InterAccess

InterAccess is a Canadian artist-run centre and electronic media production facility in Toronto. Founded in 1982 as Toronto Community Videotex, InterAccess is Ontario's only exhibition space devoted exclusively to technological media arts.[1] The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art places the founding of InterAccess as a key moment in both the history of Canadian electronic art but also within a timeline of developments in international art, science, technology and culture.[2]

History

In 1983, InterAccess was incorporated as a not-for-profit, artist-run access centre, under the name Toronto Community Videotex (TCV). It provided artists access to the Telidon system, a precursor of the World Wide Web. The early conception of electronic art placed the organization within the production cooperative system in Canada.[3] TCV's members created artworks which fell within the more systems-based notions of art production, rather than the beaux-arts[4] aesthetic of the museum.,[5] The name change to InterAccess in 1987 reflected a new focus on Macintosh graphics, multimedia production and a dial-up artists’ network (much like a Bulletin Board System, or BBS) known as Matrix.[6]

InterAccess moved to a larger facility in 1995 allowing InterAccess to offer a gallery and production space that expanded its activities beyond simply access to multimedia production. The exhibitions began to emphasize the finished production and there was a particular focus on establishing an international presence for the centre.[7] The exhibition Pandoras Box, a collaboration between InterAccess and Fylkingen New Music and Intermedia Art in Stockholm, Sweden in 2000, was billed as "the first international interactive encounter with art using remotely controlled robots."[8]

In 2005, InterAccess moved to a renovated two-floor, three thousand square feet stand-alone building, allowing for more production space, a surround sound studio and a machine shop for constructing large-scale physical computing projects and installation.

The exhibition This must be the place: Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Nell Tenhaaf and Norman White was a reconsideration of the centre and as well the place of electronic art within art history.[9] The four featured artists are pioneers in electronic and interactive art and have a history with InterAccess as both members and exhibitors.[10]

In May 2006, InterAccess received a Canada Council Media Arts Commissioning Grant for The Networked City, a series of five outdoor interactive installations on Yonge Street in Toronto.[11]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ http://www.interaccess.org/about/history.php
  2. ↑ Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art "Timeline of Digital Art"
  3. ↑ Shaw, "Cultural Democracy and Institutional Difference", p. 31
  4. ↑ Dowler, "Interstitial Aesthetics and the Politics of Video at the Canada Council", pp. 35-6
  5. ↑ Hough, "Beyond the Gallery (Electronic Mail Art)", p. 15
  6. ↑ Mann, "The Matrix Artists' Network: An Electronic Community", pp. 230-31
  7. ↑ Bull, "Radio Art in a Gallery?", p. 162
  8. ↑ Herst, "The Disembodied Eye", p. 122
  9. ↑ Schilling, This must be the place, p. 7
  10. ↑ Schilling, This must be the place, p. 8
  11. ↑ http://www.interaccess.org/exhibitions/index.php?id=55 The Networked City

Further reading

External links

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