Elsewhere On The Net

CARL EUGENE LOEFFLER, 1946 - 2001

Carl Loeffler, visionary founder of La Mamelle, ART COM MAGAZINE, and Art Com Electronic Network, died last week of complications of an intestinal illness.

Loeffler founded the nonprofit La Mamelle in San Francisco in 1975 and began publishing of LA MAMELLE MAGAZINE. In 1976, La Mamelle Arts Center, an experimental gallery for conceptual, performance, and video art, opened at 70 12th St in San Francisco with an exhibition of Xerox art. In the ensuing years, other events at the center included a woman's performance series organized by Judith Barry; the exhibition WEST COAST CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHERS; and the performance art series PERFORMING/PERFORMANCE. In 1977, with AVALANCHE MAGAZINE in New York, La Mamelle co-coordinated the SEND/RECEIVE PROJECT -- probably the first two way satellite transmission between New York and San Francisco, with simultaneous broadcast on New York and San Francisco cable TV channels.

La Mamelle, later Art Com, was a distributor of video art and actively organized international exhibitions of video artists, including the cable TV series PRODUCED FOR TELEVISION, PERFORMANCE ART IN A LIVE BROADCAST SITUATION.

In 1986, the Art Com Electronic Network began operations as the ACEN conference on the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link. (WELL)

"Well over a decade ago, Canadian seminal telecomputing artist Bill Bartlett came into Art Com, wild-eyed and carrying a terminal, printer and acoustic modem combo," Carl Loeffler wrote in 1991 to introduce "Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications", a LEONARDO special issue. "He lifted up my telephone headset, dialed out and pushed the headset into the coupler. The printer started streaming out text onto paper. He said something like 'This is a network for art' and went on to talk about connectivity and telecomputing. I became a convert at that moment."

ACEN hosted interactive art works, international art networking events, a BBS system and ART COM MAGAZINE, which moved online with a series of issues on the interface of art and electronic technologies. "We got instant feedback Carl wrote in REFLEX Magazine. "And discovered that our 'community' in the online environment was actually diverse, a pleasant surprise for an art organization interested in expanding the audience for contemporary art."

In recent years Loeffler had been SIMLAB Research Director at Carnegie Mellon University. Work included investigating existence within networked simulation environments, in the area of tele-existence, where multiple users share or co-inhabit a common distributed space; and the networked virtual reality environment VIRTUAL POMPEII.

He is survived by his wife Polly to whom he was married a year and a half and a son, (by a previous marriage) Carl, Jr.

Sources/resources:

Carl Loeffler
"New Audiences for Art and Communication"
REFLEX
January/February 1988

Carl Loeffler
"Modem Dialing Out"
in Roy Ascott and Carl Eugene Loeffler, eds.
"Connectivity: Art and Interactive Telecommunications"
LEONARDO 24:2, 1991

BAD INFORMATION -- http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/bad.html

Fred Truck:
THE DEATH OF CARL LOEFFLER; THE END OF AN ERA

With the passing of Carl Loeffler (1946-2001), an important period in my life has ended. Several people, among them San Francisco State Art Librarian Darlene Tong, have mentioned this to me in different ways, but all these ways reflect a common perception. Carl was a visionary.

His vision was not of the isolated artist working alone on a masterpiece, but a group of artists working together in a corporate structure influencing American culture at large through their work, the way any other corporation competes, at the center of things. To realize this large scale vision, Carl had to be able to understand each artist's work with uncommon perception and acuity. He had to be able to communicate this understanding in such a way that contribution to the corporate whole, to the network, became a means to individual realization as well as group achievement.

Carl and I launched the Art Com Electronic Network (ACEN) in 1986, though we began working on it together 2 years before. Anna Couey joined the project a little later. ACEN was on the WELL from 1986 to 1999. For years, there was hardly a day when the three of us weren't in contact online or by phone. We were also in contact with many willing participants on a world-wide scale eager to contribute their texts and art projects to our network, John Cage among them. ACEN flourished, there was nothing like it. By the time ACEN disbanded, 13 years later, our interests had changed, and each of us had moved in a different direction. It was impossible to refocus our energy.

With Carl's death, the dispersal has continued and an era has ended.

But what a great era it was!

______________

Fred Truck -- http://www.fredtruck.com/frontend.html -- is currently making digital prints using a variety of processes, and realizing digital 3d designs as bronze, porcelain, glass, and soft sculpture. His show, "IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY Mr. Milk Bottle and the Badge of Quality Corporation," will open at the Steven Vail Galleries in late May.

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