Anne Marie Morice is please to announce Open_Sky Party.

17 March 2 April, Opening: 29th March 6-8pm

WEB ART FESTIVAL, 28 rue de Picardie, 75003 Paris, France

For the party please download at
http://objects.activeworlds.com/downloads/awb.exe
and teleport to open_sky (sorry, PC users only!).

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[The following review of Open_Sky was written by GH Hovagimyan]

Open_Sky is a virtual 3-D space one can access via the internet on the
Active Worlds lists. It was created by Fabrice Monier and Jean Michel
Lopez. This is from their statement/ press release: "While Open_Sky
wishes to disconnect architecture from political programming-related
functionalist and economic constraints, the TAZ or temporary
architecture zone also sets out to move art away from it's usual, it's
utility and proximities, to decentralize it."

The title actually refers to Paul Virilio's 1997 book which is a
meditation on the collapsed telematic space created by the internet and
computers. Here's my favorite pull out quote from the book, which
happens to be used as a teaser on the book cover.

"One day the day will come when the day will not come."

I was invited to meet Fabrice in the Open_Sky environment on a certain
day at a certain time. After loading in the software CD, I clicked on
the icon and arrived at the Active Worlds interface on the web. I
scrolled through a list of hundreds of constructed worlds. I wasn't even
curious about the other worlds. I had an appointment with someone in a
specific place at a specific time. I hate being late. Finding the
Open_Sky name in the list, I clicked and a screen opened up. I was in
the Open_Sky TAZ. But where was I? A right hand window gave me
instructions on how to navigate using the mouse. The Open_Sky world
itself was strange to say the least. It consisted of a turquoise
background and hundreds of small black and brown pyramids stretching out
to infinity in all directions. I felt like I was immersed in a punk
geometric eurostyle painting. But where was Fabrice? I typed in a
sentence, " Fabrice are you here?" Immediately a response showed in the
chat window, "yes, turn around." Using my newly acquired mode of
movement via the mouse, I scrolled around the space and wound up facing
a female avatar. I immediately became excited at contact. I knew Fabrice
was in Paris. He knew I was in New York, but we were meeting someplace
else. We met in a space constructed by him.

Interestingly enough, a few weeks earlier Fabrice had come from
Montbelliard, France where he was visiting family to see a performance
Peter Sinclair and I were doing in Belfort, France for the CICV. In that
case we met in a situation/space as well. I find the two experiences
different, but strangely equivalent. They were both art spaces,
synthetically created, experiential and engaged in the current art
discourse.

I asked Fabrice what I looked like, realizing he must be seeing my
avatar in the Open_Sky space. He responded that I, "looked like an
American tourist." Hah! I asked him if I had a flowered Hawaian shirt
on, but he didn't pick up on the reference. I then asked him to show me
around and immediately his avatar took off in a direction away from me.
Moving the mouse I began to catch up to his trotting figure. I had the
sensation of trying to keep up with someone walking briskly with a
purpose in mind.

Fabrice stopped and then asked me if I liked the furniture. I looked
around and saw some geometric shapes which upon closer inspection looked
like modern funiture covered in a tiger stripe pattern. His avatar would
shift weight from one foot to the other while at rest and occasionally
it would place a hand under its chin while folding its other arm across
its waist in a pensive stance.

While writing this piece on a powerbook laptop, I decide to go out on
the front porch and take a break, and smoke a cigarette. I'm up in the
mountains in Pennsylvania. It's night and the ground is covered in snow.
There are no street lights and the only sound is a rather strong wind
blowing through the trees. The temperature is 0 degrees farenheight (-20
c). The sense of silence and infinity I get is similar to what I feel in
Open_Sky space. But what is in?

I ask Fabrice if we can sit in the chairs. He says no. I'm dissapointed.
I want to do more that just move through or fly through or observe or
engage in chat. One is reminded that in the Buddhist worldview, ones
perception of the external world is a construct or as they like to say
an illusion created by a hallucinating monkey. There is also a growing
awareness in quantam physics and string theory that the time/space
continuum may not really exist or exist all at once, at least on a
subatomic level. In this case both space and time become irrelevant.

Fabrice's statement talks about disconnecting architecture from its
programmatic and functionalist constraints and moving art away from its
utilities and proximities. I don't quite understand the allusions. By
utilities I assume a utilitarian purpose. In the case of art the purpose
is something to be traded, a commodity. By it's proximity I assume how
it is discussed, say in the media. So that a photograph in an art
magazine would be a proximity of art, but not the actual work. Moving
art away from these two parameters, the market and the media is, I
believe, a key ingredient to a new form of "interactive" information
art. I'm a little less convinced with conceptual architecture. I feel
that an architect's main ambition is to contain and control space. In
the Open_Sky world there is some reference to 3D in the pyramids and
furniture but it's not overwhelming. Indeed one of the more intersting
aspects of Open_Sky is its reference to painting and sculpture rather
than architecture.

Open_Sky was part of a large exhibition called "Cote Ouest" that was
sponsored by the AFAA (Association Fran