NN link to book review: _Telematic Embrace_

[pynchonoid]

review of:

_Telematic Embrace 
Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and
Consciousness_ 
By Roy Ascott; edited and with an essay by Edward A.
Shanken 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA; 427 PAGES; $44.95 

In the early 1960s, with the end of the Cold War still
decades ahead, the Department of Defense's Advanced
Research Project Agency envisioned a computerized
communications network in which discrete packets of
information could be sent by numerous paths, ending up
at the same terminals at the same time. That way, in
the event of a nuclear attack, with its catastrophic
physical and electromagnetic disruptions, vital
messages could still get through. 

Around this time, too, Roy Ascott, a young English
artist and teacher with a knack for writing theory,
was preparing his first major essay, "The Construction
of Chance." Although the "telematics" -- using online
computer networks as an artistic medium -- he was
beginning to sketch was similar to the setup the U.S.
government had in mind, it wasn't predicated on
nuclear war but on avoiding such apocalyptic failures
in communication in the first place. [...]   

 
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Media arts visionary

Reviewed by Joel Weishaus 	 	Sunday, June 22, 2003 
 

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Telematic Embrace 

Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and
Consciousness 

By Roy Ascott; edited and with an essay by Edward A.
Shanken 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA; 427 PAGES; $44.95 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the early 1960s, with the end of the Cold War still
decades ahead, the Department of Defense's Advanced
Research Project Agency envisioned a computerized
communications network in which discrete packets of
information could be sent by numerous paths, ending up
at the same terminals at the same time. That way, in
the event of a nuclear attack, with its catastrophic
physical and electromagnetic disruptions, vital
messages could still get through. 

Around this time, too, Roy Ascott, a young English
artist and teacher with a knack for writing theory,
was preparing his first major essay, "The Construction
of Chance." Although the "telematics" -- using online
computer networks as an artistic medium -- he was
beginning to sketch was similar to the setup the U.S.
government had in mind, it wasn't predicated on
nuclear war but on avoiding such apocalyptic failures
in communication in the first place. 

When the Internet is discussed in the popular media,
the subject is almost always dot-coms, scams,
pornography or government plans for snooping and
regulation. Rarely mentioned is the international
network of thousands of artists and writers who are
developing a digital aesthetics that may shape the
body of human culture during this century. 

Maybe the scope and importance of this movement hasn't
been appreciated. Or perhaps most critics, who were
brought up on books and material art, are intimidated
by the technology and will leave it to the next
generation to figure out. But 40 years ago, as the 28
essays and projects (many of which have never been
readily available in print before) in "Telematic
Embrace" show, 

media artist Roy Ascott was already interested in
telecommunications as an art, as exemplified by his
one-man show at the Molton Gallery in London, in which
he presented, in the words of Edward A. Shanken, who
wrote a superb 88- page introduction on Ascott's place
in contemporary art history for this book, "a system
of interrelated feedback loops linking various
conceptual ideas." What is valued in telematics, as
Shanken writes, is bandwidth, shuttle points, clock
speed, storage capacity "and the systematic
relationship between artist, artwork, and audience as
part of a social network of communication." 

Ascott's visionary path began with his study of
cybernetics pioneer Norbert Wiener;
paleontologist-theologian Teilhard de Chardin, who
envisioned the "noosphere" ("the engendering and
subsequent development of all stages of the mind, this
grand phenomenon"); and the artist Marcel Duchamp,
whose "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even,
or Large Glass (1915-1923)" embodies the qualities and
complexities of Ascott's reflective mind. Into this
heady mix he stirred chance operations based on the "I
Ching" and investigations into practices such as
behavioral art. But it is his experiences with the
shamans of the Mato Grosso, with whom he ate the
entheogenic ("searching for the God within") drug
ayahuasca, that sets him apart. [...] 

continues:
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/22/RV63539.DTL>

(NN = No Nabokov)

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