World In 24 Hours
The World in 24 Hours at Ars Electronica Festival, 1982. Photograph by Sepp Schaffler.
The World in 24 Hours was a networked happening that linked sixteen cities worldwide, with the media art festival Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria acting as the central node. Each site was given one hour—coinciding with midday, local time—in which to generate and transmit content over a wide range of devices and networks, including computer terminals, phone, fax, and slow-scan TV.
The project reflected [Robert] Adrian’s early insight that the network is not an artistic medium in the traditional sense. Rather, networked art would be defined by exchange—“taking place in the space between machines, only when the machines were on.”