Dax (The Digital Art Exchange)
was a cross-disciplinary organization involved in the early exploration of analog and digital telecommunications media (tlelematics) Art. They accomplished a distinguished exhibition record in approximately a decarde of work, surviving onnoccasional small grants secured by the founder of the group, Art Professor Bruce Breland. In Breland's words, DAX was "... an idea about group process as a collaborative network of artist connected mind to mind."
Breland's philosophy, and subsequently that of DAX, is most strongly rooted in the ideas of Fuller and the theorist Marshall McLuhan. While at Southern Illionois, Breland also worked with happening-artist Allan Kaprow and the poet Langston Hughes. Their influence also was felt in the Group. In the early 1970s Breland was involved with mail-art und performances in association with his graduate student Phil Rostek (MFA 1973). Some of their projects included "The American Riverwater Color Society" & "The Museum of Modern Air". Rosteck was a very visible figure on campus, always attired in the 'Fine Art Suit' - a white tuxedo with tails.
The Origins of The DAX Group at Carnegie Mellon University can be traced to the undergraduate painting and drawng courses taught by Professor Breland from 1978 to 1981. These classes werde held frequently in the Ausio-Vidual Department's video studio in Hunt Library or over coffe and cheeseburger in Skibo. In 1980, Prof. Breland urged his students to devise a name for a group identifi. The GEKKO Group was born.
In 1980, Breland was introduced to the artist & critic Douglas Davis by the filmmaker Stan van der Beek at a conference at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County. In 1981 Davis held several workshops of his "International Network for the Arts" (INFA) with Breland's students in Intermedia/Video, which had just been established as a major course of study in the department. The workshops culminated in a slowscan television exchange called "Scanning", with students of L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the International Film Academy in Lodz, Poland in May 1982. The exchange was held in the Banksville studio of Warner Cable Television in Pittsburgh.This began the group's use of low technology telecommunication media (slowscan tv, telefacsimile, telephony, amateur radio and computer text networks).
The GEKKO group (Generative Energy/Kinetic Knowledge/ Order) consisting of Breland and a succession of students and associates participated in numerous art events using these media from 1981 to 1986, including Robert Adrian's "The World in 24 Hours" at The Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria 1982), Roy Ascott's "La Plissure du Texte" (a multi-story-lined fairy tale displayed on-line at The Museum of Modern Art) in December 1983, and the transmission of slowscan images via VHF-radio to the space shuttle "Challenger" in August 1985.
In 1985 the Group's name was changed to the simpler, more descriptive "The Digital Art Exchange" when they were proposing a project to combine slowscan technology with the personal computer. In 1986, DAX was invited to participate in La Biennale die Venézia. The theme of the 42nd. Biennale was "Art 6 Science" and a global art network project titled "Network Planetario - Loaboratorio Ubiqa" was held from June to September in The Corderie in Venice. The group members at this time were Breland, Henry Pisciotta (Hunt Library), Jim Kocher (Art/Robotics), Phil Rostek (Art alumnus, 1973), Michael Chepponis (Robotics), Gregg Podnar (Robotics), Gene Hastings (Psychology), Frank Correnti (poet) and Elizabeth van Dusen (Art).