At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet

Description:

Networked collaborations of artists did not begin on the Internet. In this multidisciplinary look at the practice of art that takes place across a distance -- geographical, temporal, or emotional -- theorists and practitioners examine the ways that art, activism, and media fundamentally reconfigured each other in experimental networked projects of the 1970s and 1980s. By providing a context for this work -- showing that it was shaped by varying mixes of social relations, cultural strategies, and political and aesthetic concerns -- At a Distance effectively refutes the widely accepted idea that networked art is technologically determined. Doing so, it provides the historical grounding needed for a more complete understanding of today's practices of Internet art and activism and suggests the possibilities inherent in networked practice.

At a Distance traces the history and theory of such experimental art projects as Mail Art, sound and radio art, telematic art, assemblings, and Fluxus. Although the projects differed, a conceptual questioning of the "art object," combined with a political undermining of dominant art institutional practices, animated most distance art. After a section that sets this work in historical and critical perspective, the book presents artists and others involved in this art "re-viewing" their work -- including experiments in "mini-FM," telerobotics, networked psychoanalysis, and interactive book construction. Finally, the book recasts the history of networks from the perspectives of politics, aesthetics, economics, and cross-cultural analysis.

Annmarie Chandler is Director of Emerging Field in New Media and Digital Culture at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Norie Neumark is Associate Professor of Media Arts and Production at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents:

Series Foreword	ix
	Foreword Joel Slayton	xi
	Acknowledgments	xiii
	Introduction: Relays, Delays, and Distance Norie Neumark	2
I	Critical Perspectives on Distance Art/Activist Practices	26
1	Interactive, Algorithmic, Networked: Aesthetics of New Media Art Johanna Drucker	34
2	Immaterial Material: Physicality, Corporality, and Dematerialization in Telecommunication Artworks Tilman Baumgärtel	60
3	From Representation to Networks: Interplays of Visualities, Apparatuses, Discourses, Territories and Bodies Reinhard Braun; Translated by Cecilia White	72
4	The Mail Art Exhibition: Personal Worlds to Cultural Strategies John Held, Jr.	88
5	Fluxus Praxis: An Exploration of Connections, Creativity, and Community Owen F. Smith	116
II	Artists/Activists Re-view Their Projects	140
6	Animating the Social: Mobile Image/Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz Annmarie Chandler	152
7	An Unsuspected Future in Broadcasting: Negativland Don Joyce	176
8	Mini-FM: Performing Microscopic Distance (an Email Interview with Tetsuo Kogawa) Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark	190
9	From the Gulf War to the Battle of Seattle: Building an International Alternative Media Jesse Drew	210
10	The Form: 1970-1979 and Other Extemporaneous Anomalous Assemblings Melody Sumner Carnahan	226
11	Networked Psychoanalysis: A Dialogue with Anna Freud Banana Craig Saper	246
12	From Mail Art to Telepresence: Communication at a Distance in the Works of Paulo Bruscky and Eduardo Kac Simone Osthoff	260
13	Distance Makes the Art Grow Further: Distributed Authorship and Telematic Textuality in La Plissure du Texte Roy Ascott	282
14	From BBS to Wireless: A Story of Art in Chips Andrew Garton	298
15	REALTIME -- Radio Art, Telematic Art, and Telerobotics: Two Examples Heidi Grundmann	314
III	Networking Art/Activist Practices	336
16	Estri-Dentistas: Taking the Teeth out of Futurism Maria Fernandez	342
17	Computer Network Music Bands: A History of the League of Automatic Music Composers and the Hub Chris Brown and John Bischoff	372
18	Assembling Magazines and Alternative Artists' Networks Stephen Perkins	392
19	The Wealth and Poverty of Networks Ken Friedman	408
20	From Internationalism to Transnations: Networked Art and Activism Sean Cubitt	424
	Conclusion Annmarie Chandler and Norie Neumark	438
	Timeline	444
	List of Contributors	470
	Index	476