The document discusses the development of digital art and net art in the 1990s. Early experiments explored nonlinear hypertext narratives and ways to incorporate user interaction. Artists began experimenting with new media like CD-ROMs, the web, and technologies that blended digital media with performance and the body. This led to a period of "technological vertigo" as new artistic possibilities rapidly emerged.

1. THE DREAM
OF THE 90s
IS ALIVE
J A S O N B R U S H
http://www.possible.com | @jasonbrush | #DreamOf90s

2. Sleeping in until 11
Hanging with friends
Going to Clown School
G.W. Bush presidency didn’t exist
Riding unicycles, skateboards, public transportation
Wearing flannel shirts
Buying and selling CDs at a record store
You can put a bird on something and just call it art
Nostalgia for the things in the song? Or just nostalgia for youth?

3. Life is rich as we fill it with things
beautiful to remember.
— Goethe
A benefit of memory: our lives in the present are enriched by experiences in the past.

4. The past is never dead.
It's not even past.
— William Faulkner
A risk: we let the past haunt us, hover over us, infect our present.
Saying “yesterday was better than today.”

5. It’s easy for me to be nostalgic about independent film.

6. http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hollywood-earn/

7. We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s
degrading our music, not improving it … It’s not
that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s
being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3
only has 5 percent of the data present in the
original recording. … The convenience of the
digital age has forced people to choose between
quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have
to make that choice ...
Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music and his
legacy is tremendous, but when he went home he
listened to vinyl.
— Neil Young

8. At least Neil Young is thinking about the future...

9. We're hunting for information; we're
starving for new equipment; we are in
a personal arms race [for] memory or
speed.
— Laurie Anderson
With technology, its very nature keeps us from falling into the trap of nostalgia. If
anything, we have amnesia.

10. 1990: MS-DOS was the dominant OS
Microsoft had just released Windows 3, the first version of Windows to achieve notable
success.

11. 1990: E-mail access through a terminal UI

12. Photo: functoruser
1990: Sharing media: floppy disks
The CD-RW didn’t come until 1997, and Apple’s abandoning of the floppy drive in 1998 with the
iMac was considered a radical move.

13. It was also a time of immense change. 1990 saw Nelson Mandela freed from political prison.

14. 1990: launch of the Hubble telescope.

15. 1990: reunification of Germany.

16. A program which provides access to the hypertext world
we call a browser. When starting a hypertext browser on
your workstation, you will first be presented with a
hypertext page which is personal to you: your personal
notes, if you like. A hypertext page has pieces of text
which refer to other texts. Such references are
highlighted and can be selected with a mouse (on
dumb terminals, they would appear in a numbered list
and selection would be done by entering a number).
When you select a reference, the browser presents you
with the text which is referenced: You have made the
browser follow a hypertext link.
— Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau
Nov 12, 1990
1990: invention of the Web

18. 1993: Mosaic, first widely distributed Web browser.

20. Radio is one sided when it should be two. It is
purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere
sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change
this apparatus over from distribution to
communication. The radio would be the finest
possible communication apparatus in public life, a
vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it
knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let
the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him
into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this
principle the radio should step out of the supply
business and organise its listeners as suppliers.
— Bertolt Brecht
The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication
(1932)
Took previous concepts of creating a technology which was both the means of production and
distribution and made them real.

21. [Alan] Turing simply defined the
computer as a machine that could be
any machine...
To paraphrase Turing, the computer is
the medium that can be any medium.
— Simon Biggs

22. The effect of concept-driven revolution
is to explain old things in new ways.
The effect of tool driven revolution is
to discover new things that have to be
explored.
— Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds

23. Artificial Constructs
Hypertext ➜ net.art
Linear/Analog Non-Linear
Experience Experience
Lived Environments
As a film student, I had been working in cinema which is necessarily about capturing the real
world and creating a linear experience with beginnings, middles and ends (although, as
Goddard says, not necessarily in that order).
Hypertext was something radically different — artificial and non-linear.

24. There had been experiments with these aesthetics in the past, e.g. William Burroughs and
Brion Gysin’s cut-up collages.

25. Mark Amerika, HyperTextual Consciousness 1.0 (1995)
“Will remove the limitations of physical space and will enable us to avoid having to be in a
specific place at a specific time.”
http://www.grammatron.com/htc1.0/

26. Credit
Sam Potts
http://sampottsinc.com/ij/
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)

27. Credit
Noah Smith
noahdanielsmith.com
Pulp Fiction (1994)

28. Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996)
Experiments in how specific behaviors of HTML — e.g. Framesets — could shape experience.
http://www.teleportacia.org/war/

29. Alexei Shulgin, This Morning (1997)
Creating time-based experiences with HTML
http://www.easylife.org/this_morning

30. Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, A Hypertext Journal (1996)
Experimenting with “the WWW as Live Interface”; Predates “weblog” (1997), “blog” (1999)

31. Sites should have as their root emotive/meaningful content
The net presents huge possibilities for relaying this type or
'performance' or time based work
Remaining open to interaction is a struggle but a worthwhile
one
Sites must be in some way time based if an audience is to be
engage in more than a once only 'quick flick'
The basic building blocks of the net such as email, IRC and
basic html are of huge interest and potential use to artists
whether it is as a production or communication tool
By using the net artists are able to contectualise their own
work by linking to material they choose — this could of
course be by themselves or others.
— Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie

32. Jim Petrillo, Cinema Volta (1995)
CD-ROMs allowed artists to distribute content which would have required too much bandwidth —
audio, large graphics, video.
http://youtu.be/Tkrjr0dpPNQ

33. Through the 90s, a kind of
technological vertigo was a fact of life.
— Simon Penny

36. Recording images for the blind.

38. Realize they can record dreams.

40. Addicted to dreams.

41. “For those who can’t put it down.”

42. Laurie Anderson / Hsin-Chien Huang, Puppet Motel (1995)
Album “Bright Red” released in 1994; blending

43. jodi.org (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) (1995 –)
“Jodi is Code stripped of all functionality, Code for its aesthetic value, Code as abrasive
language, Code as hallucination, Code as theater.”
http://jodi.org/

44. Ben Benjamin, Superbad (1997)
http://superbad.com/

45. Alexi Shulgin, Form Art Competition (1997)
Could the artifacts of the digital age be exploited for expressive capabilities?
http://easylife.org/form/competition/competition.html

46. Alexi Shulgin, Desktop IS (1997-98)
http://www.easylife.org/desktop/

47. The human essence is no abstractum
inherent in the single individual. In its
reality it is the ensemble of social
relations.
— Karl Marx
Sixth thesis on Feuerbach (1845)

48. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can
do without other people, not just
because they are useful (which is not
in dispute here) but also when it
comes to happiness.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The World of Perception

49. Heath Bunting, Cybercafe (1994)
http://irational.org/cybercafe/xrel.html

50. The body is our general medium for
having a world.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception

51. Artificial Constructs
Hypertext ➜ net.art
Linear/Analog Non-Linear
Experience Experience
Body Interfaces
Lived Environments

52. Bruce Nauman, Going Around the Corner Piece (1970)

53. David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)
David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)

54. Jim Campbell, UNTITLED For Heisenberg (1994)
http://www.jimcampbell.tv/portfolio/installations/untitled_for_heisenberg/

55. Jim Campbell, UNTITLED For Heisenberg (1994)
http://www.jimcampbell.tv/portfolio/installations/untitled_for_heisenberg/

56. Rafael Lozano-Hammer, Surface Tension (1992)
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/surface_tension.php

57. Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)
Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)
http://www.joachimsauter.com/en/work/zerseher.html

58. Jeffrey Shaw, The Virtual Museum (1991)
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=88

59. Jeffrey Shaw, EVE (Extended Virtual Environment)
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=91

60. Ulrike Gabriel, Breath (1992)
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/breath/

61. Char Davies

62. Char Davies, Ephémère (1998)
http://www.immersence.com/

63. Remember to remember.
Question the present.
The future is now as open as it once was — it’s ours to make.

64. Life is rich as we fill it with things
beautiful to remember.
— Goethe
Remember to remember.
The present came from the past.
The future is now as open as it once was.

65. Links
Mark Amerika, "HyperTextual Consciousness 1.0" (1995)
Olia Lialina, "My Boyfriend Came Back from the War" (1996)
Alexei Shulgin, "This Morning" (1997)
Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, "A Hypertext Journal" (1996)
Jim Petrillo, "Cinema Volta" (1995)
Laurie Anderson / Hsin-Chien Huang, Puppet Motel (1995)
http://jodi.org
Ben Benjamin, "Superbad" (1997)
Alexi Shulgin, Form Art Competition (1997)
Alexi Shulgin, Desktop IS (1997-98)
Heath Bunting, Cybercafe (1994)
Rafael Lozano-Hammer, Surface Tension (1992)
Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)
David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)
Ulrike Gabriel, Breath (1992)
Char Davies, Ephémère (1998)