*Why not?
Those who worship the Muses end up running the museum
(...)
It’s easy to forget that before the internet, there were other networks. One of the more advanced was videotex, an information system invented in the 1970s that relied on a television or terminal — you could communicate, read the news, publish content or look up telephone numbers. In France, the government distributed more than a million such terminals, called Minitel, to citizens.
After a version called Videotexto was implemented in Brazil in 1982, mostly in public spaces like libraries and airports, the performance and multimedia artist Eduardo Kac became interested in the technology. Mr. Kac said he had an epiphany of sorts: Physical artworks could exist in a whole new sphere. “We were no longer preoccupied with dematerialization,” he said. “We could now produce immaterial work directly.”
In 1985, Mr. Kac made the work “Reabracadabra,” a digital poem created for Videotexto that he described as a “personal, formal attempt at holographic work.” This piece will be on display in the New Museum show on a terminal, after Mr. Kac painstakingly restored and recreated his videotex pieces over the course of 15 years.
“This network no longer exists, just like the internet we have now will one day no longer exist,” Mr. Kac said. “There’s a general misperception when we talk about online culture. Everyone is so obsessed with the internet, but to me it’s a historical phenomenon. It will be superseded by other networks in the future.”...
