[1] The couple had realized after their experience with Electronic Café '84[2] that the next logical step was to establish a continuous venue for telepresence media events.
[3] For the next 10 years, the ECI lab was the site of electronic networking instigations that contributed significantly to the canon of collaborative telecommunications arts.
Phrases and terms such as 'interactive dramaturgy,' 'metadesign environments,'[4] 'telephone opera,'[5] 'teleconcert,'[6] 'tele-immersive,' 'telepresent' and 'telepresence'[7] emerged during 1989 to 2000, as the participating artists, their critics, reviewers and theorists about their work attempted to describe and define the phenomena being created in the globally networked environment of Electronic Café International.
[11][6][12] At ECI, poets, dancers, and dramatic performance artists explored the attributes of telepresence.
[13][14][15] Since ECI opened in 1989, imitations of Galloway and Rabinowitz's concept of Electronic Café International have proliferated all over the planet.