The Digital Avant-garde - Digital Culture - page 70

and distortion that would change messages in unpredictable
ways. Fluxus also reflected a world linked by increasingly complex
systems of communications and connections. The movement itself
was deliberately international, involving members from the United
States, Europe and Japan, and eschewing any identification with
particular nations. It also demonstrated a fascination with tele-
communications, through various works that referred to postal and
other communications systems.
Owing to the international nature of the movement, Fluxworkers
also used the postal system a great deal to exchange material and
ideas. This became a process of making art in its own right. The
Fluxus poet Robert Filliou invented the term 'Eternal Network' to
refer to the long-term inseparableness of art and life. 11 This became
synonymous with Fluxus's use of the post as a vehicle for art. Filliou,
along with other Fluxus artists such as Ben Vautier, Ken Friedman,
Robert Watts, Nam June Paik and Dick Higgins, used postcards
and other correspondence material thus from the late ' s onwards.

This kind of work was paralleled by similar projects undertaken
by the artistic group, the Nouveau Réalistes in France, which had
many affinities with Fluxus, and, indeed shared some members.
Among those involved with Nouveau Realisme were Yves Klein,
Daniel Spoerri, Piero Manzoni, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Christo, Arman
and Jean Tinguely. Klein actually sent letters and cards franked with
a plain (Klein) blue stamp. Perhaps the most complete exponent
of 'mail art', as it came known, was Ray Johnson (illus.

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), a pop
artist and associate of many of those who were involved in Fluxus.
Johnson and his 'New York CorresponDANCE [ sic ] School' more or
less defined the genre of mail, postal or correspondence art, with his
sending and receiving of letters and faxes. With the comparatively
recent rise of the World Wide Web and the concomitant populariza-
tion of the Internet, the telecommunication concerns of Johnson,
and the Fluxus and Nouveau Realiste groups seem prescient, in
that they reflect a world in which remote communication is of

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