Impulse – Volume 8 Number 1, Fall 1979

Editor:
Eldon Garnet.

Associate Editor:
Shelagh Alexander and Anne Milne.

Contributing Editor (New York):
Willoughby Sharp.

Table of Contents:
Impulse, ‘Interconnect’; Lola Michael, ‘Divine’; Science Council of Canada, ‘A Technology Policy For Canada’; Tom Sherman, ‘Once Living In A Healthy State Of Paranoia’; Jonathan Richman; Gilbert McElroy, ‘Island’; Willoughby Sharp, ‘Toward The Teleculture Part II’; Ross McLaren, ‘Microfiche Insert’; Shelagh Alexander, ‘Mr. Leather Chicago ’79’; Excel, ‘Fashion’; Les Levine, ‘Deep Gossip: A Video Novel’; J. Kit Miller, ‘Monkeys Eat Red Peppers’; Philip Hughes, ‘Little Blank Crambo’; Michael Duddy, ‘Thinking Post Modern’; P.L. Noble, ‘Devo’.

Editorial:

One of the prime functions of the artist throughout history has been to aid in the improvement of man’s environment. Today it isn’t enough merely to work the surface, to add to the existing structure.

The current demand is for deep change: not simply to cover the wall but to rebuild it from the core.

The artist’s obligation to his environment goes beyond decorative improvement.

The technological revolution has made it clear that the entire social, economic and political structure of the world is rapidly changing and the artist who isn’t sensitive to these changes cannot be considered an artist.

The concepts expressed in The Science Council of Canada’s A Technology Policy are an example of the analytic self-examination and planning strategy necessary in every phase of modem life: to be aware of the current situation and to offer positive actions for the future.

The artist of today and tomorrow will be a social innovator, aware of technology and its pervasive ability to institute cultural change.

Impulse supports the artist on the edge whose view is to the future. Painting, sculpture, drawing, the plastic arts are historical and no more interesting than wallpaper design.

Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid process, has done more for photography than Ansel Adams, the landscape photographer.

As a cultural magazine, Impulse attempts to aid in the introduction of new modes of communication and perception; to think postmodern; to break loose of the existing confines into the unexplored.

Our vitality continues to be our growth.

Eldon Garnet