I don't think the steering committee/jury/co-curators knew what they were getting into when they opened an innocent email requesting some help nominating sites. After countless hours of viewing and discussion, viewing and discussion (it was an iterative process), I owe these people big time for their smarts, their patience, their endurance, their humor, and most of all their guidance. Thanks! (and you can turn off those bozo filters now...)

It was a fascinating, collaborative, no-holds-barred process conducted entirely online with some members I had never met before. I hope some sense of our discussion comes through in the various threads and comments posted throughout the exhibition site.

Thanks to Trudy Lane, the designer of the website, who coped with numerous last minute changes and crunches, while still managing to create an elegant, effective site.

Mark Harden was unfailingly and unflagginly cooperative in taking our pages--several times--and managing all the interconnections with the Museums and the Web main site.

Thanks to Jennifer Trant and David Bearman, co-organizers of the Museums & the Web, for the opportunity to work through my ideas and present them here.

I would also like to thank my family, Janet, Keel, and Birch, who showed patience, endurance ... and forgetfullness, in allowing me the time to work on this project.

One of the goals of  b e y o n d   i n t e r f a c e  has been to create a richer context than a glorified hot list, and many people contributed their responses and informed opinions. Thanks to: Elizabeth Broun, Ebon Fisher, G.H. Hovagimyan, Eduardo Kac, Carmin Karasic, Eve Andre Laramee, Robbin Murphy, Christiane Paul, Cary Peppermint, Mark Tribe, Paul Warren, and Benjamin Weil.

Without the gracious participation of the artists--in a skeletally articulated project when they were first approached--none of this would be possible. I learned from them and their work and had more fun than is fair. Many of these artists work in localized situations where their work is not well understood and often under-appreciated. Most of them work without the kind of support structures, which, as precarious as they can be, nevertheless exist for artists working in other media. While there is important and legitimate debate about how to support such efforts without "taming" it, it is my hope that Beyond Interface can help bring into view--onto the horizon, really--a large, growing, and important nexus of artistiic activity for the primary audience of this conference--museums around the world.



s t e v e  .  d i e t z
April 1998