"Simple Net Art Diagram", a 1997 work by Michael Sarff and Tim Whidden
Internet art (also known as net art or web art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet. This form of art circumvents the traditional dominance of the physical gallery and museum system. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work of art. Artists working in this manner are sometimes referred to as net artists.
Net artists may use specific social or cultural internet traditions to produce their art outside of the technical structure of the internet. Internet art is often – but not always – interactive, participatory, and multimedia-based. Internet art can be used to spread a message, either political or social, using human interactions. Typically, artists find ways to produce art through the use of the internet and the tools that it provides us with.
The term Internet art typically does not refer to art that has been simply digitized and uploaded to be viewable over the Internet, such as in an online gallery.[1] Rather, this genre relies intrinsically on the Internet to exist as a whole, taking advantage of such aspects as an interactive interface and connectivity to multiple social and economic cultures and micro-cultures, not only web-based works.
New media theorist and curator Jon Ippolito defined "Ten Myths of Internet Art" in 2002.[1] He cites the above stipulations, as well as defining it as distinct from commercial web design, and touching on issues of permanence, archivability, and collecting in a fluid medium.
In 1974, Canadian artist Vera Frenkel worked with the Bell Canada Teleconferencing Studios to produce the work String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video, the first artwork in Canada to use telecommunications technologies.[3]
Media art institutions such as Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, or the Paris-based IRCAM (a research center for electronic music), would also support or present early networked art. In 1996, Helen Thorington founded Turbulence.org, an online platform for commissioning and exhibiting net art, and hosting multi location networked performances. In 1991 Wolfgang Staehle founded important experimental platforms such as The Thing.[6] In 1994 entrepreneur John Borthwick and curator Benjamin Weil produced artworks online by Doug Aitken, Jenny Holzer and others on Adaweb and in 1997 MIT's List Visual Arts Center hosted "PORT: Navigating Digital Culture", which included internet art in a gallery space and "time-based Internet projects."[7] Artists in the show included Cary Peppermint, Prema Murthy, Ricardo Dominguez, Helen Thorington, and Adrianne Wortzel.
In 2000 the Whitney Museum of American Art included net art in their Biennial exhibit.[8] It was the first time that internet art had been included as a special category in the Biennial, and it marked one of the earliest examples of the inclusion of internet art in a museum setting. Internet artists included Mark Amerika, Fakeshop, Ken Goldberg, etoy and ®™ark.
With the rise of search engines as a gateway to accessing the web in the late 1990s, many net artists turned their attention to related themes. The 2001 'Data Dynamics' exhibit at the Whitney Museum featured 'Netomat' (Maciej Wisniewski) and 'Apartment' – a Turbulence.org commission – (Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg), which used search queries as raw material. Mary Flanagan's ' The Perpetual Bed' received attention for its use of 3D nonlinear narrative space, or what she called "navigable narratives."[9][10] Her 2001 piece titled 'Collection' shown in the Whitney Biennial displayed items amassed from hard drives around the world in a computational collective unconscious.'[11]Golan Levin's 'The Secret Lives of Numbers' (2000) – also a Turbulence.org commission – visualized the "popularity" of the numbers 1 to 1,000,000 as measured by Alta Vista search results. Such works pointed to alternative interfaces and questioned the dominant role of search engines in controlling access to the net.
Nevertheless, the Internet is not reducible to the web, nor to search engines. Besides these unicast (point to point) applications, suggesting the existence of reference points, there is also a multicast (multipoint and uncentered) internet that has been explored by very few artistic experiences, such as the Poietic Generator. Internet art has, according to Juliff and Cox, suffered under the privileging of the user interface inherent within computer art. They argue that Internet is not synonymous with a specific user and specific interface, but rather a dynamic structure that encompasses coding and the artist's intention.[12]
At the same period, original attempts to establish a physical relation between what happened on the web and what would be exhibited in museums were developed by MUDAM Musée d’Art Contemporain du Luxembourg and most of all by MIXM. At the time, and before platforms like Second Life where Cao Fei developed her RMB City, contemporary artists like Peter Kogler, Heimo Zobernig, Nedko Solakov or Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner realized works online that could be seen in art museums specifically as installations and not just on a computer screen showing internet art. In Solakov's work for example, one could interact online with objects that were in the exhibition space of the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève. In Heimo Zobernig's work, one could physically move a wall to reveal a space in the MAMCO containing a 3d online rendering of the same space.
The emergence of social networking platforms in the mid-2000s facilitated a transformative shift in the distribution of internet art. Early online communities were organized around specific "topical hierarchies",[13] whereas social networking platforms consist of egocentric networks, with the "individual at the center of their own community".[13] Artistic communities on the Internet underwent a similar transition in the mid-2000s, shifting from Surf Clubs, "15 to 30 person groups whose members contributed to an ongoing visual-conceptual conversation through the use of digital media"[14] and whose membership was restricted to a select group of individuals, to image-based social networking platforms, like Flickr, which permit access to any individual with an e-mail address. Internet artists make extensive use of the networked capabilities of social networking platforms, and are rhizomatic in their organization, in that "production of meaning is externally contingent on a network of other artists' content".[14]
Post-Internet is a loose descriptor[15] for works of art that are derived from the Internet as well as the internet's effects on aesthetics, culture and society.[16] It is a broad term with many associations and has been heavily criticized.[15]
The term emerged during the mid-2000s and was coined by Internet artist Marisa Olson in 2008.[17] Discussions about Internet art by Marisa Olson, Gene McHugh, and Artie Vierkant (the latter notable for his Image Objects, a series of deep blue monochrome prints) brought the term to a mainstream consciousness.[18] Between the 2000s and 2010s, post-Internet artists were largely the domain of millennials operating on web platforms such as Tumblr and MySpace or working in social media video and post-narrative formats such as YouTube, Vevo, or memes.
Art historian Rachel Greene identified six forms of internet art that existed from 1993 to 1996: email, audio, video, graphics, animation and websites.[21] These mailing lists allowed for organization which was carried over to face-to-face meetings that facilitated more nuanced conversations, less burdened from miscommunication.
Since the mid-2000s, many artists have used Google's search engine and other services for inspiration and materials. New Google services breed new artistic possibilities.[22] Beginning in 2008, Jon Rafman collected images from Google Street View for his project called The Nine Eyes of Google Street View.[23][22] Another ongoing net art project is I'm Google by Dina Kelberman which organizes pictures and videos from Google and YouTube around a theme in a grid form that expands as you scroll.[22]
Another method of creating web art that has been employed commonly is altering the internal code of files. Through this method, web artists destroy a section or sections of code within the metadata of files, creating a version of the file that fails to be displayed correctly.
Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist or the spectators to become part of the artwork in some way.
Postdigital, in artistic practice, is a term that describes works of art and theory that are more concerned with being human than with being digital, similar to the concept of "undigital" introduced in 1995, where technology and society advances beyond digital limitations to achieve a totally fluid multimediated reality that is free from artefacts of digital computation. The postdigital is concerned with our rapidly changed and changing relationships with digital technologies and art forms.
The Pleasure of the Text is a 1973 book by the French literary theorist Roland Barthes.
Information art, which is also known as informatism or data art, is an art form that is inspired by and principally incorporates data, computer science, information technology, artificial intelligence, and related data-driven fields. The information revolution has resulted in over-abundant data that are critical in a wide range of areas, from the Internet to healthcare systems. Related to conceptual art, electronic art and new media art, informatism considers this new technological, economical, and cultural paradigm shift, such that artworks may provide social commentaries, synthesize multiple disciplines, and develop new aesthetics. Realization of information art often take, although not necessarily, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches incorporating visual, audio, data analysis, performance, and others. Furthermore, physical and virtual installations involving informatism often provide human-computer interaction that generate artistic contents based on the processing of large amounts of data.
net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel García Andújar, and Rachel Baker. Although this group was formed as a parody of avant garde movements by writers such as Tilman Baumgärtel, Josephine Bosma, Hans Dieter Huber and Pit Schultz, their individual works have little in common.
Roy Ascott FRSA is a British artist, who works with cybernetics and telematics on an art he calls technoetics by focusing on the impact of digital and telecommunications networks on consciousness. Since the 1960s, Ascott has been a practitioner of interactive computer art, electronic art, cybernetic art and telematic art.
Yael Kanarek is an Israeli American artist based in New York City that is known for pioneering use of the Internet and of multilingualism in work of art.
Telematic art is a descriptive of art projects using computer-mediated telecommunications networks as their medium. Telematic art challenges the traditional relationship between active viewing subjects and passive art objects by creating interactive, behavioural contexts for remote aesthetic encounters. Telematics was first coined by Simon Nora and Alain Minc in The Computerization of Society. Roy Ascott sees the telematic art form as the transformation of the viewer into an active participator of creating the artwork which remains in process throughout its duration. Ascott has been at the forefront of the theory and practice of telematic art since 1978 when he went online for the first time, organizing different collaborative online projects.
Fred Forest is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, performances, and public interventions that explore both the ramifications and potential of media space. He was a cofounder of both the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication movement (1983).
Rhizome is an American not-for-profit arts organization that supports and provides a platform for new media art.
Heath Bunting is a British contemporary artist. Based in Bristol, he is a co-founder of the website irational.org, and was one of the early practitioners in the 1990s of Net.art. Bunting's work is based on creating open and democratic systems by modifying communications technologies and social systems. His work often explores the porosity of borders, both in physical space and online. In 1997, his online work Visitors Guide to London was included in the 10th documenta curated by Swiss curator Simon Lamunière. An activist, he created a dummy site for the European Lab for Network Collision (CERN).
Robert Adrian (1935–2015), also known as Robert Adrian X, was a Canadian artist who made radio and telecommunications art. Adrian moved from Canada to Vienna, Austria in 1972 where he became known for creating experimental artworks using radio and communications technologies. His work The World in 24 Hours, which connected artists in different cities and continents through telephone lines and radio, is considered to be one of the first experiments in online culture. Adrian is considered to be a pioneer in the field of telecommunications art and media art.
New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robotics, 3D printing, immersive installation and cyborg art. The term defines itself by the thereby created artwork, which differentiates itself from that deriving from conventional visual arts such as architecture, painting or sculpture.
Ursula Endlicher is a New York City based Austrian multi-media artist who creates works in the fields of internet art, performance art and installation art.
Genco Gülan is a contemporary conceptual artist and theorist, who lives and works in Istanbul. His transmedia contextual work involves painting, found objects, new media, drawings, sculpture, photography, performance and video.
Annie Abrahams is a Dutch performance artist specialising in video installations and internet based performances, often deriving from collective writings and collective interaction. Born and raised in Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands, she migrated to and settled in France in 1987. Her performance work challenges and questions the limitations and possibilities of online communication and collaboration. Abrahams describes her body of work as "an aesthetics of trust and attention." Studying biology became an inspiration for her future line of work. "When studying biology I had to observe a colony of monkeys in a zoo. I found this very interesting because I learned something about human communities by watching the apes. In a certain way I watch the internet with the same appetite and interest. I consider it to be a universe where I can observe some aspects of human attitudes and behaviour without interfering."
Cybernetic art is contemporary art that builds upon the legacy of cybernetics, where feedback involved in the work takes precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The relationship between cybernetics and art can be summarised in three ways: cybernetics can be used to study art, to create works of art or may itself be regarded as an art form in its own right.
Media art history is an interdisciplinary field of research that explores the current developments as well as the history and genealogy of new media art, digital art, and electronic art. On the one hand, media art histories addresses the contemporary interplay of art, technology, and science. On the other, it aims to reveal the historical relationships and aspects of the ‘afterlife’ in new media art by means of a historical comparative approach. This strand of research encompasses questions of the history of media and perception, of so-called archetypes, as well as those of iconography and the history of ideas. Moreover, one of the main agendas of media art histories is to point out the role of digital technologies for contemporary, post-industrial societies and to counteract the marginalization of according art practices and art objects: ″Digital technology has fundamentally changed the way art is made. Over the last forty years, media art has become a significant part of our networked information society. Although there are well-attended international festivals, collaborative research projects, exhibitions and database documentation resources, media art research is still marginal in universities, museums and archives. It remains largely under-resourced in our core cultural institutions.″
Émilie Gervais is a Canadian new media artist based in Paris, France. Her work explores the relationships between internet, network culture, art and its mediation. In the past, she has described herself as, "a starry background artist working with the internet, deleting and restoring stuff, interacting with stuff and people".
Martine Neddam is a visual artist, research scientist and professor. She is a native of France and lives and works in Amsterdam. She teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM)
↑ Langill, Caroline (2009). "Electronic media in 1974". Shifting Polarities. Montreal: The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. Retrieved September 21, 2010.
↑ White, Norman T. "Plissure du Texte". The NorMill. Retrieved September 21, 2010. (Unedited transcript including organizational discussion.)
↑ Klink, Patrick (1999). "Daring Digital Artist". UB Today. Buffalo: The University at Buffalo. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
↑ Moss, Cecelia Laurel (2015). Expanded Internet Art and the Informational Milieu. Ann Arbor. p.1. ISBN978-1-339-32982-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)</5-Arts Net> In the 1990s, email based mailing lists provided net artists with a community for online discourse that broke boundaries between critical and generative dialogues. The email format allowed instant expression, however limited to text and simple graphic based communication, with an international scope.<5-arts net>Greene, Rachel. (2004). Internet art. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson. pp.73–74. ISBN0-500-20376-8. OCLC56809770.
Baumgärtel, Tilman (2001). net.art 2.0 – Neue Materialien zur Netzkunst / New Materials towards Net art. Nürnberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst. ISBN3-933096-66-9.
Wilson, Stephen (2001). Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN0-262-23209-X.
Caterina Davinio 2002. Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali / Techno-Poetry and Virtual Realities, Sometti, Mantua (IT) Collection: Archivio della poesia del 900. Mantua Municipality. With English translation. ISBN88-88091-85-8
Ascott, R.2003. Telematic Embrace: visionary theories of art, technology and consciousness. (Edward A. Shanken, ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press.
Roy Ascott 2002. Technoetic Arts (Editor and Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon), (Media & Art Series no. 6, Institute of Media Art, Yonsei University). Yonsei: Yonsei University Press
Ascott, R. 1998. Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). A. Takada & Y. Yamashita eds. Tokyo: NTT Publishing Co., Ltd.
Fred Forest 2008. Art et Internet, Paris Editions Cercle D'Art / Imaginaire Mode d'Emploi
(in Spanish) Martín Prada, Juan, Prácticas artísticas e Internet en la época de las redes sociales, Editorial AKAL, Madrid, 2012, ISBN978-84-460-3517-6
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
