ART vs Art

“ART vs Art” was my online "daily journal" (blog) for my VISTA readers. It documents the three week VideoCabaret “ART vs Art: A Hummer For Mayor” performance and election campaign at the Cameron Public House during the 1982 Toronto municipal election. 

What a spectacular three weeks it was, like being in the historic nexus of new media and performance art, otherwise known as VideoCabaret. Every night, in the backroom of the Cameron, Deanne Taylor and the Hummer Sisters led a parade of Toronto's emerging and established artists, diverse, multidisciplinary and very friendly; waiving fees and pitching in, on stage, backstage, in the audience and, for the grand finale, in the voting booths. 11,914 Torontonians voted for ART at the ballot box, a distant second to Art's 121,914 votes, but, outstanding nonetheless. 

I did this on behalf of myself as an artist, with permission from Deanne Taylor Like the 2022 election with John Tory, Incumbent Mayor Art Eggleton was unopposed, except for fringe candidates. In the end, it was the tale of two arts.

Of all the Telidon/videotex "packages" I created or helped to create, ART vs Art is my favourite. With it I was able to use all the Telidon, videotex tools I'd learned, using a variety of "interactive" techniques, as well as slight animation, at 1200bps.

My 1982, electronic daily journal was a big hit amongst 500 online "users" in Ontario and Quebec. By 1985, up to 5,000 private and public terminals could access my documentary of the event. 

The story of how ART vs Art came about, illustrates a bigger story about the early 80s collision between Canadian art and technology. If art was the thesis and technology was the antithesis, the synthesis was Canada's unparalleled collection of the world's earliest "born digital" interactive (i.e. online) art, created by dozens of emerging or established Anglophone, Francophone and a few Indigenous artists of the early 80s. 

IMO, of all the speculative videotex content created by corporate, academic or government interests, in the 1980s, none is more relevant today, than what the artists created.