I'm an artist in real life, so what could make more sense then to set up a BBS for artists? I co-founded and managed a large artists' group in New York City, so I figured I had something of a handle on the art organization aspect of this project. I'm also an amateur programmer, so I felt I could create adequate menus and a decent informational structure. I wanted to learn. I wanted to break into the emerging field of online activities from the server side. I wanted to interact with other artists. Okay, I'll be honest: I wanted the thrill of being an Internet personality and having everyone see my creative work. I wanted people to think I was a cool guy.
I'm online at panix.com (Public Access New York Unix). I love that place, despite its daily report of modem failures and faulty lines ("New York Telephone swears it will have the lines installed tomorrow"). Panix is a homey Unix system with full Internet access, and does its best to maintain an open community of experienced hackers and newcomers. I contacted Alexis Rosen (who I am convinced never sleeps), and he was quite interested in the idea. I had hundreds of questions, the least of which was, "How do I go about doing this?"
Speaking with a hacker is very much like programming. Your biggest problem is that you usually get the result you asked for rather than the result you wanted. I can't remember scribbling this much info on whatever scraps of paper I could find (these become Post-its on my PC) since talking with an IBM technician about my 286-based XT (yes, there is such a thing). Alexis was extremely helpful and supportive. He suggested I experiment with a program called Lynx (developed by Lou Montulli at the University of Kansas).
He also brought up another interesting issue: money. Hmm, I hadn't really thought about that. Actually, I had, but mostly from the perspective of wondering if I could get around this project costing me anything. However, I was being asked how I'd like to make money from the project. Should I pay Panix a percentage from user fees that I charged, or should Panix pay me a percentage based on increased usership? The undertaking was getting more interesting each minute.
For a day or two I walked around multiplying dollars times bytes times seconds times users, and imagining my bank account being the receptee of this magic formula. Finally I sat down and began to read the online manual for Lynx. If you've used Hytelnet, you have experienced Lynx. On the surface it is a simple system, where the arrow keys on your keyboard move you to highlighted selections on a menu and the Enter key brings up a document. It also functions as a hypertext reader. Highlighted words within text can also point to documents. There are other features that are more sophisticated and are designed for an interactive online community. It is not full-featured bbs software, however.
Lynx allows you to create a natural set of directories and files, the way you normally would. The owner of the documents formats the text with labels that point to documents, and in some cases that execute commands. Organizing the structure of my system and filling it with content proved to be a challenge, as Alexis predicted it would be. New York Art Line would have to serve both sophisticated and new users. A new user should always have a helping hand when making mistakes, while an experienced user should not be bogged down by too much explanation.
I liked the concept of the Welcome Desk, or Information Desk, which I've seen on many Internet sites. (Buffalo Freenet is a good example.) I also decided that a personal work area for the user would be a logical place in which to house such tasks as reading e-mail, editing documents, and reading news. And between these two spots I sandwiched the basic names of the areas I wanted to develop for artists and anyone else who wished to interact with artists. The most obvious of these areas would be information about, and connection to, other art-related online resources.
What I haven't mentioned was that I conceived this project because I could not find any art-related services on the Internet. Fortunately, by the time I began to set up New York Art Line, a number of art- related resources began to emerge. My first submenu in this area pointed to OTIS (an interactive image- manipulation project), alt.artcom (a newsgroup for the arts), Fine Arts Forum (an electronic art periodical), Arts Wire (a national forum for organizations and people in the arts), and several other newsgroups I located (grepped) with the string "art." At last, among these choices, combined with the tutorial in my welcome menu and the membership database template in the "Guide Book" area, I had content. There were some as yet unstructured areas reserved for interactive communication and projects, but these awaited more support from Panix. More on that later.
Every artist friend who made the mistake of wandering past my computer became a beta tester. My first surprise was that no one started at the Welcome Desk, which is where I had labored so hard to provide all kinds of orientation, helpful tips, and overviews. Instead, people wanted to plunge right in and get confused and tangled. They would then turn to me and say, "It doesn't work" or "Now what?" The general rule I discovered was that the menu choices that are not yet filled with content or aren't yet working tend to be where users most want to go. After some tweaking and rewriting, I finally achieved a structure that appeared more natural to even random people grabbed off the street. For a while I toyed with renaming the Welcome Desk "You Must Start Here." Eventually, I got better at making menus that stood on their own. The nice thing about Lynx is that I could always add a pointer to any document or menu that would take the user to the tutorial or other information.
I've always had bad luck with the timing of upgrades. When I finished the humanities and comparative culture cycles at college, they abolished those requirements the following year. The same with phys ed. They even made the dormitories co-ed once I moved into my own apartment. So it came as no surprise that when I was ready to open Art Line to the public; a time where I would need the most system support; Panix proceeded to upgrade its computers, modems, telephone lines, and just about everything else you could think of that makes an online system work. Of course this is great for Panix and its users (whose numbers have grown tremendously over the past year), but it sure made it hard to contact Panix's staff. I tried for several months to square away last-minute details so I could officially get my project ready to go online. But I got no answers from staff.
What do you do when your system staff won't respond to you? I don't think they soured on the idea. Rather, I think they truly had their hands full. I can remember when the "who" command brought up a short list of maybe seven or eight names. I can remember one directory of users that might have scrolled a little beyond one screen. Alas, things are different today.
Being the backyard mechanic that I am, I undauntedly proceeded to learn about creating public and group directories. I've had a couple of friends test them from their directories on Panix, and anyone on Panix can try them by changing to my public directory (cd ~kgreenb/public) and issuing the command "artline." It is an enter-at-your-own-risk area, however, which means that not everything will always work. You can telnet to Panix, although you will have to become a registered user.
The idea behind New York Art Line is that users will shape the structure of the system, with some mild assistance from me. It will be a one-stop resource and jumping-off point for anyone interested in the arts, and particularly anyone interested in interacting with artists. Art Line will be a creative play area and forum for projects proposed by, and in collaboration with, other artists. We'll see how it goes, and I'll keep you updated on its progress.
Kenny Greenberg (kgreenb@panix.com) is a neon artist and owner of Krypton Neon in Long Island City, New York. He recently created the neon display for the sets of the 1994 Grammy Awards.
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