113) Current Mail-Art Network

Getting mail-art in the postbox for me still is what mail-art is about, but the new generation is doing online projects, documentation on blogs, digital catalogs, and very little analogue things these days are produced.

That is why I started to write 3D letters with the newest digital tool, a 3D pen. And the envelopes will be sent out as well into the normal mail-art network. And where will they end?

 

Probably they will end up in closed collections and a digital images somewhere on one of the networks and social media.

16) Old and New Mail-Artists. What Rules and which Network?

Mail-Art means something different to everybody that works in this field. Some have experienced the changes over the decades, were in contact with the first generation who started it all. Some have only discovered Mail-Art a few years or even moths ago and start to discover the many aspects of it. The basic aspect is that people have the need to communicate and to create. The process of sender and receiver, the use of communicationforms. The 'old' generation always communicated with the snail-mail system, mayby integrated with the FAX and telephone. Computers only became available end of the last century, and the experimenting started. The 'new' generation grows up with computers and discover this almost anarchistic art-form called mail-art. The 'unwritten rules' that mail-art follows have been written down many times, but every newcomer can write his own rules. The essence is that he/she will become the center of the new created network of which he/she will be part. When we talk about 'the Network' we sometimes forget that everybody means a different network. My network is limited by the people I know and the information I get. That is a different network compaired to the one my correspondents know.That is probably the charme as well of the Mail-Art network. Through every contact you are able to discover a new aspect of the Network, and follow the path you find. Mail-Art is a discovery-path.

5) What happens to the mail-artists that are not online?

Some mail-artist that ar sending out mail for decades still aren't online. They find this electronic game not exciting. They form their own network I guess and still keep sending out. A new generation has appeared as well. They discover mail-art online and only after that bstart to send out e-mails and even later the envelopes and cards.

Because of the postal rates the size and weight is smaller sometimes of the pieces that are sent out, but the mail-boxes worldwide got impulses again because of the Internet.