Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani founded TNC network four years ago. Their
work is interesting in that it serves as one of few examples of complex
network art, in which audio plays an important part. Here we don't have
audio or netradio so much though, but a form of network art that covers
many layers of public life (in which media play a basic part) at the
same time. Not only media are used as an instrument, but also human
participants are carefully chosen for their speciality.

Connected to this, what I like about their work personally much, is the
ease with which they 'play' institutions, or the path along institutions
to get things done, touching the right string so to speak. Complex net
art works need a lot of equipment, input and network-space. Strategies
people are trying to develop to ensure independent media art will keep
having some space on the net (like independent servers or independent
institutions) will never be enough to support them. It is nice to read
how clever social networking can accomplish a great deal. Looking at the
TNC projects in their entirety, the term 'datajockey' Beusch and Cassani
use for themselves seems well chosen.

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JB: Can you tell me about the history of TNC Network?

Beusch: Tina Cassani and I founded TNC Network (http://www.tnc.net) in
1995. TNC now has its members in Japan, in Europe and the States.
Depending upon the nature of each TNC-event, new people are added to
this core-network. Over 150 software designers, networkers, artists, DJs
and VJs, theorists and scientists were involved in TNC's recent projects
and events.

TNC (the acronym initially stood for "the next century/the net century")
is probably best known for three main sectors of activity: the running
of the pioneering online radio site Radio TNC, launched in 1995, the
design and production of distributed, networked events (for instance
Clone Party, Crash Party, both in 1997), and finally the production of
network-based media fictions (for instance The Great Web Crash, The
Headcheese Affair or Hacking Millennium Park, launched in 1998).

JB: What have you done before you founded TNC Network?

Beusch: When I was 19 years old I started producing for radio, basically
Radio France, so my background is both in traditional broadcasting media
and in new media. Concerning Tina: her background is visual media and
programming. We started working together in 1988, when we started
merging her visual projects with the media work I did. This was at the
Festival Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Austria. Before we finally started
using the Internet, we did several projects which can be understood in
many respects as direct antecedents of the network-based projects we
have done later with TNC.

JB: Can you tell something about these early projects?

Beusch: The basic idea behind our work was still the same: devise
settings that would allow for the exploration of the possibilities
inherent in the emerging networks of creation and communication, based
on information theory and media technology. These settings must be open
enough, so that different people, not only those that are directly
participating in the creation, but also people out there somewhere in
the networks, from various cultural backgrounds, can connect and join an
evolving, collaborative process.

To give you an example: back in 1992, we did a project called
'Besuch/Visite in S.', which was already based on one of those
mediafictional settings that we create nowadays for TNC. The backstory
of 'Besuch/Visite in S.' was based upon the alleged existence of
mysterious artistic archives located in a small town called "S.",
somewhere in the "France profonde", between Cognac and Bordeaux. We
invited some 15 curators, theorists (like Friedrich Kittler for
example), and radio people from France, Germany and Austria to come down
to "S." to visit these important secret archives. They had no idea where
they went, because we simply told them: "You go to Paris, then you take
the TGV to the south, you get out in Angouleme, where you are going to
be picked up, and brought to S.".

They were brought to a beautiful old farmhouse in the countryside. The
secret archives did not exist, and everybody knew this. But, when they
arrived, the mayor of this small village - whom we got involved in the
fiction - welcomed the guests, and said he was glad they were coming to
"S." to visit these famous archives. This was the moment when, for some
of the people, things started shifting. They knew it was all fiction,
but seeing this very official representative of the French Republic
talking about those archives made them doubt about it. This atmosphere
of insecurity triggered an interesting investigation about new roles and
positions the digital revolution provoked inside the world of art and
culture. Suddenly their own role and position would appear insecure.

We spent three beautiful days having a symposium understood in its very
original sense - with a lot of wine and food. We were sitting in this
old farmhouse, eating, drinking, and just talking about those archives
that did not exist. And while we talked about them - and about the way
information technology radically changed the notion of artist, artwork,
archiving, museums etc. - , these archives slowly started to emerge, to
exist.

JB: How did they emerge?

Beusch: They started to exist because all the participants contributed
to fill the framework with their ideas and thoughts about them.
Friedrich Kittler for instance, made a brilliant, improvised talk about
how these non-existing archives could be a model for a way of dealing
with information at a time when producing works, recording and archiving
no longer have the same meaning as before the flood of information. And
on the third day somebody suddenly said: "Maybe we are the archives."

JB: Was any material created?

Beusch: Yes. Everything was taped by Radio France. Two months later a
complete documentation (a book and a CD) was shown at the Secession in
Vienna, and at CCS in Paris. During the exhibition the radiostations
(Radio France in Paris, ORF in Vienna) broadcasted the CD, which
functioned as the acoustic guide through the exhibition. At some time
during the show the public present at the exhibition could intervene
live on the radio through an open microphone set up in the museum.

JB: What kind of art would you call it, performance art?

Beusch: I much prefer the term "networking," understood in its most
comprehensive sense as a configuring activity in the telematic
environment. We connect different media, we connect people, we connect
know-how from various backgrounds - this is what it is basically all
about.

JB: The amount of media you are able to involve in your projects is
quite amazing. Does your experience with radio help you with that?

Beusch: Maybe. We know the mediascene pretty well. And again: one of the
main aspects of our work is really to do this sort of networking, to go
into the institutions and find the people who are interested in this
kind of work. This is the way we are spreading the virus. We are not
trying to get our way via the hierarchical system, from the top down. We
try to find out who is interesting in these institutions and we then try
to find a way to mobilize them to participate and to bring their
specific knowhow into the project.

JB: You do this on a very personal, social level?

Beusch: Yes, it is really a kind of social engineering.

JB: Would you still call yourself an artist then, or are you an artist
curator, are you an organiser?

Beusch: To describe our activities we coined the term 'datajockey' which
has since been used by many artists working in this field. It is really
about comprehensively processing and manipulating a large amount of data
material. Organising, getting people involved, networking, on a
technical basis, on a social basis.

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