Re: [-empyre-] pieces of history

[murphy <murphy@thing.net>]

On Wednesday, January 7, 2004, at 02:10 AM, Henry Warwick wrote:
> When I was several years older, I would listen to Alison Steele on 
> WNEW-FM
> radio


Yes, definitely "The Night Bird" as well as Vin Scelsa on the radio were 
big influences on me. And of course WFMU, which I'm listening to via 
iTunes while I type this in Florida. They were the commercial media 
offspring of John Cage and you can hear Steele's voice and image 
creation in Laurie Anderson's audio work. That all changed on the radio 
with Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh and media consolidation. But then they 
could also be considered new media, couldn't they? Does new media 
necessarily mean something positive?

Anderson along with William Burroughs, The Wooster Group, The 
Ontological Hysterical Theater, The Firesign Theater, The Whole Earth 
Catalog, Sol Lewitt, Jasper Johns, Robert Smithson, Robert Irwin,  CBGBs 
(the list goes on) all helped set the stage for my first encounter with 
UNIX in the early 'eighties. I was working as a typesetter at night and 
painting during the day -- I don't remember sleeping -- and somehow UNIX 
made complete sense to me. I still find it endlessly fascinating. Maybe 
language is a virus after all.

Robbin Murphy