[-empyre-] Introducing Ollivier Dyens

["Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net>]

-empyre-  is delighted to present our first guest Ollivier Dyens,  who will
soon post an opening statement regarding his on and offline projects.

I first came across Ollivier in the mid 1990's when I read his
article 'The Emotion of Cyberspace: Art and Cyber-ecology,' in Leonardo.
At the time i was deeply questioning my newly formed relationship with
computer technology; and on reading his essay,  the lines  "the living being
is the sacred text of cyberspace... our body is the screen (the signifying
surface ) by which the machine has access to reality" deeply ressonated with
me, and profoundly influenced my approach towards working on the net.

Years later when I  saw  the first edition of his website Metal and Flesh
(www.metalandflesh.com) I was struck by the viscosity and texture of the
site, as well as the simultaneous focus on showcasing both theoretical text
and net art works, particularly VRML environments.

In 2000, he published Chair et Métal (Metal and Flesh) a book that examines
today's cultural and technological evolution. The French version is
distributed by Les Éditions VLB in Montreal, while the English version has
just been released in late 2001 by MIT Press. Chair et Métal won the award
 for Best Essay from the Société des écrivains canadiens.

Ollivier Dyens is also the founder of Feux chalins, the only French literary
magazine in Nova Scotia, and he now teaches full time in the Department of
French at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Welcome to -empyre- Ollivier.

Melinda Rackham
15 January 2002

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Notes:

Ollivier Dyens short biography
http://www.subtle.net/empyrean/empyre/dyens.html

Ollivier Dyens,  'The Emotion of Cyberspace: Art and Cyber-ecology,' in
Leonardo  Vol 27, no 4, 1994, pp 327-333.

Website: Metal and Flesh (www.metalandflesh.com)

Book:
Ollivier Dyens, Metal and Flesh:
The Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over
Translated by Ollivier Dyens and Evan J. Bibbee
MIT Press, November 2001
ISBN 0-262-04200-2
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