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

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less well known (Gangadharan, 2009). FILE facilitated the artist’s contact with like­
minded individuals, and actively reinforced the values and meanings of networking in an
information and communication enriched society. The magazine ironically embraced a
mass­media trope. Each issue still contained conventional mainstream magazine sections:
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and advertisements. It also fashioned a space for personalized activity and allowed
individuals the freedom to participate and interact on their own terms, collaborating
rather than competing (Gangadharan, 2009). As Ascott has noted from the 1950’s onwards
society began to reject the idea of the artist as genius and an individual, which had
existed in artist communities up until then (Ascott, 1994 as cited in Gangadharan, 2009).
Modernism and the subsequent processes of globalisation and cross­cultural development
placed an emphasis on the formation of communities and the exchange of information.
Despite operating twenty years before the advent of the Internet, both FILE magazine and
Omnibus News indicate a desire to promote and extend information receivership with
an emphasis on networking and community. Artistic communities are motivated by a
desire to break free from homogenized social practices. Such motivation inspires a desire
to change and invert the roles of media usage. Beuy’s proposes an expanded role for art,
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magazine and Omnibus News desired and promoted;
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The social climate of the 1960’s and 1970’s demonstrated a formation of the technological
and conceptual foundations of what would become the Internet. The structure and
operational methods of these publications demonstrated a reformulation of artistic practice
and media usage, emphasising a desire to create new structures capable of maintaining
the development of communication and networking culture (Perkins, 2005).
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