Cassandra Before Blogs

the internet is scarcely a decade old in terms of popular use.

personal computing started to become a strong factor around 1995, and up until that time the internet was largely a text-based means for sharing research and information. images (gif and jpg) were added in the late 80s and sound soon followed, although it took a number of years before mp3 compression made sound the catalyst that spurred intense internet development and demands for massive downloading. it seems fitting that music was such a driving force for the explosive expansion of the world-wide-web...

now the internet could be read, seen, and heard --- a virtual world was emerging. becoming even more visually sophisticated, browsers can now display video with several popular players like quicktime, windows media player, and realplayer (realmedia).

this was of enormous interest to me since i was involved in creating multimedia theatre, and the internet offered a new and effective platform for assimilating the media and long-distance sharing and exchange...

i was one of the principal participants and leaders of a multimedia creative interactive research experiment based on cassandra, the ill-fated prophetess of ancient troy who was doomed to suffer because apollo granted her the ability to see the future and then put a curse on her that no one would believe her prophesies after she rejected apollo's love...

our research media experiment that took place december, 1996 involved a choreographer and dancers in vancouver, a director and actors in a small theatre classroom at a university in new york, and composers and musicians at a loft in greenwich village. all were connected to the internet. each site created improvisations of 30 seconds to a minute which were posted on the internet and then each site created improvisations utilizing the materials posted by each site in response to the improvisations of each site. such were the limitations of bandwidth at the time. this media improvisation continued over a span of two hours. later a live stage production was created using these materials, and a version of this multimedia production toured europe...

cassandra continued to be the focus of our multimedia exchanges and development for about four years. the theme deeped and cassandra became the prototype feminist, the first of modern women, a strong figure of great intellect and passion. we were influenced by the east german writer christa wolf who discloses cassandra's passion and thoughts in her Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays. the author reveals cassandra's secret love and husband, aeneas, who becomes the only male survivor of the destruction of troy. this material not only fueled our creation of works around the theme of cassandra, but started a new set of productions exploring the end of the ancient world (troy) and the founding of the modern world (rome) through the adventures of aeneas.

christa wolf's extraordinary publication could serve as a model for creative inquiry and research. it provides the novel and the experiences and research that the author encountered in her writing of cassandra...