ATLAS

Arts and Technology Resource and Reference

An information map of ideas, tools, organisations, people and sources...

ATLAS exists to provide information resources to help bridge the information gap between artists and technologists in the wide-ranging area of creativity in new media. As a result, the material contained here covers a wide spectrum, from interface design to analysis of the social issues of technology, presented in a variety of formats.

The goal of ATLAS is to assemble the best information available on a particular subject, filter it for interest and relevance levels, and present it with informative and clearly designed indexes. This will simplify access for the beginner, and save time for the more expert by providing a high-level signal-to-noise ratio to avoid an overflow of data.

Note: Each document in ATLAS is described in detail on an index page and the indexes are hypertextually cross-connected, so a file may appear on more than one index page if it is relevant to more than one subject area. As well, the size of each file in ATLAS is given in kilobytes (k) next to its highlighted link. Highlighted links that do NOT have a size listed next to them are linked to other ATLAS index pages.

Artist Networking Resources

This section is a compilation of various documents relating to internet-based information, including brief histories of the net's development and available online resources related to artistic endeavours.

Conferences

Several hundred conferences are staged every year relating to aspects of technology. Several dozen of them are relevant to the conjunction of art, technology and telecommunications. This section, which is still under development, is intended to present documents relating to the most noteworthy of these. Sometimes there may be several individual texts associated with a single conference, such as the original Call For Participation (or CFP), often released up to a year in advance, detailed Agendas, abstracts of papers and presentations, and sometimes even reviews of the event. The sample documents located here are divided by year, with selections available for 1993 and 1994

Electronic Literature

What happens when the ancient medium of writing encounters the modern electronic media? Some explorations of the possibilities (including strategies for hypertext) and instructional materials can be found here.

Interface

Interfaces are the means by which human beings interact with computers, essentially the look and feel of onscreen information presentation. Some interfaces are a joy to use, clear, intuitive and natural. Others, well, they're the opposite, awkward, maddening and ineffectual.

Social Issues of Technology

What kinds of societies are created by telecommunications? How and why do these virtual societies form, and what are their advantages and disadvantages as communities?

Technological Tools for Art

This section is designed to provide background information on the formats, standards and devices of technology that are used for artistic expression. While some hint files and network sources may fall into this category, its primary goal is to provide detailed technical information.

Technology and the Law

Things have changed since the time of Hammurabi. Laws that were once written in stone are now being stretched or entirely rewritten to accomodate changes in society brought about by technology and telecommunications, especially in the areas of copyright and information as intellectual property. This section reflects those changes through electronic texts of actual laws and documents that explore the issues involved.

The New Media

This is an area for information, discussion and policy papers related to the age of convergence, the new forms of media brought about by combining existing media and media delivery systems in new ways.