Sightings: Research Overview: Arts and the Internet

Topic: Arts + Internet

While there are many expressions of creativity online, and many services for the arts online, here we're focusing on web-native artwork. This overview is included for people who might be unfamiliar with this type of work. Also view some more links of the creative web.

What is Net Art?

Net Art could be considered a sub-set of digital art whose native home is on communication networks, hence 'Net'. This may be in email, on the Internet, cellular/mobile networks or wireless networks. In our assignment wewere asked to look at the possibilities of the Internet, but found that Net Artists were using all forms of communications networks, not just the web. Definitions of net art are constantly being re-evaluated, and so the debate will continue. Blurry boundaries are some of the most exciting aspects of this genre, if we may call it that.

Who are the net artists?

Some of these artists who create net art may not have a background in traditional arts training. Many are technologists or designers who have found a need to delve deeper into questions of place, identity and human relationships; they have become artists through a passion to express ideas using tools they are familiar with. Outcomes might look very much like art to a viewer, but might have been intended as scientific research.

On the other hand, there are traditional artists who use the internet or other digital tools as a means to an end, and their net art work may be only one part of their oeuvre. The bring their sensibilities from their background in fine arts into experimentations in net art, and their work is sometimes innovative.

Searching for Boundaries

Artists, eager to use any tool to express an idea, have been using communications networks and computer networks since they have been around. But, as Matthew Fuller explains in 'Art meet Net, Net meet Art', institutions have not been so supportive of this work. Most likely this is due to the fact that to exist and use communications networks as a medium art art has sacrificed integral aspects of 'Art' such as "individual authorship; good provenance of works; uniqueness of objects; the 'autonomy' of art; [these] are all usurped by the artists, groups and processes producing the most suggestive work on the web." In addition, there are "obstacles to the prolonged collection, archiving and storage of networked material."

In the book Information Arts, Steve Wilson gives a broad overview of new works that bridge the worlds of science and art. As boundaries are blurred, he explains that it is "difficult to distinguish beteen techno-scientific research and art" (p4). He calls this area of work 'artistic research.'

Artists are using communications networks as media to express ideas in ways that were not possible with other media, and thereby testing the limits of this technology and making advances in the use of this technology. Wilson lists some "unique telecommunications-features of the web that have inspired artistic research." (p560)

Connectivity between persons
Collaboration and group work; both synchronous and asynchronous
Creation of distributed archives; the generation, accumulation and distribution of information
Internationalism
Comment on web context, for example playing with conventions of web technology

A Maturing Medium

In the summary of his book, Wilson highlights some challenges that lay ahead for this area of the arts to mature. Among the weaknesses listed was the "emotional power of art works." The work resulting from these investigations may be interesting 'to think about' but often "lacks the qulaity of emotional and sensual engagement that has historically been a hallmark of the arts." (p876)

A possible challenge and opportunity for maturation might lie in engaging artists and technologists to work with non-specialists, community members and people outside worlds of arts and science to participate and collaborate in these artistic investigations, broadening the sense of 'network' and exploring what it means to bring people together.

In addition, working at a local community level can help artists find an audience and venue for their works. Local libraries in the UK and Ireland (as elsewhere) are offering internet access to patrons, and librarians are being trained in digital storage and archiving. Partnering with a local information institution such as a library could be an instant venue for access and storage of artworks done with a community.

Read an interview with Curt Cloninger, a net artist who talks about what inspires him about this medium.

Matthew Fuller, 'Art meet Net, Net meet Art', Tate Modern
Information Arts, Steve Wilson

Research Overview: Arts + Internet

Topic: Arts + Internet

What is Net Art?

Who are the net artists?

Searching for Boundaries

A Maturing Medium

Further Reading