Reconsidering Australian Media Art History in an International Context

This project researches the contribution of Australians to the development of media arts as a global contemporary art practice. International publications and online archives dedicated to the study of media art are dominated by European and North American exemplars. Despite this, Australian media artists have been active contributors to the international context since the late 1950s. Today, Australian media artists are world leaders, pioneering trends in technologically-based artistic endeavour such as interactive cinema, video installation and biotechnical arts. This project asks how issues of geographic distance (set against the relative portability of media art) have affected the particular historical development of media art in Australia.