[-empyre-] about turbulence

[Helen Thorington]

In answer to Greg and Anna's requests for information about the name  
"turbulence"

It was New York City 1995.    A few of us -- myself and several  
friends who agreed to help me  -- were sitting around tossing out  
names for the two websites we were in the process of
creating, the one for the New American Radio series (1986-1998) -- a  
weekly series of  half-hour artist-created works (we called it "radio  
art")   produced for the public radio system --    the other for a new  
series  of artistic works for  the "new frontier" - the Web.

The one was a waning project:   Public Radio, committed to becoming a  
news network and bottom-line business, was no longer interested in  
giving artistic work airtime.  It's audience, although very faithful,  
was simply not large enough.

The other was the beginning of something new -- something I  hoped  
might be an alternative to the top-down governance of the public radio  
system, where artistic voices might be heard.

We  gave New American Radio a location in this new world at    
"somewhere.org" .   The other -- a first of its kind, it turns out --  
was to be turbulent -- trials, errors, experiments in
a new medium free from the top-down governance of broadcast systems.    
Fortunately turbulence.org was an available name.

A parenthetical note:  I was personally insulted, laughed at, suffered  
some really painful stuff at the hands of people in the public system,  
so there was a strong element of turbulence in me as I turned the  
organization -- its name is New Radio and Performing Arts, by the way  
--  away from it and toward a more hopeful future.


The question: what does it mean now?  Turbulence is not a fist-shaking  
site, but  in relation to the art world, it is still a disturbance in  
the system of how art work is made, exhibited and collected.

I hope this answers your questions.

--Helen