Never before has humankind stood upon such a grand new cusp in its ongoing story as it does now upon this cusp twixt centuries and millennia, epochs and eons and eras.

We are at last taking cognitive control of our own future evolution by reaching beyond 'simple' existence as a carbon-based species applying native neuron cell-based computing to think, act and behave, to instead become a species that will henceforth ever-increasingly augment itself with cosmetic, therapeutic, genetic, chemical, mechanical and electronic extensions, implants, engineering and other technologies, so as to prodigiously advance perceptual, cognitive, creative, physical, virtual, even space- and time-challenging qualities and capabilities.

And a key driver at the heart of this epochal shift is the burgeoning Creative Empowerment of Individuals being wrought by the spread of (mainly) computers and "Computer Based Creative Practices" (CBCPs) all around the world.

Today's average desktop computer is already a widely affordable and widely used off-the-shelf toolbox, workspace, assistant, partner, teacher, mentor and facilitator for creating almost *anything* ranged all the way from text & imaging, music & video, architectural & medical-breakthroughs, product-design & sculpture through to even Mars missions. And the co-revolution in communications brings in ever-new winds of potential for 'virtual' cooperation, teamwork, learning, sharing and even simple appropriation all across the globe.

And we too are already changing. For, just as we see the accelerating convergence of capabilities being built into devices that we are all increasingly using every day, so too is it the natural by-product of this that we should see an accelerating convergence of capabilities within individuals who use such devices.

So, while it may very well be that most of the children of today are merely the first generation of humankind to be born into, and to grow up in, this dawning new age of technological mass-empowerment, with them, humankind is arrived now at a critical inflection point on the road to intuitive human-machine partnerships and even direct connectivity.

And yet, this is all about territories that are always dawning, spreading, advancing, morphing, combining or just moving on at a pace often too fast for even a lot of mainstream practitioners to keep up with,.. and that too even as all of it spirals ever-further into every territory of human experience and endeavour by the day.

And so, against this vast moving canvas, and to address it into the future for the general public good, this document proposes establishment of a seminal learning, mentoring, networking and ever-evolving "Academy of Electronic Arts", as will be defined upon motion of this proposal in league with a very eminent global panel of active 'Special Advisors', along the lines of the 'Draft-Proposal' which follows this preamble, as a worthwhile and replicable institutional-model that would be worth creating, and then also worth replicating, anywhere in the world.

1. It is proposed to physically establish a globally preeminent "Academy of Electronic Arts" with partners and associates from around India & the world, as a 'Not for Profit' organization registered as a Foundation, Trust or Society (to be determined). This is not proposed to be a teaching institution. Instead, it will ideally be a learning, sharing, networking, mentoring, benchmarking and empowering institution that will continuously evolve to inclusively address *all* e-Creative Practices & Practitioners, whether already existing or as yet inconceivable, whether professional or not, and whether formally recognized as "Art" or not (as yet?) so, into the future

2. Towards this end, the institution will seek to establish itself as a critical interface between four constituencies globally in the general public interest, as follows:

[i] Governments and institutions
[ii] The Information Technology (IT) and other associated industrial, technology and business sectors
[iii] The creative technology-user sector
[iv] The general public

3. Intended Functions of the institution over time will include, and also exceed, facilitation and representation of e-Creative Practitioners' interests, benchmarking and propagating of best-practices, digital-archiving of works, and development of "by-products" and allied activities such as awards, exhibitions, conferences, workshops, festivals, other events, publications, curricula, R&D, etc.

4. The institution will invite membership of e-Creative Practitioners and also associated individuals and organizations against a widely affordable fee structure, beginning shortly after actual establishment/incorporation

5. A key component of the institutional agenda will be to keep itself and its members continuously informed of, familiar with, and practicing at the global cutting-edge of 'e-Creative Practices' (eCPs) of the day

6. Active Association to be sought with select associated and complementary institutions around India and the world

7. Development & launch of a major annual festival and "Awards for e-Creative Excellence" (ACE), as an income-generating mechanism to aid institutional self-sustenance and also help place members, the general public and the institution itself in a state of constant evolutionary flux, to attempt staying continuously at the vanguard of evolving eCPs across a canvas of the next 100 years.

8. Towards this end, it is intended that a group of committed individuals will associate as 'Founder-Members/Trustees' to constitute an executive "Governing Body" that will oversee, facilitate and participate in initial conceptualization, registration and establishment of the institution, (note. this is IT-related, but equally connected to culture, education, entertainment, media, community affairs, business & industry, etc.)

Including this group, it is intended to establish five primary categories of associates of the institution as follows:

[i] 'Patrons' ~ who will lend guidance and also their names to be used as goodwill support & 'endorsement'
[ii] 'Founder-Patrons' ~ who will also associate by lending their names, but additionally contribute a significant sum each towards the initial institutional corpus of funds (this category may include both individuals as well as organizations), and will be supplemented over time with 'Contributing Partners' (see below)
[iii] 'Founder-Members' ~ who will associate as the first *prime executive of the institution upon formal registration, and also contribute an agreed sum each towards the initial institutional corpus of funds. The *prime executive itself will however change periodically on the basis of elections, as will be outlined according to legal requirements of the place of registration
[iv] 'Associate-Members' ~ by subscription on an ongoing basis
[v] 'Invited-Associates' ~ by invitation on an ongoing basis

9. Primary Contributing Partners on establishment of the institution will be sought from amongst individuals and the corporate and institutional sectors on the basis of this initial commitment and action. Such partners shall be listed as 'Founder-Patrons' where their support comes prior to registration of the institution, but only as a sub-category therein after registration, as will be the case with Secondary Contributing Partners (below).

10. Secondary Contributing Partners will be selectively invited on an ongoing basis to contribute funds, hardware and software to establish, equip, operate and continually evolve:

[a] institutional premises including several different media-labs where workshops and demos may be held, and where members may do experimental cutting-edge projects against discounted rentals, or with straightforward support (e.g. video, imaging, music, R&D, concept/product development, projects & ideas incubation, etc.)
[b] a modest workshop, performance and conferencing facility
[c] a computer backbone and digital-archiving facility
[d] a Museum & Gallery of electronic arts where experimental and cutting-edge works may be showcased before the general public
[e] an ongoing and ever-evolving series of e-creative projects and programs, whether internal, commissioned (inwards or outwards), public, or all three and even more

Joel Chadabe (accepted/active)
President
Electronic Music Foundation Ltd.
E-mail: joel@emf.org

Composer and pioneer in interactive music systems, has concertized worldwide since 1969. His music is recorded on EMF Media, Deep Listening, CDCM, Lovely Music, and other labels. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Fulbright Commission, and other organizations. His articles have appeared in Leonardo, Computer Music Journal, Contemporary Music Review, Perspectives of New Music, Musique en Jeu, and other journals and magazines. Several articles anthologized in books by MIT Press, Routledge and other publishers, and his book Electric Sound is the first comprehensive overview of the history of electronic music.

Joel currently teaches at Bennington College, Manhattan School of Music, and New York University. He was co-founder of Intelligent Music, a research and development company, and he is the founder and president of Electronic Music Foundation.

Kirti Trivedi (accepted/active)
Professor ~ Industrial Design Centre
Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay
E-mail: kirti@idc.iitb.ac.in

A mechanical engineer from the University of Indore, with a postgraduate diploma in Industrial Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; and a Master's in Industrial Design from the Royal College of Art, London. An active design consultant in the areas of graphic design, book design, exhibition/museum design, environmental graphics, signage, typography and product design. Fellow of the International Design Foundation (Ulm, Germany) and UNESCO; participator and presenter in many international and national design conferences; has been variously published, exhibited and awarded internationally.

Kirti Trivedi is a professor at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He has been teaching courses in Graphic Design, Typography, Design Methods and Design History at IDC since 1976, and has been documenting the design traditions of India since 1981. In 1984, he initiated and started India's first Master's degree programme in Visual Communication at IDC.

Joe Nalven (accepted/active)
Teacher & e-Artist
E-mail: jnalven@aol.com

A Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology (University of California, San Diego J.D.), Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Affairs, licensed attorney; author of numerous articles on environmental transborder studies (U.S./Mexico) and immigration; currently teaches 'Values' and 'Reflections on Human Nature' in the Philosophy Department at Miramar College, where he previously taught Cultural Anthropology.

Joe is also an independent e-artist, and lynchpin to the Digital Arts Guild based in San Diego.

Laurie Spiegel (accepted/active)
e-Music Pioneer & Composer
E-mail: laurie@xanadu.net

Composer, computer software developer, also active in the visual arts; AB in the Social Sciences and MA in Music Composition with studies at Juilliard and Oxford; papers on technology and the arts published in MIT and Cambridge University Press Journals as well as the popular press; works performed worldwide and available on over a dozen CDs; art exhibits in several New York galleries; taught at Cooper Union and at New York University (was founder of the NYU Computer Music Studio); designer and programmer of Macintosh software that got rave reviews and has thousands of loyal users. Known as a visionary and pioneer, Laurie wrote one of the very first computer "paint" programs at Bell Labs in 1974 and was already writing about internet distribution of music by 1981.

Laurie has distinguished herself over three decades by her passion for using technology in all the arts to make creative expression available to far more people, level previously elitist playing fields, link people together and improve the quality, not just the quantity, of interpersonal connection. She is prouder that her music software got prisoners enthusiastic at New York's Riker's Island than that her works have been heard in fine European halls. On her own initiative, Laurie also set up and hosts the 'IDEA' e-arts Gazettes on her personal web server at: http://retiary.org/idea

Mel Strawn / e-Artist (accepted/active)
Professor Emeritus, Univ. of Denver (Colorado)
E-mail: mels@chaffee.net

Painter, printmaker, thinker and teacher with 32 years in US colleges and universities; was co-founder and also first president of the (San Francisco) Bay Printmakers Society in 1955 (with Will Petersen, now deceased); has been working with digital media since 1981, wide format printmaking since 1996; published "Transitions", an account of his own shift from traditional to digital media; wrote and posted seminal "White Paper" on Digital Fine Art at WorldPrintmakers.org; has acted as a juror for regional and national exhibits, traditional as well as digital, and has held several recent one-person shows of his own digital prints in the western US.

Now combining digital with traditional media, Mel lives in Colorado with sculptor wife, Bernice ~ "who has the real cutting edge".

Douglas Irving Repetto (accepted/active)
Director of Research
Computer Music Center - Columbia University
E-mail: douglas@music.columbia.edu

An artist and teacher. His work, including installations, performances, recordings, and software has been presented internationally. He runs a number of arts/community-oriented groups in New York City and on the web, including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website.

When not teaching or making art, Douglas spends much of his time cooking, coveting buildings, and socializing with members of the plant kingdom. He is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center and lives in New York City with his wife, writer Amy Charlotte Benson; two cute/bad cats, Pokey and Sneezy; and many plants.

Nainita Desai (accepted/active)
Music Composer & Sound Designer for film & television
E-mail: info@soundology.co.uk

Established in the UK as one of the young leading edge composer & sound designers for film & television, with Malcolm Laws (guitarist) since 1995. Obtained degrees in Mathematics & Computing which led to a Post Graduate Diploma in Music IT from City University, and attended the National Film & Television School, on scholarship, specializing in Sound. Was an invitee to Peter Gabriel's 'Real World Recording Week' project near Bath, working with over 70 of the world's top artistes including Peter Gabriel.

Nainita's film/TV projects have ranged from "The Natural World" (BBC NHU), and TV Commercials (Fosters /Chiclets) to music on major feature films from Hong Kong starring Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat amongst others. Other feature films include "Little Buddha", "Great Expectations" and "Backbeat" and "Little Terrorist", which recently won many Intl Film Festival Awards including a short-listing for the Oscars 2005. She also scores computer games, audio branding for websites & TV channels, and writes music for many TV series for BBC, Ch4, ITV, Ch5, Granada, Discovery, PBS, Nat Geo, NHK as well as numerous independent film companies. Her music has been included on several TV soundtrack albums including the award winning "Lonely Planet" / "Globe Trekker" series for Discovery and Ch4 through EMI and BMG.

John Antoine Labadie (accepted/active)
Associate Professor of Art
& Director, UNC Pembroke Digital Academy
Art Department - University of North Carolina Pembroke
E-mail: labadie@uncp.edu

Trained originally as a painter and sculptor at the Dayton Art Institute; also earned a bachelor's degree in painting from the University of Dayton, a Master's (with a thesis on perceptual psychology) from Wright State University, and an interdisciplinary Doctorate from the College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning at the University of Cincinnati. Has worked professionally in industrial engineering, photography, scientific illustration and as a writer, editor and artist for newspapers, magazines and academic journals. He has published more than 100 articles on subjects ranging from high performance automobiles, to Native American rock art, to digital art making. His digital art works have been exhibited in more than 150 national and international exhibitions over the last 10 years, and are held in numerous private and museum collections.

John has been in the art department at UNC Pembroke, where he founded the digital arts program, since 1994. He also concurrently serves as director of the UNCP Digital Academy, a multi-departmental collaboration offering undergraduate new media courses along with creative and technical media services. John is most happily married to Margie Beth Labadie, artist and colleague at UNC Pembroke.

Tom Chambers (accepted/active)
Artist, Art-Administrator & Teacher
Sheng Da College / China
E-mail:chambersdva@yahoo.com

A Documentary Photographer and Visual Artist for thirty years, with over forty physical exhibitions throughout the U.S.A. and worldwide. His photo, mixed media and digital works have been selected in national competitions. He has received a Governor's Proclamation, been listed in American Photo magazine in its Notable Exhibitions section, and several of his photo projects have joined the Rhode Island State Archives (Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A.), Kumho Art Foundation Archives (Gwangju, South Korea) and United States Information Services (USIS) Archives (Harare, Zimbabwe).

Tom also served a three-year tour as Art Conservator and Curator for the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and as the Initiator/Instructor of The McEwen Photographic Studio at the National Gallery's Art School.

He currently resides and teaches at Sheng Da College in China, where he is also working on 'Pixelscapes', which "begins to approach a true abstract, visual language in Digital Art." This Minimalist approach and its Derivatives (Scan Series and Shift Series) have been exhibited in the U.S.A., England, Australia, Russia, the Philippines and Brazil. Tom is also an Executive Committee Member and New Media Director for the International Digital Art Awards (IDAA) (Australia).

Poonam Barua (accepted/active)
Director ~ Public Affairs Management
E-mail: pamasia@vsnl.com

Whole-time Director of Public Affairs Management (PAMASIA ~ New Delhi), is also concurrently Regional Director - India, The Conference Board (New York), and Special Advisor to the Jindal South-West Group (Mumbai), Financial Markets International (Washington D. C.), the Institute of Multi-Track Diplomacy (Washington D.C.) and SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry (New Delhi), amongst various other portfolios.

Poonam holds a Masters Degree in Economics from the prestigious Delhi School of Economics (Delhi University), and has served as a Visiting Fellow with the Henry L. Stimson Center (Washington D.C.), the Salzburg Seminar (Austria) and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (Washington D.C.). She has also been a guest lecturer--or visiting speaker--on international business affairs and policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington D.C.), Regional Center for Strategic Studies (Colombo), University of Maribor (Slovenia) and the University of Wisconsin.

Prior to launching PAM in 1995, Ms. Barua was Chief Program Advisor with the United States Information Service in New Delhi, managing senior staff, resources and programs on U.S. foreign policy issues and international relations.

Shankar Barua
Producer-Director, Imadjinn
D-3/3492 Vasant Kunj
New Delhi ­ 110 070 (INDIA)
(91-11) 2689 9930, mob: (91) 9810615246
shankarbaba@vsnl.net

Independent creative professional as Producer-Director of his own company Imadjinn, also serves concurrently as Special Advisor to Public Affairs Management (New Delhi ~ *after having been closely associated with launch and operations for several years), the Electronic Music Foundation and the EMF-Institute (Albany, USA), Editorial Advisor to Arts Electric (NYC); Honorary Committee Member of the Museum of the Living Artist - Digital Arts Guild International Digital Art Show - 2006 (San Diego, USA); Co-Curator and also Archives & Documentation Associate to the Thailand New Media Arts Festival. He has also been an advisor and featured speaker at a few top creative institutions in India,.. amongst other things.

Shankar, educated originally as a journalist, has been networking cutting-edge Computer-Based Creative Practitioners around the world for close to a decade now, mainly-since 2000-under the marques "Imadjinn" and "The IDEA" [Indian Documentary of Electronic Arts], and as a practicing artist, musician, writer & designer, is variously associated on an ongoing basis with creative projects in several countries. He was written dozens of articles on a variety of subjects and themes for all sorts of publications over the years, and also the texts for three 'Coffee-Table' books that have been sold all over the world in several translations and editions. He is married to Poonam Barua (see above).