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.

At a Distance: Precursors to Art and Activism on the Internet (Leonardo Books) PDF

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