Book Description

"Though the technology for transmitting printed images and texts over distance dates from the 19th century, it was the introduction of the modern fax through commercially available machines in the 1970s that turned facsimiles into a ubiquitous communications medium for international business. Artists readily exploited its immediate, graphic, and interactive character, making it an important part of the history of telecommunications art, nestled between the legacy of mail art and the nascent practices of new media." "Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, FAX features the work of a multigenerational group of artists, architects, designers, scientists, and filmmakers who were invited to conceive of the fax machine as a tool for thinking and drawing. The book contains an essay by exhibition curator Joao Ribas and over 200 faxed pages, all transmitted via The Drawing Center's working fax line, including drawings, texts, and some seminal examples of early telecommunications art, as well as the inevitable errors of transmission, junk, and "fax lore." These works Form the core of a traveling exhibition circulated by iCI." --Book Jacket.