------------------------------------------------------------------------ December, John. Warriors and Ancestors Join at an Electronic Event. Global Network Navigator Internet Center: The Roundup, April 11, 1994. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TROY, NEW YORK (March 30) The rhythm of drums reverberated from the performance studio where the K'uumba Drum and Dance troupe moved against a background of balloons and television lights. In a viewing theater two floors above, this rhythm could be felt as a distant vibration, and images of the dancers appeared on monitors textured with video effects. Next to these monitors, on a computer screen, from the Internet Relay Chat channel #Njinga, text scrolled up, in one black and white line at a time, in rhythm to the dancers themselves. From Los Angeles via Picture-Tel, participants at the Electronic Cafe called in their warrior chants, screams from the "fiber of our being" as the text on the monitors explained, to mark their journeys to freedom. The event was an interactive electronic one---at the Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer (iEAR) studios on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Combining performance, music in both traditional and electronic forms, satellite, and Internet technology, the event celebrated Women's History month and a tale from Africa's past. "Njinga the Queen-King: the Return of a Warrior" by the writer Ione and composer/musician Pauline Oliveros, is the story of a contemporary African-American woman's journey of freedom from the historic effects a 17th-century African regent. Cycling through a life-oriented cycle of pre-birth, youth, middle life, and maturity and rebirth, the electronic event combined people and voices with the in-studio performances, creating one community for ninety minutes over electronic communications networks. At various times through the program, participants were invited to call in their dreams or war cries. Combined in the iEAR studios at Troy, these phone calls added to the collective voice that formed the electronic event. One caller described his recurring dream of a monstorous Mickey Mantle entering his room at night. A studio participant told of her recurring dream of an endless drive on the vast, open spaces of Canada. Through Internet Relay Chat, people contributed war cries, and the text was displayed as a pattern over images of dancers in the studio and over other video clips. The audience watching and listening to the event, broadcast via KU Band Satellite, included participants at public-access cable or Public Broadcasting sites in Minneapolis, Miami, Cedar Rapids, Sacramento, five colleges in Massachusetts, and other places. Sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the event was inspired by Ione's "Njinga the Queen-King" play, written and directed by Ione, was produced in January 1994 at the Brooklyn, New York Academy of music. Ione, a writer, critic, and producer, introduced the iEAR event by describing the events purpose as "creating a community" and involving not just a multi-cultural cast, but a "trans-cultural" cast that included Brazilian and European performers. Also serving as a music and sound designer as well as a guide throughout the event was Pauline Oliveros, a composer, performer, and author, who works extensively with improvisation and electronic music. On the monitors and through the broadcast sound, the images and music played off each other. Some technical glitches marked the real-time nature of the event: cutting to the Electronic Cafe Los Angles the first time, the audio feed didn't come through. Other technical effects hightened the artistic experience, revealing the technology that brought together people and created a sense of spontaneity. A hiss-like the sound of an off-channel television mixed over the soothing chatter of birds and jungle sounds pre-recorded in Africa that formed the backdrop of much of the event. The dancers writhed and moved in celebratory and strong rhythms in the studio in Troy. At the Electronic Cafe, a child threw a globe, and the image of the colorful ball marked with seas and continents moved across the monitors in the slow, stop-motion rhythm of Picture-Tel. The event was part of an ongoing series of performances in the iEAR, entitled "In a Word, With Technology" that explores how technology transforms the spoken word. The "In a Word, With Technology" series aims to expand forums in which people can encounter ideas in art, politics, language, and technology. Participating in this and other events were graduate students in the MFA program in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer. Branda Miller, Associate Professor of Art at Rensselaer and Executive Producer of "In a Word, With Technology" said that the Njinga event was the first one to include the Internet Relay Chat text element. A future event, scheduled for October 1994, will bring Guillermo Gomez-Pena to the iEAR studios to perform poetry and electronically-produced art. Gomez-Pena's works challenge ideas about multiculturalism and internationalism. In the middle life section of the Njinga event, participants in Los Angeles and Troy freely shouted out their warrior cries. The cries punctuated the video display, a flicker of images and electronic textures. Ione described how the warriors form the "fiber of our being." The conduits and cables that connected the sites, too, formed a fiber that brought performers and participants together. After the warrior cries, Ione called for audience members in the studio and on the call-in phone lines to say the names of their ancestors. Ione invoked these names again at the close of the event--- the names of the elders, the ancestors---and their names hung in the space that for ninety minutes was created out of air. Keywords: Performance, Electronic Art, Multimedia, Internet Relay Chat, Language