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Reviewed by:
  • Interzone: Media Arts in Australia
  • Mike Leggett
Interzone: Media Arts in Australia by Darren Tofts. Craftsman House, Sydney, Australia. New Art Series, Series Editor: Ashley Crawford. 145 pp., illus. Paper. ISBN: 0-9757303-8-X.

Interactivity and media arts are at the core of this survey of the last 15 years of creativity in Australia. Why Australia? As an early adopter of new technologies, the country can be regarded as a microcosm of the wider international scene, having its five main cities dispersed across a continent the size of the U.S. and internal communication as between countries—via airlines and on-line. The introduction of the computer and its various applications to the arts scene was bootstrapped with the hosting of TISEA (Third International Symposium of Electronic Art) in Sydney in 1992. Author Darren Tofts picks up creative developments from around then until 2005. The plethora of full color images that spill from the superbly designed square-format pages are matched in intensity by the vivacity of his commentary.

In an opening section the ground is debated—-what are the terms we use so blithely? How do they lead us into an area about which practitioners and the audiences who have followed them are familiar, but about which a new generation is mostly ignorant? In recuperating the recent past, the opportunities presented by the convergence of the computer and media are sharpened. Dispensing with many of the accumulated working terms, Tofts focuses upon the artifacts of interactive media arts with clear and weighted prose of a high order, without jargon or glib references to fashionable writers. The tiny End-notes/Bibliography section indicates intent: Interzone is not for the well-read academic or well-traveled curator, who can hone his needs from other tomes and reference works, such as Stephen Wilson's encyclopedic Information Arts. This is for the audiences, the visitors to [End Page 487] interactive media spaces, and the practitioners new to the scene who seek some guidance and analysis, some clear and stimulating perspectives on outcomes. If appetites are whetted, then there is no shortage of bibliographies elsewhere from which to proceed, including Tofts's earlier books.

Spectatorship is redefined by the three "I"s—interaction, interface and immersion. It leads into other chapter headings, which cover precursors and visionaries; abstraction of the virtual; artificial nature; and story spaces. Each commences with a cogent summary of the central issues and questions, filled out and developed through the work of selected artists in the field. Advice is proffered in one or two paragraphs on each of the highlighted works. We track the author's responses and reactive thought processes as he, as we, play co-respondent to the artwork, the initiating respondent in the dance of making the work, each distinctive by form, different by contention.

Work in the performance area and the biological receives brief mention. Inevitably, of the practitioners selected, there will be in the mind of each informed reader those few omitted. This reflects the complexity of compilation and the difficulty for the author, though committed engagement is clear, to attend all the exhibitions mounted throughout the period.

The overview, however, reveals a distinctive preoccupation with issues of representation amongst the artifacts arraigned. This is less to do with the antipodal distance from the larger audiences in Europe and North America, as much of the work has been seen internationally. But it indicates that most Australian practitioners, as with those overseas, have either migrated from the visual and media arts or been trained into the interactive media arts by earlier migrants. (Most of the artists have close involvement with teaching.) In the current climate of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Interzone critically examines the artifacts and some of the processes emergent from these traditional structures.

The book, while aiding and enlivening seminar and coffee culture discussion, could undeniably become the final visible repository of many of the works it features. The ephemerality of chip and operating systems mutating annually often prevents interactive media artwork from being preserved by the active collector or museum, engineering the ephemeral beyond the claims of earlier generations of now well-collected artists. As a milestone, Interzone is well placed...

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