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"A
future collective
society is the only possible basis for the full development of our
creative life."
–
Ma Group
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"Rather
than distribute a message to recipients who are outside the process
of creation and invented to give meaning to a work of art belatedly,
the artist now attempts to construct an environment,
a system of communication and production, a collective event that
implies its recipients, transforms interpreters into actors, enables
interpretation to enter the loop with collective action."
–
Pierre Lévy
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Telematic
Art as
Collective Agency for
Cultural Transformation
call-to-action
The
Telematic Manifesto is a participatory, collectively-generated Net Document
that articulates a vision for the future of Telematic Art as a socio-cultural
force in the 21st Century. This project investigates Telematic Art as
the synthesis of art, culture, and global telecommunications, and its
promise for a revitalized artistic expression resulting from an inherent
interconnectedness catalyzing aesthetic,
technological, philosophical, and cultural transformation.
The Telematic Manifesto recontextualizes the ideologies and ambitions
of aborted avant-garde movements whose efforts to bring about artistic,
cultural, and political change through collective
action – from the Italian Futurists to the Surrealists, from the
International Faction of Constructivists to Fluxus – lay dormant
as unfinished business at the close of the Century.
History has also shown that the evolution of computer science has tended
towards collective action: the dream of a free exchange
of information and new forms of human and technological collaboration.
From Norbert Wiener's seminal theories on the science of "Cybernetics"
to J.C.R. Licklider's research in "Man-Computer Symbiosis," to Douglas
Engelbart's creation of a networked information space designed for the
"Augmentation of Human Intellect" that would "Boost the Collective IQ,"
these visionary scientists laid the groundwork for an emerging medium
that is now transforming every aspect of human expression.
In
an effort to define and engage these artistic, scientific, and cultural
forces of change, the Telematic Manifesto serves as a
conceptual framework articulating
the collective, cross-disciplinary ideologies of a group of artists, theorists,
critics, curators and scientists at the transition into the Millennium.
Throughout
the ZKM Net_Condition exhibition, an email list and threaded discussion
introduced a series of themes intended to frame historical, philosophical,
technical and aesthetic issues surrounding Net Art. The email dialogue
was uploaded daily into an automatized writing space/bulletin board viewable
by exhibition visitors on the Web.
The
resultant texts have been organized, archived and published as the Telematic
Manifesto, a hypertextual, Web-based Net Document that provides a Millennial
record and collective statement proclaiming the future implications of
Telematic Art: its transformative properties, aesthetic issues, virtualizing
forces, historical significance, and potential for generating a new artistic
sociopolitical ethic in the broad context of a rapidly evolving networked
culture.
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"A
technical planetary system keeps its balance, describes elliptical
paths or sends elongated
constructions with fixed wings out into the distance, aeroplanes
of infinity."
–
El Lissitzky
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"The
cooperative action
of discrete agencies, such that the total effect is greater than
the sum of the two effects taken independently... where we could
say that synergism is our most likely candidate for representing
the actual source of intelligence."
–Douglas
Engelbart
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