In re:location a group of Nova Scotia artists explore the affect of "location" on awareness, identity, and communication in the context of digital culture. For this project (which included the production of the work as well its exhibition) we engaged artists whose existing practice explored notions of shifting identity, cultural displacement and infrastructural dynamics inherent to communications technologies. This included artists who question internal cognitive processes where digital representation plays a role in the construction of memory, perception, comprehension, and other sensibilities susceptible to the affects of technological dislocations.

Communications technology bridges gaps, informs and connects us all regardless of linguistic, cultural and geographic differences and this implicates us in the construction of the "global village". Our desire is to erase distance, to eliminate delay, to bring people closer together and among other things, to collect and facilitate the development of ideas. This desire is met by corporations with the design and production of an ever-increasing variety of communications technologies. Even as we ponder the problematics of "historical notions of progress" our role in the face of technological progress is normally to change, to adapt, and to appreciate each new convenience. But adapting to interactive media means spending more time communicating through keyboards, screens, hard drives, modems, computing, networks, and interactive software. As individuals we choose a level of discontent andmost make attempts to reject the technological to various degrees .

The need to understand and negotiate this tension is a contemporary reality. When we use new technologies, the brain/keyboard [real/virtual] connection disguises a significant loss: the immediate presence of the person, another body, in our exchange

of the physical for the virtual. The sensual world becomes mediated by the machine and is therefore absent. The communication of the text takes primacy over the subtle and unspoken messages of the group at dinner, the intonation of the voice at close proximity, the physical presence of the author of that text. The disembodiment of the text is complete as its authorship in the context of digital reproduction is suspect. In a digital text what signs ensure the authenticity of the origin? We know we are more open to manipulation, to fraud. Information such as; where we are located geographically, where we are from historically, and how we identify culturally, does not "describe" for us now as it did in former times. Collective memory is an exercise in data retrieval. We feel dislocation.

"Through their work, the artists explore how technologically based communica-tion can give us an incomplete sense of the world; for example we may not know the place of origin of an email, or anything about the person reading the news to us on the radio. (Phlis McGregor, CBC arts reporter).

In a hyper-mediated culture [e-mail, answering machines, search engines, 24 hour news, on-line entertainment] the connecting flow of life becomes diverted into a set of strategies for engagement. New technologies allow us to occupy and own separate spaces yet maintain a sense of connectedness. It is often our desire to maintain physical isolation yet ehannce our environment with interactive technologies. Patterns of manufacturing which are mapped over consumer desires offer clear evidence: we are not going back; we want more interactivity.

In the context of these issues, the re:location exhibition features artists who use new media technologies to make personal expression with interactive technologies. From the humble fax machine to interactive rooms, these works situate the technology as the place of art making and explore the problematics of technological progress. Often ironic in its execution, the art is not 'shown' by the computer but is 'enacted' by the computer - visitor exchange. The work is transmitted, interactive, digital, and only possible because of the technology that presents it.

New technologies offer new modes of expression and this newness becomes evident when we first encounter a piece. A first reaction may be "What do I do?". The exploration of finding out what to do; whether it be to work the program with a mouse, move around the room, or to touch the machine, causes the art to function. There are no instructions.

These artists consider the dislocations they personally experience in the face of digital culture using a variety of creative arrangements of equipment such as screens, cameras, projection, sound, space and the digital spaces of computer animation, digital video and the web. Interacting with this work reveals the acclimatization we have already adopted in order to simply "be" in a society that is increasingly technologically dependent. It is our reading of the play between form and content that reveals what the work is "about". These works re-position the viewer giving us time to pause and question what we are buying into and to notice what others in this society may be experiencing.