1990
In his seminal 1990 essay “Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?”, Roy Ascott explores the concept of "telematic art"—art created through computer-mediated communications networks. Ascott argues that these networks create a "global embrace" where the traditional roles of "artist" and "viewer" disappear into a collaborative, decentralized web of consciousness.
While the essay focuses heavily on digital networking and early internet theory, it provides a crucial theoretical framework for understanding the "network pieces" of Max Neuhaus.
Though Neuhaus often avoided the high-tech computer jargon Ascott used, his work was a physical realization of Ascott’s theories:
Ascott defines telematics as the "interaction of persons via computer and telecommunications." Neuhaus’s Radio Net (1977) and Public Supply series transformed the entire American telephone and radio network into a single, massive telematic instrument. He used the "embrace" of the phone lines to allow a dispersed public to inhabit a shared, virtual sonic space.
Ascott’s theory that telematic art has no "center" and no single "author" perfectly matches Neuhaus’s philosophy. In his network works, Neuhaus provided the system, but the content was generated by the public. As Ascott suggests, the art exists in the interaction, not the object.
Just as Ascott describes a "new consciousness" arising from networked interaction, Neuhaus’s work was "metaperceptual" (recalling Blake Johnston’s thesis). It forced the participant to recognize that their own voice and their own listening were the primary materials of the artwork.