The Process (collective)

The Process is an art and philosophy collective formed in the early 1990s. The idea was initially birthed at the same time as, and with a subset of the same people from, the studio work for the Skinny Puppy album The Process, though the direct interrelation ends there. Some of the early contributors included Nivek Ogre, Genesis P-Orridge, William Morrison, and Loki der Quaeler. Members are known as Processians[1] or Processors.[2]

The Process Logo, or P-Cross

The Process logo — formed by the overlapping of 4 P's — the name, along with some philosophies, other symbols and texts were taken from The Process Church of the Final Judgement (Process Church); ideas that were initially introduced to the early members of The Process collective by Genesis.

Aside from the facet of their structure aimed at supporting a micronation status, the general organizational structure of the NSK played a contributing role in the aim of the original, largely unrealized, structure of The Process.

The 1990s

One of the initial ideas pursued by the collective was concerned with the idea of geographically distributed collaboration. The notion which often came up in early conversations was one of "well, there's this newly available medium: the internet; it really seems like it could be used to better facilitate musicians, graphic artists, and philosophers collaborating on works", Loki Der Quaeler (personal reflection 2007).

Information about The Process was initially communicated across Usenet by its founding members, who encouraged people to upload their various media files for collaboration via anonymous FTP. "We worked out a doctrine and put something up and from all of that, something was woken. Something rose up and came back to meet the call," Ogre (Paradigm Magazine, 1998). Later, a mailing list was also created, but without direct participation by Ogre or Genesis.[3][4]

The Process provided one of the earliest international collaboration efforts by artists and philosophers who were largely unknown to each other prior to their usage of the Internet. This effort has largely gone undocumented by contemporary media theorists and Internet sociologists despite the fact that many of their assertions played out in the course of the experiment.

Several gatherings of participants took place in 1997 and 1998 at primarily East Coast locations. During the last years of the decade, community activity dwindled and the website was eventually retired. Creative spin offs and independent projects were launched around roughly the same time frame drawing many participants in new directions and away from the collective. In this same period, a number of original members of the Process Church contacted some of the early contributors of the collective and the Process Church members were subsequently provided with their own web space on the Process server from March 1997 until May 2001.[5]

Controversy

Genesis brought with them to The Process a philosophy and documents that had similarities to Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY) a collective that they had previously co-founded in the early 1980s. They were accused by Temple ov Psychick Youth North America (TOPYNA) of plagiarizing and re-branding a TOPY document for use in The Process.[6] Genesis also founded congruently with The Process an organization with an acronym similar to the one used by TOPY called Thee Outer Process International (TOPI).[7]

Since 2000

In 2000, Genesis premiered a short film entitled The Process is the Product. It was prepared from multimedia material created by Process Media Labs during the early years of The Process.[8]

The Technics

The Process ftp was initially located at the address ftp.netcom.com directory pub/puppy. The group was then afforded its own server space and listproc at USC, by Robert Engen, with the address process.usc.edu. Starting in 1995, internet efforts not involving the listproc were based from its own domain: process.org.

The original process.org server was a NeXTstation which sat in a closet in Vancouver, B.C; the location and internet connection were provided by Blacky. Since 2000, the server has been on anonymous hardware in a colocation center.

References
  1. Definitional process.org
  2. Processors index process.org
  3. "Do Ogre or Genesis P'Orridge participate on the email list?" The Process List FAQ, circa 1997
  4. Farber, Philip H., Interview with Ogre, Paradigm Shift, October 1998, Vol. 1, No. 2
  5. according to the web archive of Process.org @ WayBackMachine
  6. An Official Reply from TOPYNA, October 10, 1994
  7. Farber, Philip H., Interview with Genesis P-Orridge, Paradigm Magazine
  8. 'The Process is the Product' Page (unofficial)
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