Rachel Greene’s “A History of Internet Art” describes the details of how internet art (net art) was first created and it’s impact in the digital world. This discovery marked a new age of digital media as well as a new revelation for artists as well. With the internet initially being used as a means of technological work, one at the time may have not expected the internet to also become artistic in the ways of sharing one’s art. For thousands of years art was always shared around through word of mouth or a company would sign you but with the internet, anyone could now become an artists. It’s like of like how musicians back in the day would need to be signed by a label in order to be successful but now as long as they have a laptop and an internet, anyone could really be a successful musician independently without the help of others. I also thought it was interesting for how art suddenly became more collaborative than ever with the help of the internet since art I feel is often viewed as a personal solace for an individual but with the internet, it could be shared much more interchangeably between other users and one would be able to provide direct feedback and critique on one’s own art.
Week 11: A Response to a History of Net Art – Hannah
Reading this article I was struck by the novelty surrounding the net in its early art work. Many projects, which I suppose is true also of today, center around the idea of connectivity on the web. I especially liked the idea of Kings-Cross Phone In because it takes the connectivity of the web and applies it outside of it. Much of the web art, such as the cyberfeminist manifesto and the web art piece I viewed last week (http://www.no-limit.org) also used strong language against the status quo, suggesting a sort of revolutionary changing-the-future mindset enabled by the web. The prevalence of anti-capitalist rhetoric also surprised me, since I presumed net art to be relatively unpolitical like many other forms of art or spaces on the web (not that these can’t also be political). The article show-cased the way in which we view the web as a vector for spreading an idea and a mission to a greater extent than I had realized before. Personally I view the value of the web to be more for providing information of a less biased nature than for persuading people of an idea, and I wonder how in the coming years the use of the web will change. Will the culture of web art become more casual or light, or will more sinister? And how does the web evoke different ideas of use from its artists? Or the time period require a different usage of the web?
Week 12: Rachel Greene Vincent – Moon
Web Work: A History of Internet Art
This reading was pretty interesting because I’m pretty sure not a lot of people know about how “internet art” began. I would even argue that many of the meme culture today started through internet art. The fact that it began because of a glitch just makes it even more intriguing, something that was made by the internet itself, literal “internet” art.
From the reading, it seems that Net.Art was one of the first and biggest communities online to share people’s own creations, and me, as a person who engages in many online communities who share information and their own work, it is interesting to think that with sure scarce technology back then, people were able to make the best out of it and create something cool.
I feel that this reading was very different from a previous reading we did, “long live the net”, where they state there should be more laws/rules imposed on the internet, but Greene’s point was the exact opposite, proving to people that although there may be people who prank, the majority of the community work together to create a better place where people can share their works/thoughts.
Week 12: Web-Work: A History of Net Art by Rachel Greene – Chloe Chan
Rachel Greene offers the reader a historical overview of net.art and briefly defined what it stood for “Net.art stood for communications and graphics, e-mail, texts, and images, referring to and merging into one another; it was artists, enthusiasts, and technoculture critics trading ideas, sustaining one another’s interest through ongoing dialogue”. It was important to establish the nature of net.art as placed at the intersection of a variety of different mediums, people and ideologies. Net.art was a phenomenon that began in the early 90s and Greene’s article explores its vast expansion since coupled with net.art’s potential impact upon the artistic community as artists communicate through an entirely new language.
Ultimately, Greene underlined the growth of this new artistic field “Net.art produced a very different vibe in 1999, as net.artists were seemingly empowered by their sense of pending popularity and relevance.” Increasingly, artists have used net.art as a medium to in similar ways that artists in the past have, but in more sophisticated ways such as the creation of Neomat which was constructed by New York-based artist Maciej Wisniewski. The Neomat software produces one-of-a-kind collages instead of the way normal search engines return Web pages. With it’s growing popularity, and the discovery of the freedom that comes with the internet comes multiple obstacles that artists need to overcome.
Week 12: Net Art | Jonathon Haley
In her article “Web Work: A History of Internet Art”, Rachel Greene touches on the major events and trends in Internet art from 1994 to 1999. Net art to me is interesting because it’s free-flowing, pushing the boundaries of art while at the same time acting as though boundaries aren’t even there. It was revolutionary, not only because artists could interact and share their work like never before, and also because now, anyone could become an artist. In the days before the Internet was filled up by corporations and large interests, back when most of the pages were personal sites and personal art, the artists had true freedom to do whatever they wanted without pressure from outside forces aside from fellow artists. After the subsequent “populating” of the Internet, it makes me wonder if the art community will ever again have such a pure, unfiltered artistic medium to utilize, and if so, what form it might take in the future.