Technonationalism and Telematic Art in Canada. Vera Frenkel’s String Games (1974)

Abstract

This article considers String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video (Montreal–Toronto) (1974), a groundbreaking telematic artwork by the Canadian artist Vera Frenkel, in which participants in Toronto and Montreal played a remote version of cat’s cradle over Bell Canada’s early digital video conferencing network. Situating the work within the context of Canadian telecommunications infrastructure and cultural policy, the article argues that String Games subtly subverted the technonationalist ideals embedded in Canada’s drive to unify its vast geography through networked media.