The National Edition of “The Computer Player!” Newspaper – July 1997-
Hockenhull has long been instrumental in introducing digital media to Canadian artists. His roles have ranged
from that of research associate with the now dissolved Centre for Image and Sound Research in Vancouver, to
membership in the Web Weavers Network Society, (where he contributed to the production of Canada's first cultural
Web site) to the co-founding of Transverse Worlds (with Thecla Schiphorst), a new non-profit cultural society
investigating the aesthetic possibilities of telecommunications, interactivity and creativity.
Hockenhull's extensive hypermedia writings for the Web and for CD-ROM include his hypertext collection
Conceived, soon to be published by Eastgate Systems of Watertown, Mass.
June Campbell
Hockenhull shared some of his thought-provoking views with The Computer Player!
New technologies: "We need to rely on a critical appreciation and an active audacity in relationship to
these new technologies. We shouldn't simple adopt them to supercharge what has gone before. ...This is
especially important when one considers media ... we have to understand what it means to understand in a
world of the digital transform."
Canadian culture: "Canada has a remarkable heritage of thinking about communication and the development of
innovative industries and products regarding communications. Whether it's Bell or Marconi or Innis or
McLuhan-Canada's main contribution to the postindustrial world - intellectual, philosophical and in
industry is related to communication technology. And yet Canada in the last 10 to 12 years has not built on this
rather impressive history.
"...The Department of Canadian Heritage used to be the Department of Communications ...the Minister responsible
for this portfolio was the Minister of Communications...now we have the Minister of Canadian
Heritage. We are looking and validating the past, boxing our culture into an idea of heritage-instead of
positioning ourselves as active creators of culture, and active communicators in the world. Another example was
the closing down of all but one of the research centres devoted to innovations cultural production and software
research. These centres were to explore, create and help bring to market new cultural tools-hardware and software
programs-the need still exists in British Columbia and in Canada to initiate programs that will push the bounds
of what the technological tools can do-conceptually, technically, and most importantly-socially."
On his work: "[Is] both a struggle and a joy. I work in a number of mediums and styles: film, drama,
documentary, digital video, the Web, hypertext VRML [virtual reality modelling language], Java, drama,
poetry, multimedia."
simply be the enthusiasm that I bring to a particular story and the public issue may be the ambience of the
story...but whatever the case I am thinking through the process of creating-how it references my own life and
the life of the larger community ...I have a great love of technology-as a vehicle for creativity, thoughtful
communication, and change."