"Live Free or Die."

"It's midnight in Israel
and all the children know
it's the art
that's the part
that's the hardest letting go."

Last month {October, 1997}Levi Dedi, better known as The Night Daemon of
Fuel and iCE, a talented young high resolution artist, percieving nothing
remaining in his life, leapt from his 9th story apartment window during
the quiet part of the night and met his end on the ground below, leaving
behind only a note asking to "let him die." This happened in Israel but
news finds its own way through the wired youth of today and soon we were
all feverishly exchanging rumours and trying to find the truth, something
which may never be known. People die all the time; thousands of people
every hour. This is nothing new. It is true that though a member of the
underground computer art scene may have (and probably has) died before,
never when so prominently placed, if active in the scene at all. Perhaps
most telling of all, however, the reason this death hit us so hard, is
because it is likely that we played a part in this death. The facts are
not known, but the signs are chilling: if someone is permitted to allow
the computer and everything inside to become their life, their work, their
hobby, their friends, their community, and then if the computer is taken
away, the person has nothing more to live for; no community, no friends,
no hobby, no work, no life. We have a body on our collective conscience.
We have a martyr self-sacrificed for our cause, to bring us together and
allow us to see what we have become and will become. If the rumours are
true and the issue at stake was rights of communication, by being forcibly
removed from us he lost the thing he lived for.

I will neither condone nor condemn suicide, but can you imagine the
passion that he must have had? Most of us have participated in this silly
scene for a number of years, having poured in spare time and invested
effort in playing at politics and pretending art; it was a pleasant
diversion. But most of us consider it nothing more - a frivolous pursuit,
certainly no matter of great import. Certainly not a matter of life and
death.

It may be that our brightest star was the first to burn out. Imagine what
masterworks could be produced from our community if we put a piece of
ourselves into every work, not creating for material gain but for pure
artistic enlightenment and rapture. Would an occasional death be
recompense for the ideal of art? That's how the Romantic poets felt... not
a feeling man alive would choose to live as Wordsworth rather than Lord
Byron, though his life was many times longer.

This will either make us stronger as a community or ultimately destroy it
altogether. No single event in the history of the underground computer art
scene, no pack release, no group merger, has ever warranted the attention
this tragedy recieved from all sides. And if the trends of the information
age progress, this will only be the first casualty in the battle against
mundane reality.

The question is, are you willing to die for this?

- Cthulu
Mistigris Founder
Not a Fish
November 1st, 1997