The Year Net.Art Broke
a curatorial statement for
"Some of my Favourite Web Sites are Art"
http://www.alberta.com/unfamiliarart/

Our theme, "Some of my Favourite Web Sites are Art," captures an
important truth about art in the twentieth century: for all the art
criticism, museums, and galleries, it is still difficult to understand
why something is called "art." Indeed it might seem that a web site is
an unlikely candidate for this description. Considering internet art in
general, we felt that even the most enthusiastic art fans might be
turned off by the technical tedium of viewing art on the
internet–sitting in front of a computer, dialing up the modem,
launching a browser and waiting for plug-ins to load. The computer, net
art's main tool, is an intersection of many different activities, from
researching and word processing, to sending email and surfing cyberporn.
Also, unlike painting or sculpture, internet art is not found in
galleries, museums, or in rich people's houses. There are many aspects
of this medium that seem out-of-line with our ideas and fantasies of
what art is.

So then, perhaps the first thing to say is welcome to the underground!
This is degree zero for the first new artistic medium since video. "Some
of my Favourite Web Sites are Art" has an exciting mix. There are art
projects that treat the internet as a canvas for creative expression,
others that use it as a space for political activity and still others
that treat the internet as one big Disneyland.

The duopoly of painting and sculpture is long dead. Today's net art,
like offline art around it, has grown in response to the major
developments of our times, including digital technologies, mass culture,
visual media, biotechnology and the new capitalism.

Think of some of Warhol's famous images from the sixties, particularly
the banality of his consumer products and newspaper clippings. Internet
art has its parallels with Warhol's pop art: both tend to be defined by
their mode of distribution and production; both have met with some
skepticism because of their simplicity, their pedestrian appeal and
their acceptance of mass culture. Also, just as Warhol's Campbell's Soup
Cans resonated for a massive art audience–an example of cultural
communion in an age of consumption–so does internet art have enourmous
potential as a popular medium, perhaps moreso than any other kind of
art.

Internet art keeps it real. Unlike the music industry, the entertainment
industry, fashion, or the offline art world, it is not controlled by
huge corporations and marketing machines (at least not yet). Internet
art is made by artists, students, designers and hackers.

This has been the year net.art broke into a wider mass consciousness.
New media institutions have died, others have bloomed. While Documenta X
helped introduce net.art to the art world, Hotwired's RGB served it to a
more mainstream audience. At the same time new web-only art exhibitions
appeared like the recent Beyond Interface
(http://www.archimuse.com/mw98/beyondinterface) and last year's DIGITAL
STUDIES (http://www.altx.com/ds).

Major art institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and
the Guggenheim are realizing what RHIZOME, certain Eastern European
media centers and Canada's own Banff Center have known for years: that
internet art is significant enough to merit audience, financial support
and critical discourse.

"Some of My Favourite Web Sites are Art" is a survey of internet art.
There are digi-scapes and bikinis, political statements and personal
narratives. Brace yourself for some unfamiliar aesthetics. These are not
caricatures of art, nor are pixels and software any less affective than
paint or marble: this is real art with real substance behind it.

+ + +

We would like to thank Creative Director Vince Gaspari for inviting
RHIZOME to the Works. Also, many thanks to site designer Ken Lozowski
and coordinator Giuseppe Albi.