It was my good fortune in October of 1994 to meet a group of visiting artists from Mexico City. They had come up on an exchange program put together by NAFAA (the North American Free Artists Agreement), an organization started by Eleni Mokas in Toronto and Jorge Morales, in Mexico.
Dr. Javier Covarrubias, a professor of design at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana -Azcapotzalco, came to speak on interface design and his use of multimedia software in education to the class I teach at OCA. Through the doctor I was introduced to Professor Jorge Morales, from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana -Xochimilco, a digital image artist, and Coordinator of the Centro MultiMedia Andrea DiCastro, a video and multimedia artist.
During our subsequent meetings and discussions we discovered we had a lot in common and agreed that our two communities could benefit from further communication and exchange. This exhibition is a direct result of those meetings.
For the last decade I have been part of a community of artists centered around Inter/Access, The McLuhan Program of U of T, and the New Media Program of the Ontario College of Art. The members of this circle represent three generations of practice and experimentation in fields as diverse as kinetic sculpture, VR, robotics, CD-ROM and laser disk interactive, holography, cybernetics, and telecommunications.
It is my hope that in this current climate of trans-continental cooperation we can foster intercultural exchange taking full advantage of these new media. I have been offered an excellent opportunity to realize this hope in the form of an invitation to organize a show of Toronto artists to travel to Mexico and exhibit in association with NAFAA and the Centro Nacional de las Artes.
The exhibition includes 14 works of an innovative nature or of historical significance in the evolution of the Toronto new media art scene. Since one of the prime mandates of this exchange is to promote a relationship between our two communities, the exhibition will coincide with a series of talks and workshops. We will send down 5 of the artists to speak about their work and their experiences in the creation, promotion, and distribution of these media.