THE THING

«The Thing» was the first project to emerge from the conceptually-oriented art scene into the data nets' realm of communication, distribution, and production. At the end of 1991, «The Thing» entered the telephone net in New York as a simple mailbox or bulletin board system (BBS). The next stage, «The Thing Cologne», came in 1992; then, in November 1993, came «The Thing Vienna» and others.

June 21 1992: beginning of The Thing Frankfurt.

The Thing most visibly changed when a Web interface was created for its presentation at the 1994 Ars Electronica.

Projects like Robert Adrian's «Artex», an early bulletin board look-alike created on a forerunner of the Internet and even Rena Tangens and Padeluun’s «Bionic» bulletin board (in German only) or the California-based but international The Well, the cluster of forums that was not initiated by artists at all but which was still influential, are all of historical importance as sources of inspiration or early breeding places of Net culture.

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