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| The Internet--specifically the World Wide Web--has become such a successful "meme" in our society, that there is almost a cultural amnesia about telecommunications-based art that pre-dates the Web. As powerful as early projects such as Muntadas's "File Room" (1994) or Ken Goldberg's "Telegarden" (1995) were (and are), many artists were working in the embrace of telecommunications for almost twenty years prior. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz's 1977 "Satellite Arts Project" first introduced the notion of a virtual space--a video space in-between physical spaces--and their 1980 "Hole-in-Space" was a kind of magic of open-systems, bi-coastal communications that may have since become commonplace but which directly inspired several of the artists in the exhibition. Many others, from Bob Adrian to Roy Ascott to Carl Loeffler to Heidi Grundmann, proseletyzed the aesthetics and politics of a global connectivity over the ensuing years, using the available means, from fax to Slowscan TV to early computing networks. Their work and thoughtfulness about it is inspirational. The telematics timeline attempts to capture some of these highlights as well as a longer history of enabling technological innovation. Most importantly, it is open source. Anyone can upload new information or interpretations into the timeline via the Internet. |
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