Art Press this month (just, its the March issue, number 332) has an article about Edwardo Kac which reminded me that he had quite a few early works dealing with networks (particularily ideas concerned with telepresence).

Tesão (1985/86), which means Horny, is one work (image above, video below) I was unaware of but has served the purpose of illustrating the art works created with Minitel (France’s visionary early network system which is still in use today) in the eighties. Roy Ascott refers to works like these several times in his publication, Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness, as an example of some early screen based, network delivered art. Net.art essentially if your interpretation is (as mine is) that the net in net.art does not solely mean internet.

Tesão is one of Edwardo Kac’s Media Poetry and Language Art works, an animated poem which was:

shown online in the group exhibition Brazil High-Tech (1986), a national videotext art gallery organized in Rio de Janeiro by Eduardo Kac and Flavio Ferraz and presented by Companhia Telefônica de São Paulo.

Other early pre-internet works of note which have connections with networks on Edwardo Kac’s site include the fax live TV performance Retrato Suposto — Rosto Roto (Presumed Portrait — Foul Face) (below top left and middle left) and the fax works EarthDay Impromptu (below bottom), Elastic Fax I and Elasticfax 2 (below top right).