First presented as a local pilot series of four television programs on WNET in New York City, NTV aimed "to nurture unusual approaches to form and content." In 1987, the year after it first aired in New York, WGBH's New Television Workshop in Boston came on as co-producer and the series continued with ten more programs airing in New York and Boston. Of the works aired, one third were acquired, one third commissioned and one third given completion funds for post-production. NTV's programming ranges from narrative works like Pain Pleasures, written by Jane Bowles and directed by Swoon director and I Shot Andy Warhol co-producer Tom Kalin, as well as video montages, sound animations, documentaries and video dance pieces. In 1990 NTV began its first nationwide broadcasts and PBS attempted to put the series in a prime time slot. In keeping with Susan's commitment to the artists, when stations wouldn't air it on prime-time, she instead chose to place the series with American Program Services, outside PBS.

The Wexner Center for the Arts became co-producer for NTV in 1993, but despite this financial support the series was losing its funding. When foundations seemed interested in giving money to developing the NTV Website, Susan concentrated her efforts on Artbytes. She approaches independent media, visual and performing artists to create original artworks tailored to the digital medium. The foundations' lack of willingness to fund NTV's television series suggests that television is no longer the place for experimental visions. But if TV isn't the place, is the Web?

If Artbytes's premiere piece is any indication, Susan's project, if not already redefining multimedia art on the Web, will pose new questions. With Found Sound, documentary filmmaker, sculptor, and multi-media artist Alan Berliner has created an interactive audio piece that places us in an aural landscape whose topographies are programmed to the movement of the mouse. Forty-two sounds embedded in a black and white image of an ear are each assigned a square zone. As the mouse glides over their invisible boundaries, the squares are articulated by the sound titles that appears on the screen. The computer screen functions as an instrument, becoming vocal through text and sound. Highlight various squares simultaneously and incongruous sounds are woven together. Pair other sounds together and a narrative mise-en-scene takes shape.

Found Sound is the offspring of an earlier piece, an interactive audio sculpture entitled Audiofile, consisting of four metal filing cabinets, whose drawers, when opened, activate a continuous loop of recorded sound. By opening and closing them at random, participants can "compose their own unique sound collage combinations." Alan found that, though it lost its spatial dimension, by transposing this idea to the one-dimensional medium of the Web, "it liberated the work."

Found Sound isn't just another form of online "gaming." The aim is for the piece to be downloaded and left on the user's desktop, inviting an ongoing exploration and playful interaction. Alan's intention was to "create an interactivity in which the participant is free to explore and invent a virtual infinity of serendipitous connections and improvisitory dynamics through a real time audio collage." Found Sound accomplishes this, creating acoustic narratives and abstract musical compositions by building layers of sound. Not only do the sounds effectively conjure emotional states, encoded in textual images, they also allow words to take on new meaning. By spending time with the piece Alan found that "the internal vocabulary takes over and through word association, poetic leaps are inspired."

Marshall McLuhan foresaw the effect the computer would have on us thirty years ago when he said: "The important thing to realize is that electric information systems are live environments in the full organic sense. They alter our feelings and sensibilities." We're affected daily by the architecture of technology which orders our world--and electronic media continues to transmute and rearrange itself in our lives. Despite the mania of Web devotees the medium is still in flux and its possibilities intangible, like some of Alan's aspirations for his piece--to have people record their own sound and title compositions and upload them back onto the site. Though unrealized, this possibility encourages abstract notions of language and creative participation. It represents an interesting trajectory--for artistic expression to become a communal project.

The discussions Found Sound initiates point to directions interactive art may take on the Web in the future. The online gallery Susan envisions for Artbytes will certainly play a role in steering multimedia artists towards the medium and attracting a growing audience interested in the intersection between technology and art.

Willamain Somma (wsomma@aol.com) is a former Web producer (www.charged.com) and a freelance writer and photographer living in New York.