Society for Old and New Media in association with the Guggenheim Museum request your participation in BRANDON Virtual Court: an experiment on joint decision making and conflict resolution on the Net

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Research and script development at Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue, Harvard University

Each Net trial session consists of 8 JURORS and a moderator. The jurors will be pre-selected after completing a stress level test (provided by Gender Identity Clinic) and are required to study the documented cases that make up the trial. Jurors will be expected to log on and off on the Net for an assigned ONE HOUR trial session. The session will be conducted as a series of votes on devised QandA forms and issues can be debated over "sweat out " chat sessions.

BRANDON, launched in June 1998, is a Guggenheim Virtual Museum commission that entails multi-artist, multi-author, and multi-institutional collaboration. Set up as an open-ended narrative with four templates of interfaces, BRANDON explores narrative images and texts in a cross-section between real and virtual space. BRANDON derives its title from Brandon/Teena Brandon of Nebraska, USA- a gender-crossing individual who was raped and murdered after his female anatomy was revealed. Taking this case into the environment of gender play and multi identity of cyberspace, BRANDON extends its case study to include other legal cases where gender ambiguity constitutes points of interrogation and the verbal/textual assualt cases on the Net, such as Legba vs. Mr. Bungle, (1993), a cyberrape case made famous by Village Voice writer Julian Dibble, Jane Doe Vs. Jake Baker (1995), "alt.sex.stories" postings that call for FBI arrest of a Michigan University student.

In conjunction with London Transgender Film and Video Festival (October 20-24), the "Body of Evidence" interface features uploads by four London artists (curated by Lisa Haskel) that recall the Brandon case and reflect upon broader institutional regimes of gender classification. During the festival, BRANDON is rendered as four channel window projection facing the street at the Lux Gallery, Hoxton Square, London. The "Body of Evidence" interface is prelude for the Virtual Court Sessions at De Waag, Amsterdam.