Through a series of focused and interconnected case studies, Out of
School explores the long history of information art associated with the
Toronto School of Communication. It highlights the perspectives of
artists inspired by the speculations of Marshall McLuhan and colleagues
as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Toronto School's ideas
about information. Using pre-Internet media such as telex and the
telecopier, the artists explored in this book materialized visionary
concepts of information without the aid of computers. Harbingers of
contemporary digital culture, Bertram Brooker, N.E. Thing Co., Robert
Smithson, Wyndham Lewis, General Idea, and other artists approached
information as something embodied, sensorial, and social. Art historian
Adam Lauder recontextualizes this qualitative philosophy of information
in relation to quantitative discourses and methodologies, which these
creative figures make visible - sometimes inadvertently or satirically -
through artworks that operate at the interface between art and business.
While exploring how utopian information ontologies struggled to account
for markers of identity and difference, including Indigeneity, gender,
and sexual diversity, this book also highlights instances when
information art was able to carve out spaces of agency and resistance.
Offering an essential reassessment of the legacies of the Toronto School
of Communication, Out of School broadens the network of practitioners
connected to the school to include visual artists active both within and
beyond Canada. In doing so, it proposes that artists made significant
contributions to theory in their own right.
