At a Distance

<b>The theory and practice of networked art and activism including mail art sound art telematic art fax art Fluxus and assemblings.</b><p>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--<i>At a Distance</i> 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. <i>At a Distance</i> 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.</p>