Xerox PARC launched PAIR to provide opportunities for artists working in new media to intersect with researchers, with a focus on examining the process of their exchanges. Crane andWinet intersected with PARC researchers Dale MacDonald and Scott Minneman in what was to become a long-term collaboration. Dale and Scott develop new document genres at PARC; Margaret and Jon have a long history of creating public art outside of traditional fine art venues. They combined forces to establish a kind of contemporary performance ensemble, taking their work to a trailer park in Santa Barbara, California, to an interactive billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California, to the 1996 Democratic and Republican Conventions, and to the World Wide Web.

Each of the works created in this collaboration were guideposts along a path of discovery  where process was as important as artifact, and where active interaction with the public was more important than creating static art works for viewing in a traditional museum setting. This is the context for their work General Hospital, as described in a chapter written by the group for a soon-to-be released book about the Xerox PARC PAIR project.

General Hospital was an investigation of mental health in American society.  In the world view of General Hospital, personal and institutionalized issues surrounding mental health created the context for looking at late 20th century America. We created an installation that explored various strategies for working in physical and digital venues for public and gallery based art. This series of interconnected pieces used high- and low-tech media ranging from the Internet and the World Wide Web to live focus groups and wired gallery installations.

We like to think of our version of General Hospital as a kind of do-it-yourself soap opera looping though the infinite void of electronic space.  Only our soap opera juxtaposes our narrative text/image pieces with practical information and the voices of on-line participants.   The stories, comments, and late-breaking information posted to the linked text-based newsgroup alt.society.mental-health and to the interactive comment areas, revitalize the site in soap operatic fashion. With General Hospital we wanted to extend notions of public space to encompass electronic space and within electronic space, we sought to adapt strategies of public art to digital technology. (1)

--Craig Harris

I like General Hospital for several reasons: The play on public and private illuminates some intriguing aspects of the World Wide Web. It engages people to participate in communication that can be quite personal in nature in a venue that by definition can be shared by complete strangers. The sense of exploring potential communities of shared interests and needs reflects something that has proven at times to be a benevolent application of the net. The irony of its setting with a soap opera title, where viewers get to peek into every little detail and intrigue of an artificial scenario, presses the point home. And the engagement is intentionally "real," and not pretend or play. They are really drawing people into real communication to create a real exchange about deep issues. It's unpretentious, graceful, and direct.
--ch