Fred Forest's 1985 Thesis on Communication Art Republished in 2002

In 2002, artpress republished excerpts from Fred Forest's 1985 Sorbonne doctoral thesis on communication art, originally written over twenty years prior. The text argues that electrical, electronic, and computing technologies have transformed social life, physical environments, and mental representations, providing artists with new tools. Forest defines the 'artist of communication' as one who uses and diverts these technologies to expand perception, sensibility, and consciousness, creating new symbols and languages. He emphasizes relational aesthetics, participatory multimedia installations, and the breakdown of disciplinary boundaries between science, art, and creativity. The artist employs telephones, video, telex, computers, photocopiers, radio, and television, organizing them into interactive systems. Forest calls for a new vocabulary including network, switching, tree structure, intermittence, interval, modular, and interactive. The republication aimed to reopen debate as artists increasingly appropriated the Internet in the early 2000s. The excerpts originally appeared in Belgian review +–0 in October 1985 and later in Connexions, art, réseaux, media (Ensb-a, May 2002).