Web Sites

The Tate Gallery

http://www.tate.org.uk/

Phase One of the Tate's cyberspace presence already contains the complete Oppe collection, from Robert Adam to Wykeham Archer, with 3,500 images in between. Designed for ease of use, the site makes art accessible, rather than being "state of the art" itself. When the rest of the General Collection is added, the gallery will be first in the world, say the developers, to have its entire catalogue permanently online. The institution itself is being radically reorganised, so there are links not only to the Liverpool and St Ives Tates but to details of the millennial move to Bankside Power Station.

Nicholas Saunders

http://www.stain.org/nicholas/

The author of E for Ecstasy was killed in a car crash last month, and these memorial pages contain tributes from his partner and family, as well as from hundreds of clubbers who had come to regard him as the Timothy Leary of the MDMA scene. Saunders' career constitutes a guided tour of "Seventies and Eighties Alternative London" - the title of his directory to the city. He was also a computer pioneer, opening London's first walk- in desktop publishing facility. His most valuable contribution may be his Ecstasy Web site (www.ecstasy.org), controversially "balanced" in its stance but with an ongoing commitment to testing street product, a service some here claim to have found literally life-saving - though this is now in abeyance because of "outside pressure" on the lab concerned.

The medium is the metaphor

http://members.tripod.com/mick_cunningham/meta1.htm

An online lecture, from the Irish Times journalist Mick Cunningham, on the language of cyberspace and what gets lost in translation. Marshall McLuhan and Star Trek-TNG are invoked to illustrate how metaphors limit comprehension, and the heart of the site is an analytical glossary of webspeak, with "surfing" especially suspect as a Baywatch notion far removed from the real world of bad phone lines. Also, this European invention (the Web) is expressed in almost entirely American imagery. "Do the metaphors for this global network have to be so tied to a particular set of cultural and historical baggage of just one country?" asks Cunningham. The site warns that falling back unthinkingly on approximate language may shape and limit our future.

TMark

http://www.paranoia.com/rtmark/ homereg.html

This cabal of anti-corporate pranksters has been active since 1991, but now seeks a higher profile. The aim is to promote cultural and workplace sabotage, of a harmless and media-intensive nature: one prank involved replacing the voice boxes in talking Barbie dolls with those from GI Joes, and the shadowy outfit is now sponsoring the UK-inspired World Phone In Sick Day on 6 April. Meanwhile, a CD of "samples" from the work of singer Beck is being flaunted in the face of the copyright owners, and there are plans for a huge "New York Welcomes Saddam Hussein" banners to adorn Times Square hotels. Saboteurs are warned that sacking may follow their interventions, though prizes are on offer. There will be $1,000 for "a worker at a major metropolitan newspaper who significantly alters an issue (eg, changes most of the article text) in an interesting way".