Internet art is fascinating, as the browser is an incredibly powerful medium to deliver your message to a large medium — basically anyone in the world who has a device and an internet connection, which is more than half of the world’s population at approximately 3.2 billion people(!).
I have never really been one to appreciate internet art to be honest, but reading about its history has highlighted its prevalence in movements and making statements. For example, “The VNS Matrix (read “Venus”) were important forerunners for net.artists exploring feminist issues” (Greene 165). The internet as a medium can be used to push boundaries, provoke thought, and express emotions like frustration or happiness, similar to other mediums, but the biggest differentiator is its interactivity. The medium depends on a user’s input to truly come to life, and this is exciting.
I was pleased to see that my colleague Mark Napier was featured on the last page of this reading. “His Digital Landfill (www.potatoland.org/landfill) and Shredder (www.potatoland.org/shredder) tear the components of any Web page away from their code and either reconfigure them into a new design (Shredder) or add them to a dump pile of components from other pages (Landfill)” (190). As Greene mentions, “these works are dynamic and fun”, but to me they also comment on the fragility and manipulability of code as well as the possible interaction between distinct websites themselves. How might we take what’s already out there and consume it differently?