Roy Ascott has pioneered the place of cybernetics, telematics and interactive media in art, with such projects as Terminal Art 1980, La Plissure du Texte: a planetary fairytale, Electra, Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris, 1983; Aspects of Gaia: digital pathways across the whole earth at Ars Electronica Linz, 1989; Planetary Network, Venice Biennale, 1986; Telenoia, V2 Holland, 1992. His concept design for an interactive televator , Apollo 13, is permanently installed in the Ars Electronica Centre, Linz. His most recent network art project Art-ID/Cyb-ID premiers at the Biennal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre Brazil in November 1999.

Ascott's thesis on the cybernetic vision in the arts, "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" from 1966, begins with the premise that interactive art must free itself from the modernist ideal of the "perfect object." Like John Cage, he proposes that the artwork be responsive to the viewer, rather than fixed and static. But Ascott takes Cage's premise into the realm of computer-based art, suggesting that the "spirit of cybernetics" offers the most effective means for achieving a two-way exchange between the artwork and its audience. >>