Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0

Doug Back, Carl Hamfelt, Laura Kikauka, David Rokeby, Graham Smith, and Norman White

InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto, and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Presented in conjunction with McLuhan 100 and McLuhan in Europe 2011.

Toronto hours:
InterAccess: Thursday and Friday 12pm-6pm (live link to Rotterdam 3:00-6:00pm only)
Saturday 9am-7pm (live with Rotterdam all day)

More information as well as details on the original exhibition and individual artist’s work is available on the Strategic Arts Initiative website.

SAI 2.0 is presented as a three-day event in which visitors are invited to interact with their counterparts in Rotterdam through works of telepresence art. Complimentary refreshments will be served throughout open hours.

InterAccess and V2_Institute for the Unstable Media present Strategic Arts Initiative 2.0, a re-installation of the seminal 1986 telepresence exhibition Strategic Arts Initiative (SAI). This exhibition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the initial exhibition and coincides with the centenary of the birth of Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan, whose writings informed and influenced much of the work in the original SAI exhibition. While telepresence has become ubiquitous in the 25 years since the original exhibition (as it predicted it would) many of these works display possibilities that still seem radical today. Instead of merely communicating visually across great distances, the works in the exhibition insist on even more intimate forms of telepresence such as communicating through touch, feats of strength, and actual physical presence across networks.