Internet Art

Internet has been incorporated into our lives for almost two decades now. Within this time, it has proven itself to be so much more than a new technology for a new machine or “a medium of mediums.” Its relation to every aspect of life from a social, political, economic, and cultural perspective makes the Internet the most formative technology we have ever developed. Today, the length and depth of Internet’s role in our lives means that the Internet becomes part of our reality. We no longer see our lives with or without the Internet, it simply becomes “life” as “life with the Internet.” During these last twenty-five years, Internet art – from net art, to post-Internet art today – has been co-evolving in relation and in response to the Internet. As a cultural product of Internet technology, Internet art has been reflecting the multifarious changes we have been experiencing by living with the Internet. Copyright, open-source software, convergence, remix and appropriation culture, mixed-reality, and network sociality are all issues that are being raised and explored by Internet art. This chapter reviews Internet art’s evolution along with Internet technology and it highlights Internet art’s importance and potential for Internet research. It begins by tracing Internet’s technology evolution as reflected through Internet art’s brief history. Important Internet artworks are being reviewed in relation to these changes. It then extensively analyses post-Internet art as a unique cultural product of contemporary life with the Internet. Through this analysis, it presents an overview of the major areas of change in relation to art and the Internet through specific examples. This chapter’s important contribution is to offer a better understanding of Internet art as an art form in direct relation with a world shaped by Internet technology.

How can artists create works of computer art or Internet art in which audience members become genuine artists and collaborate with the original artists on the self-same work that they began? To answer this question, this essay will reflect on the work of philosophers who focus on questions concerning art completion and the ontology of computer art. This essay will also reflect on the artistic work of the trio LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner, whose artwork can serve as a model for creating collaborative, digital art.

Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting,” stated Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin as he denied Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.1 This is funny (ironic) coming from Pu- tin. But in the overall spectrum of things, it may not be far from the truth. Artists and criminals (hackers in this case) have been com- pared many times in the past. Writer and pioneer of the cyberpunk genre, William Gibson, once said “...give me a room full of either artists or criminals talking about what they might be able to do with an emergent technology and I’ve got it, I’ve made my lunch.”2 He also described criminals as “entrepreneurs with the brakes off.”3

It has been suggested by numerous scholars that humanity is currently involved in a period of intensive change, some arguing that the scale and scope of historical transformation over the last thirty years is without precedent (Webster 2000). However, the dynamic and direction of this change is articulated differently across disciplines and philosophies in often-contradictory ways.
In this paper, I would like to articulate my understanding of the ways in which online work can be an index of material existence, suggesting that taken collectively, internet art attempts to understand and describe the complexities of current changes at different levels of generality.
Internet art is a cultural form that seems to engage the spaces of its own contradictions and tries to extend them as far as possible. It is produced and consumed in relation to the network technologies through which emerging patterns of domination are organised, by artists and not-artists in fragile spaces temporarily resisting processes of commodification and colonisation.
In the paper, with reference to a number of internet art projects, on some of which I collaborated, I will suggest that internet art can be an index of ethical resistance to incorporation in terms of its counter protocols at the technological level, its organisational forms and dialogical exchanges, and its non-representational aesthetics.

Internet researchers recurrently encounter kinds of online content and communicational genres that appear as trivial and mundane as they are entangled with the everyday use of new media: online jargons, emoticons, copy-pasted jokes, Internet memes and many other repertoires of digital folklore. Over the last four decades, this sort of semiotic resources and user practices have been approached from multiple angles: as forms of textual play or poaching, as examples of visual or linguistic creativity, as a material culture resulting from networked communications, as vernacular resources for identity-making, and as the folk art of new media. After revisiting the convergence of folklore studies and computer-mediated communication, this chapter presents four perspectives through which various authors have approached digital folklore: Internet folkloristics, vernacular creativity, digital folk art aesthetics, and memetics.

Los fractales son figuras irregulares que mantienen su forma aunque cambien de escala. Son figuras geométricas que se caracterizan por su semejanza, y se forman como estructuras infinitas que multiplican su estructura sin variarla. Uno de los ejemplos más notables es el del crecimiento de los árboles: del tronco salen las ramas, de esas ramas salen otras más pequeñas. Estas estructuras conforman una arquitectura en red, el mismo crecimiento fractal que podemos encontrar en los diagramas de conexiones de las redes sociales. En pleno desarrollo de Internet las comunidades virtuales se están convirtiendo en el nuevo formato para las relaciones sociales.

Muchas cosas han cambiado desde la aparición de las primeras obras de Internet art en los primeros años de la década de los noventa. Al declive de las «punto.com», allá por el 2001, le siguió la generalización de nuevas dinámicas multitudinarias de participación e interrelación en torno a una infinidad de redes sociales y de nuevas formas de generación de contenidos por parte de los propios internautas, a través de blogs y de grandes repositorios colectivos de archivos compartidos por millones de personas diariamente. Como era de esperar, muchos artistas empezaron pronto a explorar estas nuevas dinámicas sociales y las tecnologías que las posibilitaban, haciendo de los blogs, servicios de microblogging, redes sociales y metaversos los nuevos contextos de referencia y actuación de sus investigaciones. Paralelamente al desarrollo de lo que podemos ya denominar como una «segunda época» del arte de Internet, han ido ganando en importancia las prácticas artísticas que, sin ser obras on line, trabajan «acerca de» o «sobre» ese conjunto descentralizado de redes de comunicación interconectadas que es Internet, analizándola poéticamente en todas sus dimensiones (técnicas, lingüísticas, económicas, sociales o políticas) y a través de un sin fin de medios, tanto digitales como analógicos (instalación, video, performance, etc.). Con ello, la relación entre el arte y la red hoy se habría ido situando mucho más allá de los límites marcados inicialmente por el primer Internet art. En cualquier caso, el carácter profundamente analítico que caracterizó a aquellas primeras prácticas artísticas en línea sigue hoy totalmente en vigor, tanto en las más interesantes propuestas que toman la red y sus tecnologías como campos específicos de trabajo, como en aquellas que, no siendo obras on line, tematizan cuestiones referidas al estado de «hiperconectividad» que la expansión de Internet ha traído consigo, así como a sus efectos en las formas de producción de experiencia y subjetividad en nuestros días. Iniciativas con las que los potenciales propios del pensamiento y experiencia del arte continúan siendo aplicados, de múltiples formas, a la reflexión crítica sobre la conectividad digital y a su papel como elemento articulador primordial de las nuevas pautas sociales y comunicativas que caracterizan nuestro tiempo. El nuevo arte de Internet seguiría teniendo, como estrategia de actuación principal, una de «invaginación»: de lo que se trata es de «contener» el medio en vez de ser contenido por él, presentarlo en vez de ser presentado por él. La cuestión no es cómo crear una obra de arte a modo de un «espectáculo» que sea capaz de comentar las condiciones sociales emergentes en función del efecto de los nuevos servicios y de las posibilidades de interacción social a través de la red, sino, más bien, en presentar a esta como un «espectáculo» en sí misma. El carácter analítico de la creación artística permanece así orientado, en los casos más interesantes, al estudio de los patrones de producción de significado que operan en Internet, de las pautas más generalizadas de su uso, de las formas de autoridad que la organizan, de cómo en ella pueden ser incompatibles determinadas prácticas de producción de sentido, o de cuáles son los límites de la participación en el universo Web 2.0. Prácticas artísticas que tematizan los usos dominantes de la red y los procesos y dinámicas de generación de valor, sentido y subjetividad que en ella acontecen y las formas en la que estos se nos imponen, y en una clara oposición a lo promovido y generalizado por los intereses económicos y políticos dominantes en ella.

Il seguente lavoro pone come obiettivo di ricerca e studio la corrente artistica contemporanea denominata Vaporwave.
Nel primo capitolo è esposta la genesi dell’espressione musicale, le prime testimonianze e sperimentazioni, la formazione della comunità artistica. 
Segue l’analisi delle modalità di composizione e le caratteristiche sonore del tipico brano Vaporwave.
Nel secondo capitolo sono illustrati i caratteri estetici della componente artistico visuale denominata AESTHETICS.
Il terzo capitolo analizza il rapporto sinestetico e multimediale tra le due componenti del movimento.
Nel quarto capitolo è presentata una riflessione sulla figura autoriale nel contesto produttivo della Vaporwave.
Il quinto capitolo costituisce la seconda fase di studio, incentrato sulla lettura ed interpretazione del movimento in chiave estetica: l’analisi dei temi ricorrenti nelle espressioni artistiche Vaporwave ed una riflessione sul panorama artistico e culturale in cui tale espressione artistica trova nascita e sviluppo.
A causa della recente formazione del movimento e della relativa scarsità di materiale reperibile sull’argomento, il lavoro è stato prevalentemente svolto tramite un approccio di ricerca ed analisi diretta sulle opere.

Digital language has meant a revolution in the methods of production, distribution and conservation of contemporary art. The purpose of
this paper is to reflect on the new status of museums within the digital age. Works using new media must be understood as spaces of nonhierarchical
communication where an artist’s role is diluted and the public becomes a user that completes an open process. Therefore, the function
of the museum is challenged, being no longer a moral authority or a place of storing physical works. Because of its instability and obsolescence, the
only valid method for the conservation of digital art is permanence through change.

Wie im Vorwort zur Plurale-Ausgabe # 1 angemerkt, scheint die „Bewegung des Falls […] prototypisch für Phänomene des Kontrollverlustes, des ungeregelten Heraustretens aus realen und symbolischen Ordnungen zu stehen.“ Diese Einschätzung möchte ich am Beispiel einiger netzkünstlerischer Werke hinterfragen. Wie das angeführte Zitat nahe legt, wird die Bewegung des Falls wesentlich durch das Moment des „ungeregelten Heraustretens“ aus einer Ordnung bestimmt. Daher kommt es mir vor allem darauf an, nach den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit einer Zuschreibung von Ordnung bzw. Unordnung zu fragen. […] Die folgenden Ausführungen greifen auf Arbeiten zur Ästhetik der Netzkunst zurück. Ihre Werke zeichnen sich durch eine spezifischen Oberflächlichkeit aus, die mit ihren technischen und technologischen Bedingungen zusammenhängt. Aufgrund dieser Kontextualisierung spielt in der Netzkunst die Frage nach der ästhetischen Qualität von Störungen eine wesentliche Rolle. Die Dysfunktionalität von Software wird häufig zum Thema künstlerischen Schaffens gewählt. Netzkunstwerke stehen als Produkte eines auf Geordnetheit ausgerichteten Verlaufs – den formatierten bzw. programmierten Web-Seiten – mit der Relationalität von Ordnung und Nicht-Ordnung in Verbindung. Aus diesem Grunde bieten sich Netzkunstwerke für eine Analyse der Frage nach den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit einer Zuschreibung von Ordnung bzw. Unordnung an. In besonderer Weise laden einige Werke der Gruppen Jodi und 0100101110101101.org dazu ein, sich gemäß dem formulierten Erkenntnisinteresse mit ihnen auseinanderzusetzen.

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From the 1990s onwards there has been an increased and growing interest among artists in making participatory and collaborative work. Recent films and video installations by the North American artist Natalie Bookchin can be counted within this field of interest. Bookchin's works draw on the video diary or video log (vlog) format now so ubiquitous on the Internet in participatory forums such as YouTube and Vimeo. In these forms of user-generated, web- based television, individuals share personal content with a frequently anonymous public. Bookchin's works appropriate these formats for the specific purpose of examining the effects of such technologies, and the possibilities of their use, on the lived experiences of vloggers and in the broader digital economy. This article discerns a particular concern within Bookchin's work: the notion of “the public” as it is made possible by user-generated media. This may seem like a peculiar idea given these platforms’ significant co-option by commerce, while the “public sphere” has been all but subsumed by private interests. Nevertheless, through a close analysis of recent works, this article argues that Bookchin's practice uniquely locates the public's possibilities in user-generated digital and social media. Central to this discussion is the artist's distinctive evocation of the public in her art in economic and political terms.

This article examines a series of internet artworks by the artist Miao Ying (b. 1985). Contextualizing her digital collages in relation to China's online culture and media spheres, it situates the contemporary art world's engagement with internet art in relation to anti-aesthetics and the rise of what has been termed Internet ugly. Interrogating the assumption that internet art emerging from China can only belatedly repeat works of Euro-American precedent, it argues that Miao's work presents a dramatic reframing of online censorship, consumerism and the unique aspects of vernacular culture that have emerged within China's online realm. Demonstrating a distinctly self-conscious celebration of what has often disparagingly been labeled The Chinternet, Meanwhile in China can be seen to emerge out of the broader contradictions of internet art practices that parody the relationships between The Chinternet and the World Wide Web, global capitalism and Shanzhai [fake or pirated] aesthetics, online propaganda and media democracy, and the art market's relationship to the virtual economies of an art world online.

When you see it coming... but nobody listens: this paper was given at a conference in in 1995 and published in 1996. Twenty years later, unfortunately I was right.
Luciano Floridi, (1996) "Brave.Net.World: the Internet as a disinformation superhighway?", The Electronic Library, Vol. 14 Issue: 6, pp.509-514, https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045517

This is an insight into the art network of 2008 - 2012 that somewhat culminated in the term 'Post Internet Art'. In this research, the beginnings of this movement arise from an online community that was dependent on pre-social media tools of HTML and 'web surfing' - differing to filter bubbles we now exist in. I argue that this community could be aligned with previous offline art movements in the way experimentation and sharing was encouraged. I also argue that there are distinct links to net.art and would encorage links to realtional aesthetics also.

This paper examines the use of appropriation in contemporary internet art-postinternet art-in terms of internet technology and web content. The paper suggests that postinternet art reflects our cultural reality through the ubiquity and fluidity of internet services. This results to novel artistic practices that draw on the cultural connections made online by appropriating found web content and internet technology. The paper presents a study of 190 artworks from the ArtBase Rhizome's digital archive between 2010-2015 to provide evidence on how and to what extent postinternet art appropriates the internet.