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Like other contemporary multimedia art forms, Superbad by Ben Benjamin¹⁵ weaves together graphics, images, text and a multitude of references to popular culture. Yet this work departs from the conception of previous multimedia art in the nature of its organisation. While the strict rational basis of perspectival art structures the viewing experience by the strong linear structure, and art subsequent to this was liberated from this rational construction to instead allow a simultaneous, yet still unchanging experience, the cyber medium permits a complete escape from fixed Renaissance perspectival structure. In Superbad, the entry point, the home page, is changed on a daily basis and the sequence by which the viewer travels through the work evolves and reorganises itself in an unpredictable manner. As the experience is also determined by the decision-making and physical actions of the viewer, Superbad is experienced in a unique manner on each encounter with each individual viewer, and so the conception of the work is slightly different each time.
 
 

Such exploration of the diverse possibilities for representing our experience of the world that are available in cyber multimedia, and the experimentation with the potential of a non-linear and non-structured medium¹⁶ characterise these Cyberart works. They allow the medium to provide an element of choice for viewers in the manner in which they engage with the works, and this self-determination is integral to Mark Amerika's Grammatron.¹⁷ The simultaneous experience of a range of diverse media permitted by the integration of text, image, movement and sound by the Internet¹⁸ is something that novelist Darcey Steinke engages in Blindspot,¹⁹ in which she examines the possibilities of translating the linear, text-based medium of the literature to the Internet by means of which she is able to compose a non-linear work where a single story is interwoven with 19 shorter stories that are experienced concurrently. The effect of this art is to blur the boundaries between the individual disciplines and to provide a simultaneous experience of the narratives.
 
 

In addition to exploring the constituent forms of the cyber medium, Cyberart also examines the content of and the nature in which the medium is utilised. The internet is commonly perceived as a tool for sharing information, yet there is often a disjunction of the body from the machines between which the fibreoptic lines and satellite beams convey the information. E-mail depersonalises communication by removing many of the inflections inherent in a hand-written communication. While communication by phone retains an explicit human presence at either end, this is often lost in the electronic domain. The theme of man-as-machine, exploring an alternative dehumanised cyber-landscape, is the issue of Grammatron. It suggests this phenomenon by providing a genderless, digital body as the vehicle for the viewer's experience of this cyber-world, an 'info-shaman' that is seen as a prototype for man-machines such as cyborgs.²⁰ Similarly, Redsmoke by Lew Baldwin²¹ has a 'programmed' worker as the figure with whom the viewer identifies.
 
 

While the internet is a more advanced channel for interpersonal communication, the depersonalisation inherent in the medium often establishes a false sense of authority.²² Ken Goldberg's Ouija 2000²³ critiques the mystification of new technology such as the internet by invoking a spiritual ritual, intoning "push aside the keyboard / dim the lights / grasp the mouse gently with both hands". He challenges the notion that the medium is more than just a communication device, and satirises an uncritical reliance on the Internet as a source of information. Fakeshop²⁴ explores how the new possibilities of the internet can foster the development and creation of other art media, in this case music. The work also explores the unique broadcast and archival potential of the internet, and the possibilities that arise for global communication and collaboration with other musicians. ®TMark²⁵ plays with the commercialised nature of the internet and undermines its ubiquitous corporate presence.
 
 

Body and Media

Having considered examples of the operation of the medium of Cyberart, resultant changes in the dynamic between media and body can be now be examined. These are primarily a consequence of the vastly increased speed of electric media, and the transition that has occurred from mechanism to automation.
 
 

The operation of the media has developed at a giddying pace in recent decades. Art was initially an object-based medium and was restricted to its local presence. The dissemination of information about art was constrained by the physical pathways available to transport the object, or manual reproductions of the object. As an object-based medium, art inevitably had a spatial presence, occupying a certain space and remaining constant over time.²⁶ The onset of electronic communication of information with advent of the telegraph and then the "wireless' radio allowed the message for the first time to travel faster than it could be carried by a human messenger.²⁷ While this allowed the content of the art-medium, often a narrative, to be transmitted more easily, the medium itself remained immobile. The potential for the mass reproduction of the art object, described by Benjamin as an increased intervention of technical means in these processes, also contributed to a decline of the aura,²⁸ destroying the singularity and authority upon which the work of art is dependent. This contributes to a decline in the distance between viewer and medium and Benjamin claims that "Above all, it enables the original to meet the beholder halfway".²⁹
 
 

While television and film were communication media that were still fixed in space and temporally discrete, the advent of live broadcast permitted a mode of communication that could share a contemporaneous existence with the viewer. While these media allowed the viewer to interact momentarily with the medium, this was possible only on the local level.³⁰ However, when art became liberated from the object, as happened in Post-object performance art, the interaction of the viewer was encouraged. This invariably affected the medium of the performance at a global rather than local level.³¹ This causal ability was a result of a reduction in distance between viewer and medium that allowed the audience and the medium to unify. As Cyberart is also liberated from the permanence of the object, is able to operate globally and contemporaneously with the viewer. By invoking a mosaic of the viewers' senses, it has become possible to respond and evolve directly to the interaction of the viewer with the medium. As Cyberart has the ability to exist as a continuous stream, changing and developing over time and experienced by individual viewers their own time, it is not restricted to the moment of its creation. Since Cyberart can be engaged with globally and simultaneously, it constitutes a form of mass medium not in terms of the size of its audience, but in accordance with the McLuhan notion that everyone can become involved with the medium at the same time.³²
 
 

The consequences of detaching art from the physical object and transferring it an electronic medium are considerable. The medium no longer transmits reproductions of art, but art itself. As the internet now reaches virtually all corners of the world, the Whitney works can be experienced just as easily in New Zealand as America.³³
 
 

While this electronic speed now permits contemporaneity between medium and body, the enmeshment of medium and body³⁴ occurs with the transition from mechanisation to the instantaneous and exact synchronisation of automation. Cyberart advances this to the extent that the body is brought into conveyance with the multimedia event.³⁵ Prior to the twentieth century, art was mechanised in its structure - it was a hot medium (if we follow McLuhan) that distanced the viewer by virtue of its rational formulation of order³⁶ and its accompanying aura. As a result, the viewer was only permitted a passive involvement with the medium. Automation instead opens up the senses beyond vision, creating a multifaceted experience in which the body and the medium are brought into convergence, and the inside and outside can amalgamate.³⁷

 

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15 http://www.superbad.com
16 In this, Cyberart is very different to the media of literature, film, television and perspectival painting. These are all structured by the linear organisation of symbols, and as the arrangement of these is determined by the author, the viewer must engage with the works in this same order. Cubism was important in that the viewer was able to take a simultaneous experience of the object, and construct a form of order individual to them.
17 http://www.grammatron.com
18 Smell is one element currently lacking, but the technology now exists to evoke the nasal experience of the viewer by activating a mixture of chemicals connected to the users computer.
19 http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/blindspot
20 This ability for the body to enmesh with the machine and to develop an alternative, genderless cyber-persona was illustrated by a recent survey which revealed that over 40% of internet chatroom users had on occasion masqueraded as the opposite gender.
21 http://www.redsmoke.com
22 A published book is commonly assumed to be authoritative, researched, credible, and editorially approved (vanity presses aside), while a spoken opinion is regarded as more subjective. However the internet allows any unsubstantiated information to adopt a sense of authority, by assuming a published form.
23 http://ouija.berkeley.edu
24 http://www.fakeshop.com
25 http://www.rtmark.com
26 Subsequent to the involvement of the artist ceasing, and disregarding natural, non-intentional changes.
27 McLuhan, ibid. pp.89-90.
28 '. . .for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.' Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), in Illuminations (New York, 1969), p.224.
29 ibid., p.220.
30 An example of this local determination is a changing the television channel. While this allowed the viewer to determine which information they personally receive, the constituent medium and information emitted from the origin is not changed.
31 As the medium of this art was the performance, the involvement of the viewer altered the medium, much as the computer mediated interaction of the viewer can change the work of Cyberart. Where a work of art is fixed to an object, e.g. painting, or a narrative, e.g. literature, any changes the viewer makes is only at a local level. 
32 McLuhan, ibid. p.349.
33 We are no longer reliant on a second or third-hand dissemination of information to reach us via reviews of art criticism, and faced with the improbability of actually experiencing the art in its actual form which results from geographic remoteness of New Zealand, problems which had caused a perpetuating artistic conservatism here in earlier years.
34 Instead of a cause and effect relationship between body and medium, more of a simultaneous relationship was possible, with the action and the reaction occurring at the same time.
35 The uniqueness of Cyberart can be marked by a comparison to other multi-media. For the music video Californication by the band Red Hot Chilli Peppers, clips of the band members playing the music merge seamlessly with animated representations of the group cavorting in a cyber-landscape of an arcade game. The distinction between the realms is minimal, and the bandmembers controlling the video game have been subsumed directly into cyberspace. This is similar to other arcade games such as those of the snowboarding genre, where the player mounts an actual snowboard, and their physical weaving and jumping translate directly to the actions of their cyber-personage on screen. While this conveyance of body and medium is the foundation of Cyberart, in these examples there is still only a communication between a single, localised body and the medium. In contrast the global character of Cyberart permits communication via the medium, to other bodies. By nature of this interconnectedness, the fusion of man and machine can occur. In a world first, on May 19, 2000 New Zealand band Shihad released General Electric Hypergame CD, three interactive tracks which connect the viewer to a website whereby they can zoom and navigate around within the music videos to search for clues and questions in order to win prizes. Like many modern bands, Shihad appreciate the ability of their website (www.shihad.com) to foster a more intimate connection between them and their fans, and singer Jon Toogood claims that this new hyper-entertainment concept will permit an even greater communication, and he claims that the information-based concept of the hyper-game incorporates an element of creativity which traditional video games lack. Rip it Up, June 2000, pp.16-19. As this concept has the potential capacity to also allow a global and contemporaneous communication between the artist and their audience, this is evidence of the expanding potential of Cyberart. Hyper-tainment is defined as 'a fully integrated system of music entertainment, market research and interactive advertising. It combines hybrid CD music-videos and 3D world environments with real-time Internet data in a new music-video-game experience.' www.hypertainment.com 
36 As the work of art is provided with strong structure and a completeness, there is little chance for the audience to participate by filling in or completing the work. This is a contrast to the cool medium of Cyberart which demands a considerable participation from the audience. ibid. pp.22-23.
37 As the speeding up of the electrical has allowed sequential fragments appear continuous, for example in the medium of film, the structural basis of the mechanised form has become disguised. It was Cubism, by encouraging more than a visual experience, that permitted automation, and included other senses which are less structured. McLuhan, ibid. p.12.