Articles and Essays
Below you will find abstracts, articles, essays, and papers by Eduardo Kac on visual art, experimental poetry, and electronic media.
For articles in languages other than English, please click on the language of choice at the top of Kac Web's home page.
Originally published in Portuguese in the newspaper O Globo,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July 10, 1988. This exclusive interview
was done over the phone, between Rio de Janeiro and New York, on
the occasion of Nam June Paik's forthcoming live television
special "Wrap Around the World".
Originally published in Portuguese in the newspaper O Globo,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September 10, 1988, on the day of Nam
June Paik's live television special "Wrap Around the World".
This abstract was received by the Leonardo office on 26 July, 1990, and published in Leonardo, Vol. 24, No.2, p. 233, 1991. It introduces 'telepresence' as a new art category.
The first version of this paper was writen in 1990. Subsequent
versions were published in New Media Technologies, Ross
Harley, editor (New South Wales, Australia: AFTRS, 1993), pp.
123-139; and in Display Holography (Fifth International
Symposium - Proc. SPIE 2333), Tung H. Jeong, Editor (Bellingham,
WA: SPIE, 1995), pp. 123-137. This paper discusses the aesthetics
of holography from the point of view of theories of perception and
representation. The paper challenges the notion that holography is
exclusively an art of space, revealing it as a time-based medium.
Originally published in Siggraph Visual Proceedings, John
Grimes and Gray Lorig, Editors (New York: ACM, 1992), pp. 47-57.
Republished in English and German in Zero
-- The Art of Being Everywhere, Robert Adrian X and Gerfried
Stocker, Editors (Graz, Austria: Steirische Kulturinitiative,
1993), pp. 24-32, 40-48, 62-69, 75-92. Also republished in English
and Hungarian in the art magazine Árnyékkötôk, N. 15, Vol.
6, Budapest, Hungary; and in Portuguese
in the book Comunicação na Era Pósmoderna, Monica Rector
and Eduardo Neiva (editors), Editora Vozes, Rio de Janeiro, 1998,
pp. 175-199. Published in French in: ConneXions : Art,
Réseaux, Media. Annick Bureaud and Nathalie Magnan, eds.
(Paris: École nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 2002), pp.
253-269. Excerpted in German in: hrsg. Jeannot Simmen. Telematik.
NetzModerneNavigatoren (Verlags-Buchhandlung Walter König,
Köln, 2001), pp. 102-104.
This paper discusses the history and theory of pre-Web
telecommunications art, from early avant-garde radio and
Moholy-Nagy's Telephone Pictures to international collaborative
works.
Originally published in Display Holography (Fourth International
Symposium - Proc. SPIE 1600), Tung H. Jeong, Editor (Bellingham,
WA: SPIE, 1991), pp. 229-236. This paper gives an overview of the
development of visual poetry in the twentieth century; it then
introduces theoretical issues in holopoetry and discusses new
holopoems created between 1989 and 1991.
Originally published in French and English in Art-Reseaux,
Karen O'Rourke, Editor (Paris: Université de Paris I, 1992), pp.
20-23. This article asserts that dialogical structures offer
alternatives to the traditional unidirectional system of art.
Originally published in Holographic Imaging and Materials
(Proc. SPIE 2043), Tung H. Jeong, Editor (Bellingham, WA: SPIE,
1993), pp. 72-81. This paper presents new digital holopoems. It
also dicusses hypertext and introduces the first hyperpoem created
by the author.
Originally published in English and German in Teleskulptur,
Richard Kriesche, Editor (Graz, Austria: Kulturdata, 1993), pp.
48-72. This paper lays the theoretical foundation of the
interactive art of telepresence, defining it in the intersection
of telecommunications, computers, and robotics. This paper was
published in the book that accompanied the International
telecommunications art festival "Beyond Boundaries", realized in
and out of Graz. The paper also mentions the intercontinental
telepresence installation "Ornitorrinco on the Moon", realized
between Graz and Chicago by the author in collaboration with Ed
Bennett, and which was specially comissioned for the festival. A
shorter version of the paper appeared as "Telepresence: A New
Communicative Experience", Epipháneia, N. 2, Salerno,
Italy, pp. 53-55.
Eduardo Kac -- The
Aesthetics of Dialogue
In this interview, realized by Simone Osthoff on July 8, 1994, Kac traces the development of his work from the early '80s in Rio de Janeiro to the mid '90s in Chicago.
Originally published in the international bi-lingual film magazine
BLIMP, Graz, Austria, Fall 1995, pp. 48-57. Republished in:
Jung, Dieter. Holographic Network (Bramsche,
Germany: Rasch Verlag, 2003), p. 180-182. Republished in
Portuguese in : Maciel, Katia: Transcinemas (Rio
de Janeiro: Contra Capa, 2007). This article discusses the work of
artists that explore temporal elements in holography, as well as
the incipient forms of holographic cinema and video in Russia,
Japan, France, and the United States. Artists discussed include
Dean Randazzo, Paul Newman, Vito Orazem, and Rudie Berkhout.
Originally published in English and German in Mythos
Information; Welcome to the Wired World, Karl Gerbel and
Peter Weibel, Editors (Vienna, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1995),
pp. 170-179. This book was published on the occasion of the 1995
edition of the annual electronic art festival and symposium Ars
Electronica. This essay discusses new forms of interactive
art that take place on the Internet, including hypertext pieces,
web sites, hybrid television broadcasts, and telepresence
installations.
Originally published in the Digital Salon special issue of Leonardo, Vol. 29, N. 5, 1996, pp. 389-400, with a technical appendix by Ed Bennett. The article discusses conceptual, cultural, and technical implications of telepresence art on the Net, with emphasis on the Ornitorrinco project and the piece Rara Avis. Different versions of this article have appeared in books in Russia, Brazil, Spain, and Germany. A French version is included below.
Text of Kac's lecture (in French) originally presented at the Colloque
Les Treilles, on L'art technologique, sponsored by
the Les Treilles Foundation and which took place at the
Schlemberger State, in Tourtour, France, on March 1997. First
published in the French journal Alliage,
N. 33-34, Hiver 97-Printemps 98, pp. 25-33. For more information
on the Colloquium, see the Projet Colloque des
Treilles site.
Statement written by Eduardo Kac and Marcel.lí
Antúnez Roca in 1996. Originally published on the Web in
Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 5, N. 5, May 1997.
Written on July 4, 1997, the day of the historical Mars Pathfinder
landing, and published here on July 5, 1997, this article is a
reflection on the cultural meaning of telepresence, as experienced
simultaneously by millions of people via televison (and on the
Web). The article was also published in the July '97 edition of Leonardo
Electronic Almanac (on the Web) and in Leonardo,
Vol. 31, N. 1, 1998, pp. 1-2.
Originally appeared in Art Journal, Vol. 56, N. 3, Digital Reflections: The Dialogue of Art and Technology, Special issue on Electronic Art, Johanna Drucker, (ed.), CAA, NY, 1997, pp. 60-67. This article defines a framework for the understanding and analysis of robotic art. It discusses three pivotal art works from the 1960s that outlined the genesis of robotics in art and that formed the basis of the three main directions in which robotic art has developed. This article also elucidates the new issues raised by current robotic artworks and clarify their relationship to the main paths defined by those three early works.
Originally published in Veredas, Ano 3, No. 32, 1998, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, pp. 12-15, and Blimp - Film Magazine,
N. 40, Graz, Austria, 1999, pp. 49-54. This article discusses
interactive art that explores alternative interfaces, complex
navigation structures, and distributed exhibition venues, often
combining elements of both physical and virtual domains of
experience.
Originally appeared in Proceedings of Computers in Art and Design Education Conference, University of Teesside, UK, 1999, n.p.n. (ISBN 0-907550-66-5). This paper shows that new insights can be gained by examining art works that are themselves real dialogues, i.e., active forms of communication between two living entities. These works can often be found among artists that pursue the aesthetics of telecommunications media. To name these works, the author proposes a literal use of the term "dialogism".
Originally published in: Goldberg, Ken (Editor). The Robot in
the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the
Internet (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 180-196. The
works discussed in this paper created dialogical telepresence
experiences. They suggest the need to nurture a network ecology
with humans and other mammals, with plants, insects, artificial
beings, and avian creatures.
Originally published in Kostic, Aleksandra (ed.). I Leviate, What's Next... (Maribor, Slovenia: Kibla, 2001), pp. 88-97. Updated and republished in French and English in: Space Art, A. Bureaud, J.-L. Soret (dir.), catalogue du Festival @rt Outsiders 2003, numéro spécial, Anomos, Paris, sept. 2003, pp. 196-199. Also published in Tate in Space, 2003 <http://www.tate.org.uk/space> and Art Catalysts, 2003 < http://www.artscatalyst.org >. Updated and republished in : Zero Gravity: A Cultural Users Guide (London: The Arts Catalyst, 2005), pp. 18-25. Published in German as: "Gegen den Gravitropismus", Der Freund, N. 4, Sept. 2005, Hamburg, pp. 80-88.This article discusses the premise that neutralization of gravity on Earth, as well as creation in zero gravity environments, opens up new possibilities for art.
Originally published in Convergence, Spring 2001, Volume 7, N. 1, 87-111
The chronology covers the period from 1955 to 1996.
Originally published in Artforum, September 2001, p. 42.
This Artforum Hotlist discusses telepresence artworks
created in the 1990s that employ either proprietary networks or
the Internet.
Originally published in Cybertext Yearbook 2002-03,
Edited by Markku Eskelinen & Raine Koskimaa, University of
Jyvaskyla, Finland, 2003, pp. 184-185. In a world of clones,
chimeras, and transgenic creatures, it is time to consider new
directions for poetry in vivo.
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