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birth of gaia
November 2009 
Hole in Space (The birth of Gaia, FB, Myspace)
Doug
The conversation didn't last long and I was never able to reconnect with this person or anyone else that far away with my walky-talky. Hey, I wanted something bigger and better like a HAM radio! Well I never did get a HAM radio and forgot about bridging distances with technology.
This afternoon I went to SFMOMA to see a show of Martin Puryear work and while I was lost looking for that show I ran across a room where "Hole in Space" was being displayed on two huge monitors that faced each other. The room was dark and there were people in the videos shouting and holding up signs like "Ivan are you there?"
Galloway, Kit; Rabinowitz, Sherrie
Hole in Space
Hole in Space was a Public Communication Sculpture [for three days]. On a November evening in 1980 the unsuspecting public walking past the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, and «The Broadway» department store located in the open air Shopping Center in Century City (Los Angeles), had a surprising counter with each other. Suddenly head-to-toe, life-sized, television images of the people on the opposite coast appeared. They could now see, hear, and speak with each other as if encountering each other on the same sidewalk. No signs, sponsor logos, or credits were posted—no explanation at all was offered. No self-view video monitors to distract from the phenomena of this life–size encounter.
Hole–In–Space suddenly severed the distance between both cities and created an outrageous pedestrian intersection. There was the evening of discovery, followed by the evening of intentional word-of-mouth rendezvous, followed by a mass migration of families and trans–continental loved ones, some of which had not seen each other for over twenty years.
(source: Kit Galloway/Sherrie Rabinowitz, http://www.ecafe.com/getty/HIS/index.html)
Ivan are you there?
Access: Public
Doug!!! Thank you for sharing this. I’m very moved by your early connection with ‘someone’ out there via your walky-talky. It’s so fascinating … our human need to connect with others and to expand our ‘awareness’ of who we all ARE.
This video about the Hole in Space (a public communication sculpture) had me in tears.
Great blog my friend! Yes, I’ll connect with you wherever and whenever … here, there and everywhere!
love you,
peri
What is your frequency Doug? : )
I love this narrative blog. Thank you for posting it. I love your story about your walky talky. I have great childhood memories of such stuff as well. I love the idea of a public communication sculpture. I love such creative ideas. I wish to do a sort of thing.
all the bests,
Samme
Hi, Doug - this is a great blog. It brings back the memory for me of being in a restaurant in East Berlin obviously before the wall came down. The six of us US college students had enough German between us to communicate with our waitress, who spoke wistfully of family in the same city on the other side of the wall whom she hadn’t seen since it was put up. That experience, among others led me to *really* resonate with the movie Wings of Desire when it came out a couple years later. Later in the trip to Germany, I had an amazing experience of connecting with a distant cousin who had defected from East Germany on his way back from a hitch as a doctor in Ethopia. We sat on the patio of his apartment and stumbled through an awkward conversation in German - growing up in East Germany - he learned Russian and so his English was less workable than my rudimentary German skills. Sometimes the human desire to connect can really throw spotlights on various walls that divide us. Those experiences help my reading of your blog be especially poignant.
peace and blessings -
Sylvia
Doug,
It is easy to forget what life was like just 10 years ago. That was about the time I remember really beginning to use email and some internet. Age allows the looking back at the unfolding of this revolution in human interaction and I realize how the little steps have added up to where we are now.
I remember using CB radios when I was driving an 18-wheel truck cross-country 30 years ago. The human connection of that was similar to the Hole-In-Space only less distance and no visual contact with the other person.
About 20 years ago, I remember thinking an electronic typewriter was a miracle, with its memory I could enter my bosses edits and reprint the letter in record time. It was about then that I began to use a computer in the most minimal way.
I remember when my husband and I added a fax machine to our office, I doubted it’s need, now most of our communications, even those that originate as a fax or voice mail are all being digitized and sent to our office via email from a service provider. We can continue to pursue our business anywhere, no longer teethered to our office. It feels very free.
You would probably enjoy Lisa/Morningstar’s blog “It’s a Wonderful Internet” here - http://morningstar11.gaia.com/blog/2008/12/its_a_wonderful_internet.
Thanks for yet another perspective on the theme …
Deb
Hi Peri! Wow I wish I could have shared what I saw in the museum! It was just amazing and so worth getting lost in order to find it. I also saw a video of David Tudor playing John Cage’s 4’33” that seemed to me to be about the same thing. It’s about what it takes to get us to pay attention for maybe 4 minutes and 33 seconds, just long enough to experience what is, this life. It’s the kind of art I’d like to create, a transparent art through which we see ourselves. And me too, moved to tears.
Hi Samme! I’m on channel 0 or at least trying to be that quiet. Thank you for sharing this with me dear friend!
Hi Sylvia! I love your story. You know I was thinking the same thing about the walls that divide us. Why is it that we seem to be able to connect via satellite or a hole in space and yet we sometimes fail to see the person standing next to us in the grocery store line?
And today I was thinking that maybe it’s that wall of technology that creates just enough safety to allow us to be who we are for a moment?
Hi Deb! OMG CB radios! Well that is modern technology compared with HAM radios.
So what’s your handle good buddy?
I remember we bought a Brother word processor years ago where I worked and suddenly I was interested in answering complaint memos!
And I finally did find the Martin Puryear exhibition across the catwalk on the fourth floor. I felt like I was stepping back in time. In the lobby there was a wooden box on old wooden wagon wheels, the whole thing was tilted back and the harness was a long tapered pole reaching up through the atrium all four stories as if it were trying to harness something, which couldn’t be harnessed, couldn’t even be touched but only imagined, like the space this ladder leads to.
Hi, Doug - an interesting aspect of the safe distance on the internet - I’ve been chatting online for many years. With pastoral training I find some people wind up confessing to me. That’s a little disconcerting sometimes - my background is Baptist and confession tends *not* to be big in those circles [wry grin]. But cyberspace allows for an intriguing kind of intimacy - distant enough to have some safety - and close enough for folks to share their guts sometimes.
Thanks for this blog!
peace and blessings -
Sylvia
My hair stood on end with this post. Well, I have a crew cut now, but it stood up anyway. Another ‘Giant step for Mankind’ moment. The ’80s, huh? And today we’re all literally peeking into each others kitchens to see what’s cooking thru holes in space! Truly great art.
Hi Praveer, Lol about the hair! There are places on the top of my head where it would truly be a miracle if hair stood up. Hey the sides are another story! When that happens I look a little like this.
I wish I could have shared the experience of being in the room with the larger then life video of the woman in New York trying to connect with Ivan via a hand made sign.
Sigh - that’s a photo of me, Doug. That’s exactly what I’m avoiding with the crew cut. It was either that, or I let the fringe grow out in front and become a Benedictine monk with a hole-where-there-should-be-hair on top.
Lol! Well if they ever do a remake of Killer Klowns from Outer Space then you and I can sign up for parts K?