Disembodied Art Gallery

In the 1990s the Disembodied Art Gallery was part of this jump into cyberspace...

Stay tuned...

More Babble from the 1994 archives... “What game do you like to play?”

Yet more archive material from the “Babble” telephone art installation, 1993. Excellent dada poems performed over the phone from the USA by Horea

Another one from Disembodied Art Gallery archives... a “Tarantinees” game to generate a film script.

More tidbits... found from a previously ‘lost’ cassette of “Babble” telephone installation contributions. These recordings are some of the oddities that were received. Enjoy!

Otherwise keep looking at this Tumblr site for occasional new info.

Faxed is the first history of the facsimile machinethe most famous recent example of a tool made obsolete by relentless technological innovation. Jonathan Coopersmith recounts the multigenerational, multinational history of that device from its origins to its workplace glory days, in the process revealing how it helped create the accelerated communications, information flow, and vibrant visual culture that characterize our contemporary world.Most people assume that the fax machine originated in the computer and electronics revolution of the late twentieth century, but it was actually invented in 1843. Almost 150 years passed between the faxs invention in England and its widespread adoption in tech-savvy Japan, where it still enjoys a surprising popularity. Over and over again, faxings promise to deliver messages instantaneously paled before easier, less expensive modes of communication: first telegraphy, then radio and television, and finally digitalization in the form of email, the World Wide Web, and cell phones. By 2010, faxing had largely disappeared, having fallen victim to the same technological and economic processes that had created it. Based on archival research and interviews spanning two centuries and three continents, Coopersmiths book recovers the lost history of a once-ubiquitous technology. Written in accessible language that should appeal to engineers and policymakers as well as historians, Faxed explores themes of technology push and market pull, user-based innovation, and "blackboxing" (the packaging of complex skills and technologies into packages designed for novices) while revealing the inventions inspired by the fax, how the demand for fax machines eventually caught up with their availability, and why subsequent shifts in user preferences rendered them mostly pass.

And of course its very nice to see a reference to our Telaesthesia faxart show mentioned as part of the narrative.

Previously displayed at Geelong, Australia in 2012 in an exhibition entitled: Prolonged reading not appreciated", it's most recent outing was at the Post Office gallery, Ballarat, Australia: Jul17-Aug 8 2014. The collection includes Disembodied Art Gallery material which (I believe) were on display.

This package came Absolutely Free and is now a highly desired collector’s item, fetching fabulous prices on the international quality lit market and art curator scenes (or maybe, hopefully, not). 

So if you happening to be passing the university - check out crate 66 in his archive... For everyone else - take a look at the University's summary of the collection.

(Babble appears in the timeline 1994)

Cut-up prose created in 1992, and later distributed as part of a "WSB kit" during the William S Burroughs 80th birthday celebrations in Brighton UK, 1994.

When approached by a visitor, whispering voices would dart from handset to handset around the telephones. Photo by Mark Monk-Terry.