Setting off with predictably lofty ideals, we talked this e-zine into being to create a forum for networking --among ourselves and with the larger industry. As a showcase for our works, InCommunicado is an advertisement for the InternActive program and for us individually, available to all the digitally privileged. We hope to promote collaboration and cohesion among ourselves by providing a face for and an inside look at InternActive and its participants. In short, we wanted to create the classical in-group affinity while self-promoting for employers, all of which would result in oh so very much communication.
The physical reality, however, plays out like this: for the most part our audience will sit alone at terminals, scrolling silently along, occasionally tapping out replies on keyboards, perhaps mailing projects for inclusion next time (hint, hint), without direct human contact. Thus, despite the potential far-reaching circulation and wildly enthusiastic response around this 'zine, we are still essentially, organically incommunicado.
Another aspect to the title dodges the customary approach of defining the content/mission of the publication in favor of naming what we are rectifying. Although you, the reader, and we, the freaks behind the curtin, may never come together in person, we will transmit and exchange ideas through this space. We will direct potential employers and project partners to this site. We will react to the content and reply, either by displaying our works or by remarking in word. We will engage ourselves and each other.
In brainstorming titles, we bandied about the notion of playing with intern in the words (see Internal Combustion). Several of us thought intern communication when Mary first said incommunicado. Chalk it up to years of mind-altering and living in momentary perceptions, but that's where we were.
Lastly, incommunicado the word just sounds good. If we remove our noses from the dictionary long enough simply to hear without intellectualizing, our ears are treated to stately grandeur without abrasion,sonorous tones preceded by a warm-up, engine-revving "nnn." Can't you hear Leonard Nimoy's voice booming through deep space, reciting The Desiderata? (Mr. Nimoy is ineligible to present his work here as he is not an intern.--Editor's note). In short, we just liked it. And that is always a very good place it start.
Welcome.