e.i.i.i is four words brought together to form a sound that some languages would recognize as “egg”— be it a very strange and stretched-out eggggg, the kind that runs all through your pan with a cracked yolk and the only thing you can really do with it is scramble it. But we are not an egg, although we’d like to resemble one.

e.i.i.i stands for eternal interconnected interplay incubator. Yes, that warm place you hatch life in, preceded by many grand terms we’d like to clarify (lest they run the risk of sounding void).

eternal

e.i.i.i is an internet-based multi-media zine. Each issue will exist on the internet, accessible to all, free for all. We aim to be a virtual gallery, rather than a magazine read front to back. We don’t want to be tethered to the flat page but create a space that aesthetically too is without end, by turning to the hyperlink structure of the internet. Eternal also functions as an adjective to the following i’s, affirming that these processes are all endless.

interconnected

Our goal is to be interconnected. As an internet-based zine we have turned to the mesh net for inspiration. Think of us as your local network connecting nodes non-hierarchically. Not one voice screaming to be exceptional but a network of different voices that participate equally in approaching a topic in whichever way they see fit, allowing for connections on multiple levels. We want to question the hyper-individualized hyper-specialised knowledge economy by having all sorts of paths cross at random and creating in a way some sort of chaos within a system.

interplay

This is perhaps where we should admit that our name was inspired by a Derrida meme. We’d like to step out of our bubble and find the space between ourselves and others, to recognize what is outside ourselves and sustain it. To quote Newton’s Third Law of Motion and risk sounding like dicks: When one object exerts a force on a second object, the second one exerts a force on the first that is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Perhaps we’re looking to work in a force-field, in the space between — between people, media, artforms. We want our contributors to be free in their approach, their use of medium and style, to work freely and intuitively. If we can put it on a webpage, we will put it on a webpage.

incubator

Back to the incubator and what matters to us above all. We aim to be a platform for the talent we see around us, all over the world. A circle of people that we hope will grow and expand. We want to be a place where ideas are fostered, kept warm, bred. To quote Wikipedia using a cut-and-paste method:

“[An incubator is] an enclosed apparatus in which premature or unusually small babies [ideas] are placed and which provides a controlled and protective environment for their care.”

For each issue we will put an object into the incubator. Our contributors are free to foster it however they want; a collective deconstruction through free association and approach. What will hatch is a diverse and colorful collection of interpretations of the common theme.

To speak in blunt Dutch: jij, wij, e.i.i.i

With a video acting as theme it feels almost gratuitous to add text. So we will be short. The video is the theme, as such, anything you might take from the video is considered to be on theme.

Having said that, a short note on the video can be found below. Do with it what you will.

In 1995, Japanese divers discovered a mysterious pattern on the seabed near Amami Oshima Island, southwest Japan. For the life of them, they did not know what it was. Beautifully symmetric circular ridges lined the ocean floor, reminiscent almost of a crop circle. In the decade that followed, the structure was sporadically observed by recreational divers. They named it ‘a mystery circle.’ For 15 years it remained just that, a mystery. But in 2011, a small male pufferfish was identified as its creator.

Much remains unknown. We know the pattern surrounds a nest, that it is created by a male pufferfish to attract a female to lay her eggs at its center. What it is about a pattern that attracts a female is ambiguous. The human mind drifts to aesthetics almost instantly. Aren’t we often swayed by pretty words, a bouquet of carefully curated flowers, a really smashing tinder bio?

But the radially aligned structure has an important function. Water flows towards the center through the valleys, regardless of current direction. The beautiful lines could thus serve only to channel fine sand – the best sand, said pufferfish females – and carry no aesthetic purpose whatsoever. Louis Sullivan would rejoice. Desperate romantics worldwide cry out in horror. Stone cold realists might tell you that a tinder bio is a form follows function-situation also.

Meanwhile in the depths of the East China Sea, the pufferfish carry on quite unaware of the waves they’ve stirred up by digging their anal fin into the seabed. And it is bolstering to know, in times of global crisis, that far from the human eye, beautiful little things like that are created everywhere.

We accept work of various shape, form, and length - ranging from the abstract to the academic, sincerity to satire, high to low, east to west, you to us, and everything in between and outside. We also accept intermedial work.

Please send your submission + a short bio to submit@eiii-zine.nl. If you want to include a description of the work to be published alongside, please send this also. Want to fuel the mystery and keep us guessing? Fine by us. We accept previously published work, as long as you retain full publishing rights.

All work must be related to the theme.
By which we mean to say we’d like you to make a free association; we do not expect a well-presented argument. To speak in incubator terms: the theme is the seed, you are the heat, let’s see what grows from it.

All rights remain with the contributor. Each contributor receives an artist fee for their submission.

Written work may be submitted as .doc, .txt, or .md

Photography may be submitted as .jpg

Videos will be embedded via artist or e.i.i.i.’s vimeo

Audio will be embedded via artist or e.i.i.i.'s soundcloud

Games or small programs will be embedded via iframe

Have something else? Send in a proposal and we will work together to put it online!

Submissions for issue 3 are accepted ongoing.

Or send us an e-mail.

Subscribe to eternal incoming information items, our bimonthly newsletter.

Or send us some €€€ to support our dear contributors via Patreon.

Concept
Merel Gerretsen & Winke Wiegersma

Logo & Web Design
Tim Hardie

Web Development
Winke Wiegersma