Virtual Futures '94
Archive materials from the first cyberphilosophy conference held at the University of Warwick in 1994
Virtual
Futures '94 was the first of the three VF events held at the University of
Warwick. Smaller and less unwieldy than the carnivalesque behemoth that
followed in 1995, it still attracted some 300 attendees. Its success led Eric
Cassidy & myself to organize the Thomas Pynchon: Schizophrenia &
Social Control conference which took place that November, almost just to
keep ourselves busy inbetween VF events. The speed at which these events could
be put together was dictated entirely by the internet; Mosaic, the first
graphical web browser, was slowly starting to gain in popularity, making it
possible for us to publicize these zero-budget conferences globally.
The shortage
of funds forced us into innovation in other ways. VF '94 was propped up
financially by its own club night, a strategy we continued to employ
subsequently. In '94 I brought in The House of God, the Birmingham-based techno
collective whose numbers include the now-famous DJs and producers Surgeon and
Regis; in '95 the Parisian duo Rob Maze & Tom Louichon, and the London
collective Technet played; in '96, by which time all the original VF team had
left Warwick and the conference was continued under the aegis of Sadie Plant, I
took control of the decks myself, DJing alongside A Guy Called Gerald, Tom
Middleton, and Technical Itch. This unlikely marriage of hardcore techno and
academic philosophy produced some of the most memorable moments of the VF
events: one image burnt onto everyone's retinas was that of a certain pair of
well-known, 'cutting-edge' cybertheorists demonstrating their avant-garde
credentials by dancing like Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Basic
Instinct.
Not all the
speakers we tried to bring to VF '94 could make it that year, which meant that
another conference was almost inevitable. For example, I was desperate to bring
Hakim Bey, the New York-based writer, to VF '94, but was unable to do so as
there was some doubt over the legality of his entering the UK. We found a way
around this the following year...
A book
containing some of the papers mainly from VF '94 is available:
The programme and one of the posters are to the right.
Charles Stivale's synopsis of events gives a good flavour of the conference, and summarizes the main issue and arguments.
