High-tech and low-tech increasingly circle around the pole of human empowerment. We cast our vision back to the times of our ancestors and discover that traditional materials and techniques - despite their apparent simplicity - have within them the distilled wisdom of millennia. With minimal costs, training and tools - but with maximal knowledge - we can create structures of quality and integrity.

On a parallel but very different track, the high-tech tools of the information society - computers and the Internet - have similarly served to empower the ordinary person. Knowledge is power and the proliferation of computer technology in our society has allowed everyone access to a global pool of knowledge. It has facilitated communications amongst like-minded individuals scattered across the globe and has allowed anyone with a good idea to speak to an audience, outside the parameters of corporate controlled media.

These two strands, stemming from divergent sources, have converged around the shared ideal of stepping outside the narrow confines of consumerism and the corporate agenda of selling our legacy back to us, to help individuals create a life and living place that reflects their own vision and ideas.

It is our intention, through this display, to highlight some of those pools of knowledge and channels of communication which allow such counter-currents to circulate and flourish. The common principal in all this is to take the materials, tools, and technologies available to us in our times and use them to build structures and communities that reflect our shared values.

Christopher Majka