It were landmarks when artists in the sixties of the 20th century discovered human networks as an artistic media of its own and consciously started to work or play with it. It depends on the cultural background which forerunners for "self reflected networked art" one digs out: For example:
1. The artists of Die Brücke, in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century, with their exchange of postcards for shure made "art on the mail", but i have doubts, whether it consciously was "art with the postal network or a network of friends".
2. Marcel Duchamp thought rhizomatic. One can find early elements of a network art approach in his art and publications.
3. Robert Filliou, who coined the term eternal network, had been one of the philosophically most advanced artistic networkers. While his idea of the eternal network was linked with his interest in buddhist philosophy and spirituality, he was conscious of the development of military digital networks like ARPANET. His practice and communication had to do with the idea that poetic thought and action, while noticing such phenomena, by playful creation of a human world in future can avoid them. Although the internet is a laughingly poor and materialistic version of his idea, I believe, mentally and culturally he has contributed to its best effects.

As far as i know, the conscious work with networks in larger scale started in in Europe with Robert Filliou, Ben vautier and the Mail Art network, in the US with Ray Johnson´s School of Correspondence, in South America with the artist- and community-networking of the avantgarde, in Japan with the Gutai group, globally interconnecting with a few other subnetworks involved. Fluxus played a mayor role in this process. Possibly my networking art/mail art project in Ghana in 1984 was the earliest of that kind in Africa.

Artists who worked with postal services and networks of correspondence in the mailart network often were playful explorers, conscious about theoretical implications, while for most of participants it was just fun. In mailart and correspondence art a participant could experience basic conditions of rhizomatic communication networks. Mailart and correspondence art has a meaning for the understanding of the internet, it can be described as a creative analog internet for artists globalwide since the sixties until today.

If the global analog postal service is part of the pretext to the internet, mailart and correspondence art networks are part of the pretext of netart in the internet.

Compare utopian networks and correspondence identities by Stephen Perkins.

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