2002
-empyre- soft skinned space
listserv, founded by Prof Melinda Rackham
I started it cause I was doing Interferon treatment and was too depressed and tired to talk to people but could type.
In the id-late 80s, women made up less than 10% of internet users. The multi-platform pioneer Melinda Rackham was instrumental, along with collectives such as VNS Matrix, subRosa, 0(rphan)d(rift>), Gender Changers Academy and many more, in sharing computer and coding skills that would enable women to participate in the emerging networks and spaces for discussion and research.
In late 1998 I started working in VRML. I built a world called “empyrean” which loosely means the realm beyond the material world where god and the angels live and termed it a “soft space” to indicate it was a “virtual or electronically constructed space” as opposed to a “real space” which I term “hard space”. In soft space you can float through walls and not get hurt. In hard space you are limited by ur physical body.
In 2002 Melinda Rackham formed -empyre- soft skinned space "to fill a void in the net" taking the concepts of "soft space" from her early VRML project and applying them to the listserv format. The – – links in the title were an important way to indicate that the community space was not closed, that there were always ways in and out of the “soft skinned space”.
-empyre- was an autonomous, non-hierarchical collaborative entity, a zone for focussed improvisation about ideas that mattered amongst a broad and inclusive community of artists, writers, theorists, curators and others, especially those living and working in the global South. It was specific to the issues which surround media arts, without necessarily being academically referenced, nor concerned with delineating areas of practice.
Setting up the list for me involved providing an environment conducive to social interaction, strategically inviting interesting and diverse people to join and introducing them to each other, ensuring they feel comfortable and safe, enthusing them with juicy theoretical, emotional aesthetic and critical topics.
The listserv was run on the then-popular open source Mailman platform - developed in the early 90s as a single-topic fan-based platform - and was maintained by platform magician Nigel Kersten on a server at the School of Art & Design at The University of New South Wales, Australia.
-empyre- was active for over 20 plus years, only recently going into recess. -empyre- is archived in the Rose Goldsen Archive at Cornell University, New York, and is an invaluable research repository in the historical study of the emerging practices in new media art with emphasis on digital interfaces and experimentation by international, independent artists.
The intellectual and emotional tools of curiosity, open mindedness, and humility are the things I believe to be the most precious and useful in art and research.
https://subtle.net/empyre