"Man makes man in his own image." 1 The internet is revitalising text, the very nature of the text is very easy to manipulate manipulation of existing code seamlessly. Information stops having a history there is no resistance. When an image is turned in to text it can lose its violence it is not in the text, that is only black and white, it is us. Many of these new techno-bodily economies have developed out of the late twentieth century's conceptualisation of the body as an effect of codes, flesh specified through/as information. The ramifications of this form of specification are only gradually being realised, both in the sciences and the humanities. While the idea of the living body as a system of information is most familiar to us from the field of molecular biology, it has also, perhaps indirectly, conditioned the understanding of the body and its identity in many other domains, from that of science fiction to the disciplines which Fox-Keller (1994) terms "cyberscience" - information theory, cybernetics, operations research and computer science, the sciences which have been responsible for the development of the new digital technologies.2 The whole medical aspect of the body there is no dignity. Is somebody's personality residing in the tissues can we reduce it to that the invasion is what is going on the logical next step would be to interchange the brain with the VHP. We don't have an engagement with death the artistic response is really fragmented. Just as the corpse excludes complexity, from the biomedical model of Life, so too does the VHP. The VHP presents a virtual body which is fully contained within the parameters of biomedical imaging and explanatory frameworks, and which is hence fully cooperative as a clinical, commercial and experimental object. It is a model of the body and corporeal space in the sense that a model is a systematic visual field which is consistent in its own terms, a field from which all heterogeneity, non-predicability and qualitative difference has been excluded.3 The abuse of the body in the exhibition at PICA last year what was the purpose of the work exhibited there? Mark Quinns blood head was a much more engaging work. The VHP is not going to replace operations, you cut virtually not actually. In the past you drew from dead bodies to understand life. Galleries pick artists so they can promote the ideology they support. How does quality exist independently of this. No real evaluation or critique of work is coming out of the use of new technology. There are a body of artists working within this format. Art is for the minority. If we were a medical group our conversation would be different relating to discussing the VHP project. We are concerned with making something extraordinary out of the ordinary. Illusion and allusion. Problems of simulatlon are essentially problems of representation - of creating svmbolic entities with properties and rules of interaction that correspond to real entities and their interactions..... Computer simulations are....by nature partial, internally conslstent but externally incomplete. this is the signlificance of the term "micro-world". Every micro-world has a unique ontological and epistemological structure, simpler than that of the world it represents. Computer proorams are thus intellectually useful and emotionally appealing for the same reason: they create worlds without irrelevant or unwanted complexity (Edwards 1990: lO9).4 That part which is not part of the central code appears at the periphery of the rectangle screen and is discussed in great detail, what gets left out is that which can't be coded, it becomes invisible. My political concern is outside the computer. Sensuality the eroticism of the interface minor fetishisation on a different level sub-divisions you don't get the tactile on the monitor we should also be looking at this stuff, practice critiques, not just talking abstractly. leave terminus= card like the queen of spades the terminus group seems to relate to the internet web of connections MUD (multi user domain). text is becoming important in creating identity- this relates to Derrida and language. This is more real than my real life -says a man pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.5 freedom with no responsibility I split my mind I am getting better at it .I can see myself as being two or three or more. And I just turn on one part of my mind and then another when I go from window to window. I'm in some kind of argument in one window and trying to come on to a girl in a MUD in another, and another window might be running a spreadsheet program or some other technical thing for school...And then I'll get a real time message(that flashes on the screen as soon as it is sent from another system user) and I guess that's RL. Its just one more window.6 This is affecting the way one thinks. making connections like links in web sites. we are no longer one to one this is a fallacy a contradiction a discontinuity takes place body language is lost, narratives are broken and rearranged, messages arrive out of sequence and messages and replies are confused. words are deeds, words can assault, words like fuck, still carry power. do they still have power on email, because they are more direct and instant can language exceed itself and rhyme the body. the way words are put together, words do become deeds. .......contrast with modernism, the classical world-view that has dominated Western thinking since the Enlightenment. The modernist view of reality is characterised by such terms as, "linear", "logical", "hierarchical", and by having "depths" that can be plumbed and understood..... computer mediated experiences are bringing philosophy down to earth.7 bits of our discussion are put on the computer, does this reflect the interests of the group or the editing by the scribe as they type? Simple text is image as text Derrida was saying that the messages of the great books are no more written in stone than are the links of a hypertext.8 Bromfield's review of Ben Joel's show "tenuous portraits"? David only talks about the painting and fails to talk about the relationship between paintings and computers no understanding of the intertextual nature of the production of meaning which is what Ben was trying to engage with and failed the work is a book without a plot there is no narrative. the computer was incidental and irrelevant. visibility and invisibility of the artist and his/her work is based around being part of the discourse, the work is remembered in relation to the discourse / criticism and therefore constructs a particular framework in which a dislocated community deals with its situation. Continue meeting 5 1.VHP The Visible Human Project: Data into Flesh, Flesh into Data Catherine Waldby Communications Studies, Murdoch University Draft for Wlld Biology. 2.Ibid. 3.Ibid. 4.Ibid 5. Ibid. 6 Sherry Turkle, 'Identity in the Age of the Internet' in Life on the Screen.7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Victor Burgin, The end of Art Theory. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. Terminus = Paul Thomas Mark Cypher David Carson Brian Mckay Jeff Jones Barbara Bolt Theo Koning Jeremy Blank Alex Spremberg INTRODUCTION MEETINGS. ARTISTS E-Mail: p.thomas@curtin.edu.au Terminus=