MODULE: 2AMP7H1.Y Thinking Practices: Critical Dialogues for Contemporary Art and Media Practices Student: Liliana Garcia 12002542 MA Arts and Media Practice
Lilith’s Rain: a case study of practice-based –research in the visual arts
Introduction
Since 1990 the debate about higher art education and the ‘practice-theory reflection’ has been the concern of the academy and other higher art institutions in Europe. This discussion has promoted changes that where addressed in Bologna Convention in 1999, which inaugurated the ‘beginning’ of new reforms in the higher education system. When addressing this topic Slager, (2008) explains how art institutions in Europe are looking for new strategies to address professional competencies and a way of legitimatizing art practice knowledge inside the academy. Because Bologna Convention is also valid for higher art education, student artists are now expected to conceptualize and present their work, besides expanding their own practice. The Utrecht Consortium (an initiative of the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (MaHKU)) is an organization trying to map out this theory-practical issue and working towards identifying the specific characteristics of art research that can be useful in terms of curricula and models of methodology. In the contingency of this debate, and as an MA art student in the U. K. I wish to reflect on the changes that this MA course has made (so far) regarding the identification of the methodology I use, the theory that underpins it, and the professional perspectives I see as an artist. In this essay I will first explain my general way of working and then analyze the methodology and the theory in relation to my specific work in progress: Lilith’s Rain, as well as reflecting on the specific characteristics of art and art’s research that can be useful to other fields of study.
Carving a Methodology
‘Practice-based-research methods are again shown to be emergent, moving between theory, and the changing demands of the artist's physical and psychological states as well as those of material studio processes. At each step, practice itself, determined the direction and method to be followed.’ Barrett (2007, p.11).
Because of the nature of the visual artist’s work it is difficult to conceive any methodology other than one emerging from the very process of inquiry and creation. The methodology of my own practice comes out from my direct investigation (both technopractical and theoretical), it is based on solving specific problems at each stage. Each step represents a cue to the following one. I have an idea of the whole in the back of my mind, I try to get as close to it as I can, but also allow myself to change during this process. This constitutes the main difference in relation to fixed methods used by other researchers, including artists. This ‘ever changing process’ is intuitive and qualitative and is very close to the model of the Grounded Theory used in the social sciences: 'Generating a theory from data means that most hypotheses and concepts not only come from data, but are systematically worked out in relation to the data during the course of the research. Generating a theory involves a process of research.’ Glaser & Strauss (1999, p.6).
Poetry as inspiration, poetry as provocation
At an early age I found myself writing poetry and then addressing what I had written with a drawing. These 2 results ‘matched’, 'belonged to each other'. I doubt that the next thing I did was perform a bow and sing a tune (to complement text and image), but in time, I discovered that it might have been only natural that I did for I conceive my work as progressive integration and interaction of different artistic languages that convey poetically in a certain moment in time. I believe the methodology I use is nothing but the evolution of these emerging associations that finally build up a multidisciplinary piece. I cannot decide if it is actually an image that provokes the words, or if words detonate the images. It is the nature of poetry that both image and word merge in the metaphor, content and form are inseparable, very close to behaving like an ideogram. Materializing the thought through words is the first step, to ‘utter the idea’, then ‘writing it down’ so it can ‘look back’, and from then on, ‘we’ continue. It is a method that is continuous and that evolves as the work progresses. With every work I have several handbooks with drawings, and many dislocated words or paragraphs written in different colors, each color goes after a different voice, one follows the conceptual line of my enquiry; one talks to me as a reminder; and one is loose from both and remains unruly, dislocated and poetic. I do this writing and drawing during the first stage, and after I feel I have completed this part of my exploration, I put everything I have imagined 'on the table' and then I take myself out of the room for ‘as long as I can’. When I come back to the ‘room’, I know I
have gone through an unconscious evaluation process, and I can see what is and is not relevant, and move on to the next level. Barrett (2007, p. 6) stresses this idea when she states: ‘once a certain critical level of complexity is reached in any system, genuinely novel properties -those that have never been instantiated before-emerge’, which also alludes to how my practice has got more complex and challenging with each new piece of work.
The current work in progress: Lilith’s Rain.
The inspiration. Chance? I came to know about Lilith many years ago, because of my own name ‘Lilita’ (a diminutive of Liliana) which is what people call me at home. Someone made the connection, and to my astonishment, I realized there was such as a woman before Eve. I tracked her name and found about the legend and was soon caught up in the topic as by enchantment. Lilith comes from a Judeo-Christian myth that first appears in an anonymous book of Jewish proverbs ‘The Alphabet of Ben Sira’(comments on the bible of the prophet Ben Sira ) dated anywhere from the seventh to the eleventh century. Stern & Mirsky (1998, p.183) translated the passage where Lilith is first named: ‘After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone' (Genesis 2:18). He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For
you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: 'Sovereign of the universe!' he said, 'the woman you gave me has run away.' At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels to bring her back.’
But Lilith does not submit to Adam and his patriarchal God and is expelled from paradise, cursed and condemned by God to live as a demon (among other demons and succubus) and held responsible for the death of newborn children as well as for men’s ruptures of lust. Then Lilith appears to have vanished from memory. It is only over the past 30 years that the myth has been revised by contemporary feminists, as she represents the first independent woman, hence the perfect symbol of women’s emancipation. Amazingly so, to the general public, she is hardly known. For Plaskow (2005, p.8) Lilith could actually represent the core of the feminine movement and can be read as a metaphor for the unfolding of ‘feminist work’. It was not surprising that the ‘unfair setout’ and the miscarriage of justice spurred like a ‘benevolent poison’ into the stream of my system. As a woman, I was shocked, overwhelmed, hurt, and at the same time fascinated by the legend, but on a deep layer, I was scared of what this myth might do to me. Lilith was a demon, she was cursed and burning in hell because she defended her integrity, her right to be equal to Adam. This did not seem shameful or wrong, why should I feel afraid?, But I guess the patriarchal order played a bad trick on her and on every other women of the species. Sometimes I dared to talk about God´s abusive
behavior towards her, but most of the time I felt afraid to bring up the subject; Latinamerica can be very hostile to feminism (seen as transgression to the natural order) and in some ways is still narrow minded and pusillanimous because of Catholicism and Christianity. I knew men would look at me with dislike, and women even more so. But Lilith was still such an appealing figure and had so much resemblance to my own life (my father a conservative navy officer and me a ‘lefty-rebel-poet’) that I kept her in mind. After a while I moved to Mexico and while living there, an ‘ongoing’ conversation with a close Jewish friend drove me to the subject of Lilith again and made me decide to write about the legend.
The text came out rather easily, in the way of a long poem. The poem had strong images.
The evolution of the visual
Even though this is the best known ancient images presumed to be Lilith (besides the contemporary dark images of Lilith represented as a vampire or a vicious lustful creature), Lilith never seemed to me as human, she was a dazzle, a flick of light, a sigh of the air. I (unconsciously) conceived her safe and away from masculine gaze, so she took the form of a stick figure; a simple drawing with the fundamental features of any woman (and the caricature has no face). Because I drew her in my copybooks, she was always
surrounded by letters and words. A tree soon appeared in the scene (the tree of right and wrong?), so this was the world I started to imagine for her.
original images
In the long poem (Lilith’s Trial), I wrote the fiction of her returning after having lived thousands of years beyond time and memory. She was coming back as a sudden phosphorescence, bringing with her the other alphabet, the other order. That is what the text said, and that was what I soon found: The other alphabet.
The other alphabet. Original image.
The other alphabet was not a complex idea, just the same traditional alphabet but doubled in the reflection of itself. There! The sense of completeness, the strokes that show the intersection, highlighted, the concept of completeness represented in a visual sign. It was eloquent, it was simple. I had already started the visual dialogue that would gradually lead me to the aesthetic of Lilith’s world, and eventually to the concepts underneath this aesthetic. I played for hours with the symmetrical alphabet, then I realized the importance of symmetry in the way I conceived Lilith’s order (conceptually and visually) and extended the sense of symmetry to the act of writing: I am predominantly right handed so I wrote each letter with my left hand (using the right hemisphere of the brain) then did so with words and sentences. It was not difficult, for I had been doing this for years, I had even practiced how to write backwards, but I had not tried writing backwards with my left hand, that would do it! The total transgression: ‘exploring’. According to Turgeon (1994) the left hemisphere (right hand) is analytical, (divides the whole into parts), linear (analyses one thing at a time) and supports accumulation of knowledge, while the right side of the brain (left hand) is systemic, conceives the parts as part of the whole; holistic, intuitive and supports creative thoughts. Thus it is easily deduced that the current (male) dominant system promotes only one approach to reality (analytical, linear, and accumulative), leaving aside the holistic, non linear, creative approach, that can be alluded to the characteristics of Ecriture Feminine, term firstly coined when Helene Cesoux’s wrote ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (Marks & Courtivron, 1980), a famous essay that defended and promoted women to write and to do it in a in a ‘womanly way’ (inscribing herself and her ‘differentness’ in her writing).
The mirroring (reverse). Original image.
Lilith as a ‘simple’ avatar and as the double.
At the end of 2006, a year after having (unexpectedly) won a creative writing award for Lilith’s Trial in Chile, I worked with some other artist friends towards obtaining the funding to put the play on stage. This required a team (a lot of technical support), for I had to present a visual draft with the basics of the play including a simple animation of Lilith. So I saw her transition from paper to a computer screen, and according to cyber culture, ‘just, just’ become an ‘avatar’, an icon, an electronic image that represents and is manipulated by a computer user (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2009), and in relation to the origin of the word (Sanskrit), a deity appearing in bodily form on earth (Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2009), which in the case of this figure, literally means the incarnation of a higher spirit on earth for a special purpose. For Rehak (1997) the avatar,
as the reflection and the double, does double duty, as self and as other. As self because its behavior is tied to the player through the interface, and as other, when it is different to the player and can sometimes accomplish supernatural tasks. Hence, the psychoanalytical meaning in Lilith’s Rain, is easy to read; this avatar could represent a side of me who might also need to be restored through the piece.
original image
The showcase of Lilith’s Rain
Some terms involved in the description of Lilith’s Rain (avatar, interface, computer) seem those of a high-tech contemporary work, never the less, I prefer to define the piece not just as a digital performance; a computer based work in its aesthetic or delivery forms (Dixon, 2007), but rather as a hybrid piece that mixes ‘digital performance’ with a more into the 80s ‘theatrical performance’ (Goldberg, 1999), very much inscribed into Ecriture feminine because of the evocative, cyclical, non-linear narrative representing ‘women’ in a woman’s body. The space is conceived (paradoxically?) as an‘ephemeral’ immersive installation, one in which the viewer withdraws into the self and experiences a kind of escape from reality (Oiveira, Oxley, Petry, 2003). It consists on a mirrored wall and a translucent veil that
divides it tangentially. This design occupies a corner of a room and ‘opens up’ this space when the veil is projected upon and reflected. The interesting immersive quality of this piece is that images on the veil not only double themselves, but suggest a 4D texture.
The mirror and veil in Lilith’s Rain have a physical meaning as well as a psychological one. The veil articulates 2 realities, it represents what is hidden (subconscious) and what is out, or comes out. By controlling the illumination one can graduate its opacity and transparency: what the spectator can or cannot see. The reflective mirror, in a psychological sense, has to do with self identification and subjectivity, whereas physically, it has to do with symmetry, multiplication and infinity. Projecting the reverse-action is also meaningful to the piece, for it represents total transgression, as well as an explorative experience. Hence, Lilith’s Rain is a poetical ‘explorative piece’ that fuses animation (hand drawing), kinetic poetry, original sound composition and the intervention of 2 women (or three) interacting with the mirror, the veil and Lilith’s character. The visuals of the piece consist in the display of the legend (text); the animation (her coming from the sky and arriving next to the tree, the
symmetrical alphabet, the act of writing backwards and a universe full of letters falling from the sky) and the performance of women interacting with this media backdrop.
Visual poetry (kinetic poetry)-performance and the Avant Garde
Because Marinetti, (the first one who spoke about performance in 1909) was a poet, the origins of performance are intrinsically routed with the origins of Avant Garde poetry, visual poetry and painting, more so, when the first performers were actually painters (disrupting the action of painting). Those were the days of the beginning of modernism; both manifestations aimed to break with the cult of tradition and embraced the idea of ‘no master, no tradition and no dogma’ (Goldenberg,1999, p.3). With the apparition of Apollinaire’s first Calligrams in 1914 (Bohn, 1993), a new layer was added to the meaning of poems so the icon form of language became symbolic and semantic (Bachleitner, 2005) and also one of the favorite expressions of surrealists and Dadaists. From that moment on, the visual aspect of poetry has developed widely. Kinetic poetry is a new branch of visual poetry, and it has recently expanded because of handy computer based technology. Moving words and falling letters play an important expressive role in Lilith’s Rain, they suggest we are immersed in text but also this ‘text’ is displayed as a form of rain.
Interaction of media and performers
In spite the fact that Lilith’s Rain is inspired in my theatrical media-piece; Lilith’s Trial, when I adapted it into a performance, I engaged with particular traits of performance which are described by Phelan (1993) as implicating the real through the presence of living bodies, that it requires consumption, that it is ‘inscribed in the present’, and that through this characteristic of ‘being ephemera, it clings to memory in a very subjective way. I find this ephemeral side especially related to my version of Lilith, for one of her statements in the play is that her returning is only temporal. Lilith’s Rain enquires into the relationship of women and their subconscious and it is founded on the interaction between ‘real actors’ and a projected scenario. Reflection, symmetry and infinity are explored psychologically, visually but also in the interaction between performers and soundtrack.
The performance will be done in 2 different levels: - A woman (or two) will represent the damage caused in women, they will act out this sorrow not verbally but using only their bodies, they first avoid the mirror and finally come to terms with it. These women hardly utter a word, their performance is more based on their body gestures: they crawl, they limb, they fall. They will represent transgression, symmetry and ambidexterity (finding a personal gesture to express a ‘psychological knot’ will be explored in workshops).
- I will be in the back of the veil where the projector is, intervening some images by putting a glass between the lens and the translucent veil (interface). This intervention gives a ‘live’ characteristic to Lilith, and also gives her an especial ‘aura’.
The soundtrack
The sound track is original and consists of the ‘theme of Lilith’ ( piano) and 2 different sound compositions that give the ‘out of this world’ atmosphere. Some texts will be recorded but ‘obsessive repetitions’, stuttering and echoes in speech, will also be an expressive part of the psychological exploration. The performers will relate to this recorded ‘disturbed speech’ and maybe will make it a moment of interaction with the audience. The editing of the soundtrack will be done at the end, after the actors have brought in their own understanding and meaning into the work. Lilith’s Rain is conceived to change:
It will change from venue to venue. It can also mutate into something different. It is encouraged to change.
Conclusions
The nature of what I do as an artist comes from the direct experience of being a woman, and as one (in the context of Ecriture femnine), I have strongly identified with poetry because it is essentially expansive, out of traditional discourse, and most of all, refuses to be monopolized by references (Muller-Zettelmann & Rubik, 2005). As a Latinamerican woman, I feel the profound need to fight against women’s discrimination (but also against any discrimination) that the male-dominant system has based society on. Even now, while writing this essay I have felt the consequences of this discrimination and realized how my own unconscious prejudice against feminism, initially stopped me from addressing the corresponding theoretical background of Lilith’s Rain. Having said this, l do not define myself as part of the female or feminist art, but more into 'woman's art'; a vast range of art done by women who, generation after generation have struggled to become visible, and since the second half of the 20th century (Grosenick, 2003) have become not only visible but also revolutionary and strong. In relation to the eternal debate ‘inspiration versus method’, I cannot start to think about doing anything if it does not compel me deeply, for it is this ethos what will take me through the long journey of having the work finally done and presented. Because of my own ‘poetical reasoning’, I see a risk in conceiving the ‘creative process’ in art –making, as a ‘research-practicebased-knowledge’, and all its conceptual academic implications. But at the same time, I do believe that putting a mirror in front of my process might be insightful and help my practice or help the practice of others. Hence, I have tried to translate my ‘poetical doing’ into methodological and theoretical words.
Methodology Research in the arts field is essentially experimental and mainly qualitative. Art-basedresearch is a personal way of inquiring through making, experimenting, testing, exploring, comparing, composing with concepts and concepts, concepts and objects, objects and meaning, meaning and other artists, artists and concepts, and so on. The emergent methodology I have used in Lilith’s Rain includes the use of simple media (veil, glass, mirror, illumination), digital media (programs such as Photoshop, Final Cut and Maya (3D)), a Korg synthesizer, and also body language and performance. The orientation of the research has emerged from the contingency of the work in progress, specific to every moment and to every component of the work (each previous stage acts as a cue for the next one). Unlike other fields of knowledge there is no theory a priori, and it is only by analyzing the current information that the theory appears (Glaser & Strauss, 1999). The knowledge comes along with the praxis, and the parallel reading and writing comes out of the work in progress. There is a unity between problem, context and solution (Barrett, 2007, p.5). Not having a theory in mind or a fixed outcome might be one of the strong sides of artistic research, so the researcher acts more attentively to what is happening and is ready to change when the situation seems to need it. It is a sort of “here and now” way of experimenting life. Unlike other professions that tend to be more and more focused on a ‘particular area’, artistic practice tends to integrate, to question, and to bare in mind a wider picture. It promotes a critical approach as well as the understanding of wholeness and awareness: it puts to work our creative, intuitive, holistic understanding that resides in our left hemisphere of the brain.
Context and theory The context of Lilith’s Rain (and of every previous work) is based on the basic feminist issues; it tries to provoke awareness of women's oppression-repression and promote analysis and strategies for liberation (Marks & Courtivron, 1980). But because of its social implications , and unlike other feminist works that are exclusive (‘from women to women’), my work is from ‘a woman’ to anybody or everybody. Lilith’s Rain is an eclectic piece interconnected with other disciplines, it relates to psychoanalysis because it works with the subconscious, identity, the mirror and the double. It also involves the ‘cognitive experience’ when it calls attention to the brain’s function and its expansive capacities (ambidexterity and backwards progression). My current work chooses the body as a way of expression, and works specifically with the female body’s catalytic and cathartic properties. It is a modern, non- conventional visual piece, whose montage is something between performance -installation and visual poetry, but at the same time, it has traits of a traditional theatrical piece because it is based on a fixed script and rehearsals. The sound and music are original, the editing and the atmosphere play a crucial role. The soundtrack contemplates the recording of ‘off text’ ‘as well as ‘oddinner speech’ that will represent introspection and consciousness. During this module, among many other things, I have become aware of the social dimension of art and have situated my practice in relation to a broader system, inside a collaborative-community-communicative network (web 2.0) where knowledge is better understood as a cooperative self regulated embodiment (Bruns, 2007). I have also experienced this cooperative-collaborative knowledge in the way we have been ‘working together’ inside this Thinking Practices module, in where traditional boundaries and
hierarchies have not been part of the methodology. The innovative- personal methodology (that has emerged during this module) has been extremely effective and stimulating, so much so, that I have thought about teaching again (a part of my practice I stopped doing because of a deep disappointment in the system).
Art as a reminder Being an artist ‘inside the academy’ has brought up different issues for me, one of them being the role of the academy in relation to the formation of artists (artistic research fitting the academic criteria) and also the academy actually responding to the specific needs of the artistic field. In this essay I have tried to develop the first issue and have disclosed methodology and theory to meet the academic standards, but would also like to put myself to the question of how art making might benefit the academy when, in opposition to the academic structure, it refuses to stay still and always encourages change and a critical approach to its subject of inquiry. When talking about the expansive quality that practice-based research has in modeling consciousness Barrett states: ‘...the implication that creative arts research has for extending our understanding of the role of experiential, problem-based learning and multiple intelligences in the production of knowledge’ (Barrett, 2007, p2), thus there might be an opportunity if the academy sees with ‘good eyes’ the creative process of art making, and would like to consider some of its essential characteristics as expansive and positive to culture and society.
Lilith’s Rain is a simple piece, an intimate piece, a feminine piece, a mutant piece, a poetical piece, an net,art piece, a personal piece, an eclectic piece, a ritual piece, an ephemeral piece, an adaptable piece, a provoking piece, a virtual piece, a poetical piece, a poetical piece, a reminder.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bachleitner, N., 2005. The Virtual Muse. Forms and Theory of Digital Poetry. In Muller-Zettelmann, E & Rubik, M., eds. Theory into Poetry. New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, pp. 303-340.
Barrett, E., 2007. Introduction. In E. Barrett and B. Bolt., eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: IBTauris, pp. 1-14.
Barrett, E., 2007. Introduction. In E. Barrett and B. Bolt., eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: IBTauris, p. 2.
Bohn, W., 1993. Apollinaire’s plastic imagination. The Aesthetic of Visual Poetry 1914-1928. 2nd ed. Chicago, London: Chicago University Press, pp. 46-68.
Bruns, A., 2007. Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation. In Creativity & Cognition Conference, Washington, DC, 14 June 2007.
Cixous, Hélène, 1980. The Laugh of the Medusa. In Marks, E & Courtivron, I, eds. New French Feminism. An anthology. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 245-264.
Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2009 [Online]. Available at: http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/avatar?view=uk [Accessed 15 March 2009].
Dixon, S., 2007. Introduction. Digital Performance. A history of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London England: The MIT Press, p. 3.
Glaser, B. Strauss, A., 1999. The Discovery of the Grounded Theory. The Discovery of Grouded Theory Strategies for Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. Chicago, London: Adline Transaction, pp. 1-18.
Goldberg, R., 1999,.The Arts of Ideas and the Media Generation 1968-1986. Performance Art. From Futurism to the present. 2nd London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 195-201.
Goldberg, R.,1999. Forward. Performance Art. From futurism to the present. 2nd ed. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 3.
Iggulden, A., 2007."Silent" Speech. In E. Barret and B. Bolt., eds. Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London: IBTauris, pp. 65-80.
Mark. E & Courtivron, I., 1980. Why this book? New French Feminism. An anthology. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, p. x.
Meriam-Webster Dictionary 2009 [Online] Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/avatar [Accessed 15 March 2009]
Muller-Zettelmann, E & Rubik, M., 2005.Introduction. Theory into Poetry. New Approaches to the Lyric. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, p. 7.
Phelan, P., 1993. The ontology of Performance: representation without reproduction. Umarked. The politics of performance.London, New York: Routledge, pp. 146-166.
Plaskow, J. & Berman, D., 2005. Intersections. The Coming of Lilith. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 5-20.
Rehak, B., 1997. Playing at being, In Buttler, J, ed. Excitable Speech. New York: Routledge, pp. 103-126.
Slager, H., 2008. Research Report. MaHKUzine journal of artistic research, [Online] 5(8), pp. 44-46, Available at: http://www.mahku.nl/research/mahkuzine5.html [Accessed 5 March 2009]
Stern, D. & Mirsky, M., 1998. The alphabet of Ben Sira. Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp, 167-202.
Turgeon, M., 1994. The Left and Right Hemispheres of the Brain. Right-brain left brain Reflexology, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company, pp 14-26.
IMAGES
Timson, M., 2003. The Queen of the Night (and its reconstruction) [British Museum Collection] Available at: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/t/queen_of_the_night_relief.aspx [Accesed Februry 19 2009]