hen reviewing CD-ROM products there's a twofold danger. First, there's the risk of getting too wrapped up in the technology. Second, there's the danger of trying to cover all of the content on a disk, which is usually enormous. These hazards were particularly acute in reviewing The Beat Experience, a new disk from Voyager Company produced by the Red Hot Organization. This product, which serves as a preview of the Whitney exhibit, "Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965," headed for San Francisco in the Fall, presents its readers and viewers with a dazzling array of aural and visual artistic genres, including poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, music, photography, cinematography, and computer interactivity.

"Sampler" is the operative word in reviewing this product, which is truly a multimedia extravaganza. Selections from over 30 books by Beat writers and poets, such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, and others are included in the program in both text and spoken-work formats. (A video of Kerouac's appearance on the Steve Allen TV show is included.) For each major author there are excerpts from multiple selections. The literature segment also includes excerpts from the works of poets and writers who were influential in the development of Beat literary art, such as Herman Melville, Arthur Rimbaud, Alan Watts, and William Carlos Williams. Finally, there are discussions of romantic and symbolist poetry and the literature of the "lost generation" as influences on Beat writing.

Cinematography, music, and art share space with literature on the disc. There are film clips from over 20 movies made during the Beat era by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, and other filmmakers, along with over 20 minutes of jazz music tracks by such artists as Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and John Coltrane. The program further contains over 50 images from the Whitney's exhibition and the Museum's permanent collection of Beat art in oils and acrylics, assemblage and collage, still photography, and sculpture by such artists a Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning, Jay deFeo, Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Wallace Berman, and many others. Some of the images are presented with a zoom feature that allows the viewer to enlarge the composition and examine its detail. For all of the major artists, genres, and movements, helpful and informative biographical sketches and artistic commentaries are provided.

All of the content on the disk is accessed by the user through an ingenious and highly functional interface screen made to look like the stylized interior of a "Beat pad." A mouse click on the figure of an 8mm movie projector opens the program to the selection of Beat films sampled. A click on the bookcase opens up the Beat literary segment, and a click on the 45-rpm record player calls up the jazz music tracks. A click on the image of a crescent moon seen through a window pane in the background switches the interface to the Beat Gallery that contains the Whitney's image collection. Clicking on the icon of a 50s-style radio produces an enlarged picture of it from which the viewer can operate the on/off switch and select from five stations, each of which, when selected, produces a 40- to 50-second broadcast of old-time radio, complete with commercials. Clicking on the television-set icon produces a similar collage of TV video clips from the Beat era. (Familiar pull-down menus are also attached to the program's graphical interfaces.)

There are secondary interface screens in the program, such as the one drawn to represent the interior of an early 60s vintage automobile. A mouse click on the car radio produces radio sound bytes, and a click on the glove compartment door causes it to open and a street map promptly pops out. Clicking on the map produces another interface screen in the form of a map of the United States with targets indicating the locations of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Clicking on these targets call up images, graphics, video, and film clips of people, places, and activities indigenous to those locations during the Beat era. For example, a click on the San Francisco location causes the screen to change to a detail map of the Bay Area with five sites in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Marin County targeted. Clicking on these sites produce different graphic displays and film clips portraying, for example, scenes from the Gathering of the Tribes and Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park or the interior of Allen Ginsberg's Berkeley apartment in the 50s.

Caveat emptor: Beat art was predominantly if not exclusively postmodern, avant garde, and experimental, and some Beat artists reveled in being seen as strange and bizarre. There is currently a huge unresolved question of how much of what they created will survive over the long haul. If the history of avant garde movements holds true for the Beats, the answer unquestionably is very little. This program is aimed at Beat aficionados, avant gardists, art historians, literary scholars, and students of postmodern literature and art. Its appeal for the general reader/viewer will be limited, and jazz lovers will find the coverage woefully inadequate. Though hardly titillating or obscene, the disk contains nudity and sexual content, including homoerotic segments, which may be offensive some persons.