ARTCHAE. For a Media Ar(t)chaeology of Telepresence
Journal Article
Overview
abstract
Much of contemporary media entails forms of telepresence. Interaction and perception across physical distance today underpin both everyday media—such as mobile phones and teleconferencing platforms—and simulation-based media, including immersive and extended realities, which consistently incorporate a live component. ARTCHAE traces the roots of these processes to the electronic arts from the 1960s to the early 1980s—video art, installation art, and sound art—where mediated presence first became a site of experimentation, while simultaneity, embodied interaction, and self-recognition were already challenged. Combining analyses of media artworks by leading international scholars with interviews of prominent artists and curators, ARTCHAE proposes an ar(t)chaeology: a genealogical inquiry into telepresence grounded in the early insights of artists, particularly overlooked women, who explored the ways tele-media reconfigured private and public spaces, the mediation of the Self, and collective participation.
