This paper will focus on concepts of analog and digital modalities in the arts and sciences while exploring an on-going series of video/web projects from the mid 1990s to the present. The premise of my project, provisionally titled CO-OR, is to create virtual maps probing the physical terrains of place and the body by creating metaphors from the geo-political co-ordinates of North-South, West-East, etc.

Thomas Pynchon, Gregory Bateson and Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, have raised serious questions about the analog and digital divides in humanistic terms especially on issues of sustaining life as we know it. Using a progression of ideas that move back and forth in time, I will begin to explore issues ranging from the body and DNA, time and measurement within a broader global perspective. In many cases the micro/macro levels of these concepts are intertwined alluding to a synthesis that these authors suggest for combining analog/digital modes of interaction. Simply stated, the analog signals represent continuously variable quantities while the digital "yes /no" signals are discontinuous.

Parallels are drawn to the innovative works of Bateson, Duchamp, Williams and others to serve as enduring models for creating virtual projections of a renewed synthesis of analog and digital modalities that may continue as a humanizing force well into this new century.

Peter d'Agostino is Professor of Film and Media Arts and Director of the NewTechLab, Temple University, Philadelphia. He is an artist and theorist who has been working in video and interactive multimedia for over three decades. A Fulbright Scholar (Brazil, 1996; Australia, 2003), he is currently serving on the senior specialist roster to 2005. He has also been awarded grants and fellowships from: the National Endowment for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Pew Trusts, and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT. D'Agostino's work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art's Circulating Video Library, and distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. Major exhibitions include: The Whitney Museum of American Art (1981 Biennial, and The American Century-Film and Video in America 1950-2000), the Bienal de Sao Paulo, Bienniale of the Moving Image, Madrid, and the Kwangju Biennial, Korea. D'Agostino's books include: Transmission: toward a post-television culture, ( co-editor, Sage: 1995). He is also a contributor to Illuminating Video (Aperture: 1990) and Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art ( UC Press: 1995). Recent publications featuring his work include Telematic Embrace: visionary theories of art, technology and consciousness, (UC Press: 2003), Video Art and Digital Art (Thames & Hudson: both 2003).