journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

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reliant upon cultural imagination and individual subjectivities, while in turn cultural
imagination and individual subjectivities are produced by these technologies (Neumark
2005:10). Counter culture and the cultural undercurrents of society are concerned with
mainstream practices, links, interactions and experiences, while attempting to breathe life
into an otherwise homogenized, mechanised and de­personalised society (Saper, 2001).
As a result of a motivation for innovation, variation and change new ways to engage with
information, discussion and user communities are developed.
On the cusp of globalisation, post World War II, a desire to absorb and interact with
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and a departure from the voyeuristic tendencies of previous generations and the end
of an era of cultural exclusion, replaced by an inclusive art world and inclusive popular
media. In a paper co­authored with Robert W. Taylor in 1968, titled ‘The Computer as
a Communication Device,’ Licklider discusses the potential of networked computers to
create ‘interactive communities of geographically separated people’ that furthermore ‘will
be communities not of common location, but of common interest’ (as cited in Perkins,
2005).
Artistic communities have shown an independent motivation for promoting and
extending their community bases, embracing technology available to them at the time.
In many instances their networking projects have foreshadowed the ways in which online
communities interact in contemporary society. Since the development of the Internet,
globalization can now be considered a social and cultural condition, however a desire for
connectivity and communication is evident in media and technology projects of smaller
communities since the 1950’s. The following essay will consider art and creative culture
and its relationship with media as a form of communication and community formation
from the 1950’s until today.
Mail Art: Evidence Of The Beginnings Of Cultural Networking
The mail art movement was an innovative outgrowth of the downtown New York art
scene of the 1950’s, pioneered by local artist Ray Johnson (Perkins, 2005; Cubitt, 2005;
Gangadharan, 2009). Intrigued by collage and communication, Johnson embraced the
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