| Telematics are the constellation of arts which use networks and long-distance systems as the media for the artist's message. Telematic art originates in one place on Earth but is perceived and interpreted by the viewer in a different place entirely. Hypertext, such as is found on the web, can be considered a telematic form if it's part of a long-distance connection from author to reader. Holopoetry is as it sounds, poetry composed in holograms. Artists in these forms often have a hacker buried deep inside them who is pushing artistic buttons in their human host's consciousness. They try things which may seem kluged, oblique or sublime, but they gravitate toward frontiers driven by the novelty in the collision of art and technology. When I encountered Eduardo Kac on the Internet, my search begun at the Alhambra finally took a turn. Kac is an articulate, soft spoken media artist, born and raised in Brazil, living in Kentucky and now of some renown in the United States and abroad. Kac's words do not sit still on a page. They have dimensions and motions of their own. They play specifically for the reader at the reader's request. Rather than tessellate into patterns in stone, they move and evolve with theatrical effect in time and space. To be sure, we've already been partly exposed to this process. Television exploits such creative titling to sell us air travel, credit services or cola. There's an interesting comparison to be made between the present round of commercial for Nexxus hair care products and the experimental poetry videos of Richard Kostelanetz. In the commercials, descriptive and inviting language flows through a woman's hair in ways with amplify and comment on the words themselves; letters regroup into phrases and blend into a prescription of beauty. In Kostelanetz' videos, letter may simply wink on or off, or change one at a time to compose new words or nonsense, as though someone were trying different permutations to solve a crossword, revealing coded relationships. The credit of the Beats and their contemporaries, who coined a concrete poetry by typing poems in the shapes of their subjects, both textual endeavors have a prior graphical example in the West. However, commercial semiotics have outpaced fine art because the capital incentive drove the process harder. The text in the Nexxus ad carries subtle connotation by its curvy movement, its typeface and even its varying degrees of soft focus. The text invites the viewer to contemplate the relationship between its action and its printed meaning. In contrast, the typical television viewer would be unimpressed by Kostelanetz' video works, which use flat typefaces and very simple rules of composition. In this comparison it's important to keep the commercial's agenda in mind, to remember that the play of the advertiser's words happens on the advertiser's timetable, not the reader's, and the message is still beholden to a product, not itself. The Nexxus ad is a creative commercial, but it's not art.
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