After a full generation of constructivist thought, after close to a decade of Internet construction and nearly as long a period of activity at ebr/altx, we’re ready to put an end to the construction of periodical issues. Instead of working within an unconsidered paradigm inherited from print media, the ebr editors intend to construct our own ends, over time and on terms that we set for ourselves (within the constraints of the web environment).

Initially presented as a thread in two parts, green and grey, Critical Ecologies continues to explore convergences among natural and constructed ecosystems, green politics and grey matter, silicon chips and sand. A 2004 Festschrift, with over a dozen essays on Joseph McElroy, hints at the literary implications of an ecological, medial turn in literary theory.

Like the webarts here under discussion, ebr approaches the Internet, in the first instance, as a unique art medium.

As “sound” approaches ever more closely the condition of music it too approaches a kind of writing, which is then retroactively revealed to have been “noisy” all along.

The count-down is complete; the line has served its time. In this spirit of millennial closure, the Winter 1999/2000 issue of ebr will be the last written under the constraint of periodical publication.