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Physical encounters with digital culture “will neither be replaced by so-called social media nor by post-internet art,” argues Dieter Daniels in this essay written on the occasion of transmediale’s thirtieth anniversary. He dives all the way back to the 1960s to explain why a festival format—one which resists formalization—is still relevant.

David Blair’s 1993 Wax, or the Discovery of Television among the Bees was the first independent film to be edited using a non-linear editing system, the first film to be translated into an interactive and hypertextual online experience (Waxweb, 1993), and the first film to be streamed over a computer network. In its many incarnations, Wax tells the surreal story of Jacob Maker, a programmer of weapon and flight simulators who keeps a special Mesopotamian breed of bees. His life takes an abrupt turn when the bees take over his consciousness, allowing him to communicate with the dead. His hallucinations are visualized by psychedelic collages of computer animation, video feedback textures, home videos, archival photos, and found footage.