TEL-SPAN Begins Live 24/7 Broadcasting

WASHINGTON, DC - The US Department of Art & Technology has activated TEL-SPAN Live 24/7 - the telematic channel providing global access to the artistic process in an increasingly cybernated society. The channel's first program is Department Works, Mixologies, and Transformations featuring politically-infused, socially-engaged music-videos by staff members and artist-associates of the US Department of Art & Technology. According to Kevin Teixeira, Director of US DAT's Office of Micro-Technology and Virtual Realities, "We project our illusions of the world into this formless void and it comes back to us as light and sound."

Among TEL-SPAN's first offerings is the Pharmakopolis Broadcasting Services (PBS) of Trace Reddell (Director of the Bureau of Pharmakogeographical Surveying), an ongoing series of animated political cartoons, amazing dope tales, and detourned superheroics. Other Department artists include: Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky (Under Secretary for the Bureau of the Aesthetic Hyperculture), whose 9-11 Saturation Engine, in collaboration with "47," immerses the viewer in hypnotic media-driven imagery in which new meanings are constructed on top of the ruins of the media's strafing; Rick Silva (Director of the Joint Chiefs of Sound Warfare and Peer-to-Peer Defense) has curated Overdub: The Remix of Politics, featuring cut-up works of his own along with artist-associates Edo, Atmo, Haik Hoisingtom, Coup, and Tim Jaeger; Andy Deck (Under Secretary of the Bureau for the Transformation and Radicalization of Corporate Culture and Militarism) presents Ad Infinitum, a fast-paced visual experience involving the collision of expression, advertising and promotion; Alex Galloway (Under Secretary of the Bureau for Rhizomatics, Community & Generative Data) exploits bugs and glitches in the code to create dirty, jolting game loops in RSG-THPS4; and Patrick Lichty (Director of the Bureau for the Dissemination of Metastructures and Media Metaphors) puts Socks, former President Clinton's cat, in the center of the Lewinsky sex scandal with Haymarket's Riot Machine: - The Engines of Truth.

"Citizens of the nation and around the world have an appetite for the kind of high quality, socially relevant, 24/7 public affairs programming TEL-SPAN provides," said Randall M. Packer, Secretary of the US Department of Art & Technology. "TEL-SPAN provides media artists who seek to influence the national discourse, public policy, the political process and the future of art a direct conduit to its audience without filtering or otherwise constraining their points of view."

TEL-SPAN will also deliver comprehensive, up-to-the-minute proclamations, remixes, rants, speeches, manifestos, Department PSA's and more, drawing on the depth and experience of artists engaged with the US Department of Art & Technology and its Experimental Party, including: Secretary Packer, National Chairwoman Roberta Breitmore (created by Lynn Hershman), avatar-candidate for President Abe Golam (from Mark Amerika's Grammatron), WeTheBlog.org founder Jeff Gates, and Jon Henry, Chairman of the USA Exquisite Corpse. TEL-SPAN plans to provide its audience access to live, real-time distribution of broad forms of cultural content, and to other forums where critical artistic issues are discussed, debated and decided - all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of all radical points of view.

Tel-SPAN is a public service of the US Department of Art & Technology. Its mission is to provide global access to the artistic process in an increasingly cybernated society. Tel-SPAN provides its audience access to live, real-time distribution of broad forms of cultural content, and to other forums where critical artistic issues are discussed, debated and decided - all without editing, commentary or analysis and with a balanced presentation of all radical points of view. Tel-SPAN is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Digital Media Center and the Open Source Streaming Alliance. The Principal Software Designer is Joe Reinsel.

The US Department of Art and Technology is the United States principal conduit for facilitating the artist's need to extend aesthetic inquiry into the broader culture where ideas become real action. It also serves the psychological and spiritual well-being of all Americans by supporting cultural efforts that provide immunity from the extension of new media technologies into the social sphere.

The Experimental Party - the "party of experimentation" - is an artist-based political party that has been formed to activate citizens across the country in an effort to bring the artists' message to center stage of the political process. This is a political awakening, 'representation through virtualization' is the major political thrust of the Experimental Party, it is the driving force. The Principal Artists are Roberta Breitmore (created by Lynn Hershman), Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Jeff Gates, Abe Golam (from Mark Amerika's Grammatron), Jon Henry (Exquisite Corpse), Randall Packer, and Wesley Smith.