CREATIVE NETWORKS
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enhancing the understanding of the new (interactive) ways of communication and information exchange availability of free, creative, individual, multiformal usage of the Internet creation of a ‘social media+art space’: promotion of the development of an Open society E-L@b = CONNECTIVITY for: many media art institutions in Latvia - Sounds Open Systems, Multimedia Center - Riga, Latvian Academy of Arts, Latvian Academy of Culture, Latvian Artists’ Union, Club Secret Experiment the closest international collaboration: V2_East Syndicate, SCAN, Moskow WWWart center, CINE FANTOM, etc. E-L@b = FREE SPACE for: electronic and interactive art projects, exhibitions in new media - conferences and e-arts events providing artists with a possibility of carrying out e-art projects, free access to Internet E-L@b = OPEN MINDS to: clearing of the confusion and the misleading ‘precaution’ among people in front of the realities of technology & information society - Internet, Interactivity, Virtual Reality, etc. comprehensive information about new media usage - way of appropriating future technologies as a tool for the building of an open community, based on the essential human values – individuality and creativity79 To better understand the motives that evoked the decisions to create such ‘alternative zones’ in the 1990s and in determining why such a creative and innovatively networked structure as E-Lab was founded, it is necessary to analyze how the personal (inner) motivations related to the situation (outer circumstances) of that time. First, Raitis Smits and I both graduated from the Latvian Academy of Arts in 1993. We were highly interested in working in the contemporary arts field though our education in art history ended at the end of the 19th century… We didn’t have any knowledge of the context of the 20th century modern and postmodern art. We were lucky to get introduced to Jaanis Garancs, who had gone to study media art at Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in order to acquire the rare and valuable knowledge of computers and new media. ‘I had already started to experiment with video
79. E-lab’s Manifesto, 1996: http://www.parks.lv/home/e-lab (Viewed on 9.05.2010).