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4D CONVERSATION:
an on going
hyperlinked dialogue between participants. The 4D conversation
incorporates two methods of communication, an evolving bulletin
board/chat space which allows streems of conversation to be developed
and refered to through time, and Architext developed by Eliot
Lewis.
Architext
is a synchronous 3D chat space that evolves as the social exchange
develops. The conversations in Architext are deleted when the
communication stops. Architext is a place where the medium of
communication is text, and a place where the very act of the communication
defines the space itself.

Naturally
the holding for these multiple communication modes is the Tower
of Babel. Genesis 11:1-7
"Now
the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated
from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled
there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks,
and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone,
and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build
ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and
let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth." And the Lord came down
to see the city which the sons of men had built. And the Lord
said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have one
language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do;
and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for
them. "Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech." So the
Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the
earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name
was called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of all
the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over
the face of all the earth."
The possible
location of the Tower of Babel lies, as a ruined mound, in the
in the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
(modern Iraq). This marks the site of the ancient city of Babylon.
The city was first built around 5,500 years ago and evolved through
several incarnations. Each city housed a pyramid shaped temples,
or ziggurates. The biggest incarnation of this tower, at around
295 feet high, was probably one built to honour the god Marduk
by King Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC).
According
to an inscription made by Nebuchadnezzar, the tower was constructed
of "baked brick enameled in brilliant blue."
Herodotus,
who visited the tower in 460 BC described it as:
"It
has a solid central tower, one furlong square, with a second erected
on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight
towers can be climbed by a spiral way running around the outside,
and about halfway up there are seats for those who make the journey
to rest on."

Pieter Bruegel
the Elder Building the Tower of Babel (1553)
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