Editorial: Nisar Keshvani

We celebrate fAf's 14th birthday with a site relaunch this month. Kudos to our design team led by Daniel Heinonen, Ben Gay, Kat Brazier, Dave Agius. Damon and Eugene Gorman who've reorganised fAf to serve you better. We are all ears to your views and comments.

Ray Lauzzana, founder of fineArt forum, has kindly contributed an article retracing fAf's history and development since 1987. Reading his article, has reinforced for me, the quick pace of technology, innovation and this evolving beast we call the Internet. The topic of 'Change' reminds me of someone I met a few weeks ago.

John, a counsellor in his late 40's, works with distraught youth. He conducts confidence-building workshops in Brisbane high schools. John has a farm 2 hours away from the city centre, rears animals, and is excellent with youth. He heads there, every few weeks to escape from the hassles of life. He doesn't have power supply, tap water or a television. But he recently acquired a Macintosh G3 Powerbook.

From our conversation, I found that he has nothing against change or technology and is very happy with his Olivetti typewriter. However, while working with teenagers, he realised he had to watch TV to pick up the right lingo to blend with them. And, when he approached school administrators with ideas they told him to email them. When he said why email when he had phone, fax, voicemail facilities, he was blatantly told that 'If you don't email us, we are not interested in talking to you.'

So, John went along and picked up a Mac. He's jazzing along great, and has adapted with his new techno-skills. It's amazing how quickly he adjusted to his new work needs. In the same way, fineArt began as a humble two-page listing and has expanded to a complete site. Our mission has been to grow with the medium, adapt to our readers needs and keeping our zine personal.

We've stuck to this approach, and this month's image courtesy of fAf's Stuff Editor, Holly Robertson is indeed a special one. It's a photo of Holly's 2nd birthday cake, and is a symbol of celebration, coming of age and identity.

As Holly rightly says, "In a virtual environment, it's hard to communicate emotions and feelings - and I felt that something as personal as a cake would most effectively get across the feeling of celebration and identity. fAf feels to me like a little person ... like a little kid .. that everyone has watched grow up, and grow over time (either as part of the fAf team or from a distance)."

As we grow from strength to strength, this month the fAf team offers our salutations to fAf greats - Ray, Roger Malina, Annick Bureaud, Paul Brown and others who've supported our growth.

Cheers to them, and here's to another 14 years of fAf!!