas), stormed the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas and officially proclaimed its armed insurrection. The Zapatistas have taken their name from the recognized Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata, who led a successful insurrection and eventual revolution in the 1910's and serves as a solid reminder of the years of injustice and repression. The rebels in Chiapas did not have to wait long for others to join their call to arms on the first day of the new year. The next night two bombs exploded--one in a shopping plaza in Mexico City, and the other in AcapulcoÕs municipal plaza. This rash of bombings and subsequent bomb threats throughout the country bore the markings of the Revolutionary Worker Campesino Union (Party of the Poor), which has been operating underground for the last few decades. In a letter to Amnesty International, representatives wrote, "For more than 40 years we have asked for agricultural reform, without getting a solution. For that reason, we have formed an independent organization to defend the interests of our people." The Campesino Union, which is considered the "patriarch" of the countryÕs various rebel groups, descended directly from a schoolmaster turned underground hero--Lucio Cabanas, who fought the Mexican Army in the jungle mountains of Guerrero (southwestern part of Mexico) for seven years until he was caught and killed in 1974. Reports of armed groups have increased in eastern parts of the country such as Veracruz and Hidalgo and in the other southern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. Many of these organizations are believed to have been originally formed as defense groups that indigenous communities and campesinos created to defend themselves against "goon squads" hired by local ranchers. These rural bands have demonstrated the ability to switch from defensive to offensive tactics. It is believed that the Zapatistas where originally a self-defense group, turning to organized aggression when their peaceful protests went in vain. The Zapatistas are fighting attitudes which are typical of those expressed by the cattlemen and other large landholders such as Bartolomeo Dominguez who argues that the Zapatistas "...are not simply impoverished Indians. People who have no money to buy food have no money to buy machine guns!" Dominguez, who used an alias to protect his real identity and to avoid repercussions, added, "The Indians donÕt deserve the land because they donÕt know how to make the land produce what it should." In perfect contrast to this, the leader of the Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos, was quoted "Our form of armed struggle is just and true. If we had not raised our rifles for the Chiapas poor, the government would never have been concerned about the Indians and campesinos in our land." The uprising in Chiapas sheds light on a problem which is not new. It has its origins as much in a constant political dichotomy as in the economic differences which have long existed. It has also confirmed a national suspicion that without political reform, any economic reform is fragile and even deceitful. - Andreas Seppelt, Latin American CorrespondantÊ -- Cuisine: Swedish Boiled Bread -- I would like to share with you one of my favorite recipes for bread. Having grown up on the countryside in southern Sweden, and being used to the dark, often spicy bread, moving to southern California meant either having to buy imported German bread, which is much denser than the one I grew up on, or starting to bake myself, which became my choice. This bread is very easy to make, sounds very weird, but is a true delight in my own opinion. Swedish Boiled Bread Mix the following ingredients well: 0.6 oz dry yeast (or one 50g cake fresh yeast) 3-1/2 cup rye flour (0.9 liters) 0.6 cup dark corn syrup (0.15 liters) 1 tsp salt (5 ml) 1-1/2 cup lukewarm water (0.4 liters) Then, mix in, little by little 3-1/4 cup wheat flour (0.8 liters) Knead the dough. Rub a thin layer of fat on the inside of a stainless steel bowl, powder the inside with flour and put the ball-shaped dough in the bowl. Now, put a lid on top of the bowl, which shall be large enough so that the lid will not touch the dough. Put the bowl in a pot, fill up with water to 2/3 of the height of the bowl, and boil for 4 hours. Fill up with water to 2/3 every now and then, but be careful never to get any water into the bowl. If possible, keep a lid on the pot while boiling. The bread will rise while being boiled, but will be a rather compact bread. Eat the bread warm with butter and cheese. Enjoy! - Markus Jakobsson, markus@cs.ucsd.eduÊ ------------------------------------------------------------ NEXT MONTH ------------------------------------------------------------ Next month, we feature articles and reviews of your favorite Local Authors. Kent Barrett will have his report from the annual "Eye Of Eros" exhibition at Exposure Gallery for Keepers of Light. Also next month, Gerry Roston will have a rebuttal of Jon Gould's gun control article "American in Denial." Should be very interesting, so stick around!Ê ------------------------------------------------------------ STAFF & INFO ------------------------------------------------------------ Editor-in-Chief: Ian Wojtowicz Art Director: Anand Mani Cover Artist: Anand Mani Correspondents: Biko Agozino, Edinburgh, Scotland Prasad & Surekha Akella, Japan Ryan Crocker, Vancouver, Canada Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA Jon Gould, Chicago, USA Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada Mike Matsunaga, Skokie, USA Satya Prabhakar, Minneapolis, USA Brian Quinby, Aurora, USA Motamarri Saradhi, Singapore Dr. Michael Schreiber, Vienna, Austria Johnn Tann, Ogden, USA Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada Seth Theriault, Lexington, USA Marc A. Volovic, Jerusalem, Israel Columnists: Kent Barrett, The Keepers of Light Tom Davis, The Wine Enthusiast Andreas Seppelt, Latin American Correspondant Funding policy: If you enjoy reading Teletimes on a constant basis and would like us to continue bringing you good quality articles, we ask that you send us a donation in the $10 to $20 range. Checks should be made out to "International Teletimes". Donations will be used to pay contributors and to further improve International Teletimes. If you are interested in placing an ad in Teletimes, please contact the editor for details. Submission policy: Teletimes examines broad topics of interest and concern on a global scale. The magazine strives to showcase the unique differences and similarities in opinions and ideas which are apparent in separate regions of the world. Readers are encouraged to submit informative and interesting articles, using the monthly topic as a guideline if they wish. All articles should be submitted along with a 50 word biography. Everyone submitting must include their real name and the city and country where you live. A Teletimes Writer's Guide and a Teletimes Photographer's & Illustrator's Guide are available upon request. Upcoming themes: March - Local Authors April - Travel Deadline for articles: February 20th, 1993 E-mail: ianw@wimsey.com Snail mail: International Teletimes 3938 West 30th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. V6S 1X3 Software and hardware credits: Section headers and other internal graphics were done in Fractal Painter 1.2 and Photoshop 2.5 on a Macintosh Quadra 950. The layout and editing was done on a Macintosh IIci using MS Word 5.0 and DocMaker 3.96. Copyright notice: International Teletimes is a publication of the Global Village Communication Society and is copyrighted (c)1993 by the same. All articles are copyrighted by their respective authors however International Teletimes retains the right to reprint all material unless otherwise expressed by the author. This magazine is free to be copied and distributed UNCHANGED so long as it is not sold for profit. Editors reserve the right to alter articles. Submitting material signifies that the submitter agrees to all the above terms.Ê ------------------------------------------------------------ BIOGRAPHIES ------------------------------------------------------------ Kent Barrett Kent Barrett is a Vancouver artist with over twenty years experience in photography. His work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada from Vancouver, B.C. to St. John's, Newfoundland. He is currently working on his first nonfiction book and interactive CD-ROM, "Bitumen to Bitmap: a history of photographic processes." Prasad Dharmasena Prasad is a Solid State Electrical Engineer turned into a C++ programmer who works at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, DC. He has been known to take decent photographs when the phase of the moon is right. Though he was born in Sri Lanka, he cannot play Cricket. He enjoys playing Frisbee beside his favorite temple, the Lincoln Memorial. David Fitzjarrell Dave lives in West Jordan, Utah. He is 41, enjoys writing, backpacking, chess, snowboarding and mountain biking. He has a minor in French, he has almost completed a BS in Physics, and he works at the Post Office. Dave claims to enjoy Teletimes "in the extreme" and has had a chance to contribute a wonderful piece of creative writing for the February '94 issue. Jon Gould Jon teaches law and political science at both DePaul University's International Human Rights Law Institute and Beloit College. He is a former counsel to the Dukakis- Bentsen Campaign and has served as General Counsel to the College Democrats of America and Vote for a Change. Anand Mani Anand is a Vancouver, Canada-based corporate communications consultant serving an international clientele. Originally an airbrush artist, his painting equipment has been languishing in a closet, replaced by the Mac. It waits for the day when Òthat ideaÓ grips him by the throat, breathily says, ÒPaint MeÓ and drags him into the studioÑ not to be seen for months. Johnn Tan Johnn is a Mathematics major at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, USA. He is one of the founders of Wasatch Area Voices Express (WAVE), an alternative Ogden paper. When he isn't eating vegan food, cooking, hiking, or philosophizing, he is active in politics, socialism, and feminism. Dr. Euan R. Taylor Euan grew up in England where he did a degree in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. Before moving to Canada, Euan spent 6 months traveling in Asia. Now living in Winnipeg, he is doing research in plant molecular biology, and waiting to start Law School. Interests include writing, travel, studying Spanish and Chinese, career changing and good coffee. Pet peeves: weak coffee, wet socks and ironing. Ian Wojtowicz Ian is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaurate program at a Vancouver high school. His interests include fencing, running Teletimes and sleeping in. Born in Halifax, Canada in 1977, Ian has since lived in Nigeria, Hong Kong and Ottawa and has travelled with his parents to numerous other places all over the world. ------------------------------------------------------------ Reader Response Card ------------------------------------------------------------ If you enjoy reading Teletimes and would like us to continue bringing you great electronic articles, please fill out this card, print it, and mail it to: Teletimes Response Card 3938 West 30th Ave. Vancouver, BC, V6S 1X3 Canada Better yet, e-mail it to: ianw@wimsey.com Name:_______________________________________________________ Age:______ Sex:______ City and province of residence:_____________________________ Address:____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ E-mail:_____________________________________________________ Computer type:______________________________________________ Occupation:_________________________________________________ Hobbies, interests:_________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ What other electronic publications have you read?___________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ How many people do you know who have seen Teletimes?________ Where did you find Teletimes? 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