Originally published in the catalogue Teleporting an Unkown State,Peter Tomaz Dobrila and Aleksandra Kostic, editors. Published by KIBLA,Maribor, Slovenia, 1998, pp. 5, 7. (ISBN 961-6304-00-3)

Foreword

Peter Tomaz Dobrila

I don't exactly remember when I heard of Eduardo Kac for the first time,but I remember that I was immediately impressed by his work. Later, whenI was surfing through his web pages (www.ekac.org), his retrospective struckme as a complete story of an artist, who has followed his credo from thevery beginning and has never missed the point. Starting with the performancesin his home country Brazil, on the Ipanema Beach, Rio de Janeiro, in the80´s, he clearly pointed out the body art principles of the 60´sgeneration. That was his answer to history, an answer with the media ofpresent and the new media of the future, which would appear years later.

Communication as the wide core of his projects has been defined in variousways, concerning internal and external entities, from the intimacy of thehuman interior to something we could call a public appearance or a bourgeoisrole of the gallery space. Of course nothing is closer to the thin linebetween "in" and "out" as the tools which connect peopleor which seem to connect us into a global village. But what happens withour inner circle being disguised and discovered, hidden and shown at thesame time, joining into bigger and bigger circles and forming new typesof societies, forming new spheres of interest and changing our perspectives,emphasizing our perception and stimulating our behavior as a virtual collective?

Nothing was the same anymore, space lost its meaning, time reduced tomessages sent and received became an intimate structure and the livingcreatures turned into data fields through biological/genetic analyses andtechnical/machine substitutes. Eduardo Kac experienced both, when he wascreating murals, fax or teletex art, holographic poetry and recently, whileperforming implantation into his body or creating telecommunication eventsand interactive projects. His work has been given the Leonardo Award forExcellence and one of his pieces, called "Teleporting An Unknown State",is being exhibited in the Multimedia Center KiberSRCeLab - KIBLA and transmittedto the Internet. A seed on a bed of soil is developing into a plant bygrowing in a black box isolated from the natural environment. The wholeprocess can be seen on the web until its last stage, when the plant istaken outside into its natural environment. Thus the cycle of artificialis finished and the new cycle of natural begins. But are there any bordersat all? There is only a short path from the simulated laboratory environmentto the real one, nevertheless it is a long process in the whole game ofbeing. And what is it that really matters? Gertrude Stein would reply inthe avant-garde manner: "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose..."

These are only some of the questions and many answers raised by EduardoKac's work and I often wonder: What next? More than enough for us to followhis future steps.

Peter Tomaz Dobrila is the Head of Multimedia Center KiberSRCeLab -KIBLA, Maribor, Slovenia.

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