When art is a form of behaviour …

Roy Ascott’s influence is pervasive, through his pedagogy (the ‘Ground Course’ and the ‘Planetary Collegium’) and through the telematics works in the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 1960s, Ascott lit the slow burning fuse of a mind-bomb that, rather than shattering the fabric of the art world, slowly dissolved its materiality. As telematic shrapnel penetrate its vital organs, the object d’art staggers on, zombie like, curators wheeling over head, picking over the corpse. Rather than try to resuscitate the remains, there are those who prefer to surf the shockwave of this legacy in the hope that the future will catch up.