3.4.1 The surrealists could have a field day. (Ascott, R., 1980)

3.4.2 The 1970's brought creative imaginings and developments in telematics, and a new culture began to emerge. At Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre), a group of visionaries created the first graphical user interface (GUI); at Atari, inventors created the first graphics based games, Pong and PacMan; at MIT, the Architecture Machine Group created the first "walk through" of a photographic representation of a city (Aspen, Colorado), all with the concurrent growth of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork), the precursor of the Internet. But, most important of all, the first commercially-available personal computer, the MITS Altair was released, thus truly initiating the digital revolution. As we move towards implementation of Internet 2, which I will discuss in chapter 8, one can easily see that a world with all these elements coming together in many forms at a large scale is a near reality. Artists have recognised this early on, as is evident by Ascott's' premonitions of cybernetics and art in the early 1960's and much experimentation which had to wait until the equipment became more accessible.

3.4.3 The idea of using communications technologies for artistic creation was considered by avant-garde artists as soon as the telephone was becoming part of life. The earliest example of this type of work can be seen in Moholy-Nagy's series of telephone pictures, which were shown in his first one-man show, in 1924, at the Gallerie der Sturm in Berlin. This was recognised as a forerunner of conceptual art in the 1960's, forty-five years later in a exhibit "Art by Telephone" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Thirty six artists were asked to call the Museum, or answer the Museum's call, and then instruct the Museum staff about what their contribution to the show would be. The Museum produced the pieces and displayed them. Jan van der Marck, the Director of the Museum, was interested in testing the aesthetic possibilities of remote control in which the artist was absent from the process of creation of the physical manifestation of the idea. He saw it as an expansion of the syncretism between language, performance, and visual arts characteristic of the 60's. Dadaists, Futurists, and artists such as Nagy and Duchamp set the stage for conceptual art which prepared the way for telecommunication [4] art by emphasising the idea, the process, and the concept over form and matter. (Kac, 1992)

3.4.4 In the context of telecommunication art, it is important to recognise mail art as an interesting predecessor. Used much by Fluxus artists among others, mail art is truly the first international, non-organised collaborative communication work. It is not surprising that it pretty much subsided as soon as the Internet became easily accessible. [5] [top]

Notes:

4. I will use the term telecommunications as defined by Roy Ascott and Carl Loeffler, who define it as electronic transmission of information through computer networks, radio, slow-scan video, telephone, television, and satellites. (Ascott, Loeffler, 1991) [back]

5. To find out more about mail-art, see: Travelling Art mail (TAM) www.geocities.com/Paris/4947/index.html [back]