Net art

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Post Internet Art - one of the most recent trends in net art

Net art is a collective term for artistic work in nets or networks . This includes social networks defined as works of art, the artistic use of analog networks as originally in Mail Art , as well as artistic works that use digital network services such as the World Wide Web or other communication networks such as cellular networks .

Conceptual environment

  • Internet Art is a naturally used term in the Anglo-American language area. From around 1982 the global networking of computer networks is increasingly referred to as the Internet. The literal translation "Internet art" is often simplified in German as "art that can be seen on the World Wide Web". German specialist literature prefers the term net art (see literature list).
  • Netart used as a term in German mostly means net art as artistic work with digital networks and internet services such as the World Wide Web. Among artists, the term is an abbreviation for international net art.
  • Post Internet Art , like Internet Art, has its roots in Dada , Fluxus and research into net culture in general. In contrast to Internet Art, Post Internet Art is less influenced by telematics. She no longer tries to produce art online. In May 2015 a group of artists living in Berlin published their own “Post Internet Art Manifesto”.

Definitions

Network or network

Netz und Netzwerk are differentiated in German. The term network, like the electricity network or telephone network, tends to describe a technical aspect. Network is the German term for "net-like structure" (see Wahrig 1968). However, the English term network is often wrongly adopted, where network is the better translation.

In a figurative sense, "web-like structures" or networks are, for example, social structures, relational structures and psychological relationships with many variables, or thinking itself. Such structures or networks change and reproduce under favorable conditions according to their own rules that are barely linear, but rather chaos-theoretical . Network can therefore be the appropriate term in social science texts, as well as in art with networks.

Although it is all about networking , it can be essential for an understanding of media theory to distinguish between art on the web and art with networks. Where complex relationships between objects and people can be described simultaneously as a moving, three- and multi-dimensional network, or as a social network that uses technical aids, these different approaches complement each other.

Since both perspectives are also related to theoretical network and net terms, a wide field opens up in which creative variants of artistic work are favored by linguistic and theoretical misunderstandings. The inflation of the terms "Netz" and "Netzwerk" suggests to check whether derived expressions make sense:

Net paradigm means with “art on the net” a pattern of ideas of how the net is technically or organizationally constituted or could be in order to be able to produce net art with it. The supposedly similar term network paradigm for “art with networks” is only meaningfully applicable with a well thought-out media-theoretical background (such as in Manuel Castell's The Information Age ).

Art on the net and art with networks

  • Art on the net as media digital art , requires computer networks or internet services such as mailboxes or websites as indispensable means of interaction and the creation of images, sounds and texts. It is not decisive whether the art is created by one or more people, but that essential aspects and statements of the works can only be experienced in connection with a computer network . The current arrangement is computer - keyboard - screen / projector - Internet connection - peer / server or similar. Other arrangements are conceivable or practiced, e.g. B. cellular networks can be used for media cell phone art .
  • Art on the net as collective virtual art is operated by telecommunicatively networked participants who work together on a visual or auditory work. Your network technology can be analog or digital. The participants usually make their contributions consciously, but they can be skimmed off voluntarily or involuntarily through programs in digital networks. Many net artists have made interactivity a condition in their projects. With the additional use of databases and log files , any status of an overall result can be tracked, which can be constantly changed by the active visitors to the respective project page. The offer to contribute texts usually has to be secured against abuse through spamming .
  • Art with networks changes or creates networks. Whether it uses technical communication networks or other communication networks as a means to an end does not have to be decisive. Sun founded Joseph Beuys organizations that arose as a conceptual artistic works and became long-lived social network of ideas, communication and work contexts. According to this understanding of art, Tim Berners-Lee's contributions to the development of the World Wide Web are both intelligently applied network science and globally momentous artistic interventions by a creative networker who visually expanded an existing network significantly. In addition to network artists appearing individually or together, see etoy , there are networkers who refuse to act artistically, but create significant networks themselves.

Net art is sometimes tied to networks and networks at the same time: Mail Art was created through artistic initiatives in a creative process based on technical networks of postal and telecommunications services and existing social networks as a social, communicative and artistic network and developed according to its own, sometimes even self-formulated Laws continue. When participants in telematic networks create networks through constant communicative processes and change them further, for example an “online community”, they can become networkers.

Art on the web , on the other hand, is not net art. It uses the network (Internet) like any other media. This includes projects and works of analog or digital art that are presented on websites, but would in principle be possible without the WWW. An artistic examination of the net or network does not take place, or only in a superficial manner. Net art is not included with: Applied art with websites; Images of works of art on websites; Use of the term 'Netzkunst' or 'Netart' for reasons of status. Likewise, network relationships between artists are not automatically net art: they have to be created as a work of art in order to be more than a marketing vehicle, exchange rate exchanges or address networking.

Analog and digital

If the artistic work or the artistic process takes place in the confrontation with digital networks and a corresponding network paradigm, then it is 'digital net art' in the narrower sense.

In contrast, net art with networks is not always digital. It can also be created based on analog social or abstract foundations, even when digital media are used as tools. Such net art can already be experienced through participatory interaction in analog telematic networks.

For digital net art, however, the participant or networker needs devices, displays , websites and other technical means. However, many phenomena that only became known with the Internet on websites (WWW - World Wide Web) can already be observed in analog telematic networks. In a simple network of participants who send each other postcards, virtuality can certainly arise, for example by imagining artificial people who develop personality and have an effect on communication like an avatar.

Marshall McLuhan's sentence “The Medium is the Message” is important for net art and its interpretation. Even if a network seems to function independently of the type of technical networks and media technologies used, the form and content of every message and presentation are influenced by the technical fundamentals of the medium and thus change reality . Like the transition from book printing to electronic networks, the transition from analog to digital information processing has a societal impact, because digital technology is based on a technology-dependent encryption and decryption process, the mastery of which requires a knowledge society and has far-reaching social consequences.

Forms of net art

  • Mail Art or Postkunst uses all available networks for their network. Theglobally accessible postal system that emergedin the 1960s , in which almost all telecommunications facilitieswere integrated as public services, was originally intended to change society on the one hand as an artistic object and on the other hand as a means for artistic processes in networks based on it, network art more diverse Art produced. So there were self-proclaimed Mail Art postmen and couriers very early on, as a kind of Mail Art Performer who delivered mail art. Today there is Mail Art z. B. also as e-mail art. Correspondence art (art of correspondence) is a sophisticated parallel or special form. Correspondence at the same time, in the sense of Pop Art , trivially refers to the objective correspondence but in the sense of the hidden subject of Ray Johnson's "New York School of Correspondence", also to theoretical or spiritual (non) correspondence.
  • Web Art is digital net art that, as artistic work with websites, goes beyond the mere design, for example by artistically addressing the conditions for perception and manipulation on the Internet. Web Art always has to do with digital net art, but only on a case-by-case basis with artistic networks. It uses the same interface with the web browser as commercial web design .
  • Webcomics are comics that are primarily or exclusively published on the Internet. This must be distinguished from comics that are produced for print and also published on the Internet. The transitions can be fluid.

Change in society

In the early days of digital networks, artistic networkers could easily experience their changeability, as they were makers and users in personal union. Analog or digital net art was often inspired by ideas about social change , social science theories, social utopias and literary role models. With the emergence of Internet culture , the criticism of the existing and the enthusiasm for social and technical possibilities, new forms adopted (see guerrilla communication , media guerrilla , Telematic Society at Vilém Flusser ). Critical experimental arrangements in areas such as perception , media and society are not uncommon for net art. So it can be net art to use social or cultural traditions of the internet in projects outside the technical structure of the internet for changes.

Network artists are often interested in the deconstruction of aesthetic, digital and social codes, but media network art can also refer to all other phenomena of communication networks.

Networks are not permanent without positive mental participation of the participants, but under certain circumstances disruptive and uncomfortable network strategies can be artistically consistent. In the international net artist scene, the “creative net hack” is seen as an act of political and aesthetic resistance. It is not uncommon for artists to be net activists and 'hacktivists'. The presentation of a computer virus at the 49th Venice Biennale was typical in this regard, not a criminal act, but the calculated work of network artists. Artistic activities of this kind are always in danger of being misinterpreted and criminalized.

Net art is part of a movement for the free exchange of information, software and ideas in the face of the commercialization of the net. Art and electronic civil disobedience (electronic civil disobedience and hacktivism) overlapped. Responsible use of destructive aesthetic, digital or social codes in the context of civil disobedience and the freedom of art includes the egocentric art propaganda of neoism as well as the uncertainty of Internet users through artistic interventions in access to the World Wide Web , for example through websites (Web Art ), which promote a critical awareness in dealing with the medium.

The current forms of net art are related to changes in the areas of telecommunications , social interaction and perception in the media society . Net art can reflect these changes, be involved in them and sometimes anticipate developments.

Virtual personalities

Even in the Mail Art network, virtual personalities were created through network communication. In neoist propaganda campaigns, personalities in which anyone can participate have been propagated. The personality is filled with virtual life through the network of networkers involved. Appearing as an artificial personality, it can develop a communicative life of its own that cannot be controlled by the original creators. The concept of the avatar , which is common on the Internet and in virtual worlds , was already anticipated by such figures in analogue artistic networks. In a large search engine, for example, entering " Karen Eliot " leads to a thicket of websites where there are opportunities to communicate with Karen Eliot or to appear as Karen Eliot yourself. The multi-personality is reproduced as a nom de plume or pseudonym for many users , among other things . Karen Eliot spread like Monty Cantsin or Luther Blissett (collective pseudonym) as a collective pseudonym and multiple virtual personality initially in analogue artistic networks, found its way into the first artistically used mailbox systems and finally conquered all suitable Internet services.

Legal consequences

Due to their explicitly non-commercial character, net art projects move in a legally free area. Nobody has z. B. a personal right to the product when it comes to usable results in projects that aim at literary, musical or graphic works. Both the initiator and the participant in such a project have to live with this fact: all results are in the public domain . Even with the existence of log files, it would no longer be possible to reconstruct to whom which IP addresses would subsequently be assigned.

The problem of the transience of virtual net art objects , whose verifiability is directly dependent on their availability on the Internet, ultimately on the maintenance of the projects by the network artists who have direct (and ideally administrative) access to the offering server , is completely unsolved . Subsequent reconstruction is usually impossible.

history

Reception and globalization

In the 1960s, influenced by Conceptual Art and Nouveau Realisme, originally conceptual and process-oriented networks emerged, such as the Mailart and Correspondence Art Network. This analog "art with networks" and "art on the net" was not easy to grasp from an art-historical point of view: After the realization of a procedural work of art in communicative processes, there were by-products such as sent objects, letters, cards and mail-type catalogs, as well as documents of social reception in artist archives, but little that can be marketed in the art business. Therefore, the art-historical processing according to today's standards was delayed and initially superficial. When and where the multi-layered term "net art" is used meaningfully in art theory and art history is therefore worth discussing.

Mailart, Happening and Fluxus assume conceptual or real, local or global, networked communicating and acting participants and networkers. Among the first initiators of such networks were artists like Ray Johnson , who used his communication contexts for partly real, partly virtual exhibitions; Yves Klein and Ben Vautier , who staged post-scandals; Ken Friedman , whose exhibition project "Omaha Flow Systems" (1972) had the character of a communication and event network. In 1968 Robert Filliou coined the term “Fete Permanente / Eternal Network” with George Brecht , which was characteristic of the cultural situation at the time and which is culturally related to the idea and development of a non-military Internet. Filliou's actions and publications mark a turning point for artistic networkers. At least from this point on, art with networks can be perceived in terms of art history.

These forms of net art already naturally included electronic networks in addition to networks such as letter post, e.g. B. Telephone and fax . On January 12, 1985, Joseph Beuys took part in the “Global Art Fusion” project , together with Andy Warhol and the Japanese artist Kaii Higashiyama . This was an intercontinental FAX-ART project initiated by the concept artist Ueli Fuchser, in which a fax with drawings by all three artists involved was sent around the world within 32 minutes. This fax was intended to be a sign of peace during the Cold War and is one of the first works in a global context - before the age of the Internet. Net art became digital net art long before the creation of the World Wide Web of websites, in connection with digital art, which is particularly important for digital image and sound generation ; first via networked computers at individual research institutions, then via the growing Internet. With the first telematic art projects (see Telematics ) based on digital networks, networks only emerged as works of art for a short time. The artistic use of mailbox systems followed in the 1980s . More complex networks based on digital network technology emerged, which among other things became politically important, such as the Zamir network (see digitalcourage , formerly FoeBuD). Websites were discovered a little later, often by new actors, as a visual and acoustic, but also as a socially and politically usable medium. The Thing (initiator and operator: Wolfgang Staehle) can be named as one of the most important points of reference up to around 2000 , and Olia Lialina and Heath Bunting (irational.org) as early weaving and netart artists .

German-speaking area

Precursors for the beginning of net art are among others: The postcard exchange of the artists of the bridge until 1913; in relation to communication theory and aesthetics also Max Bense and the Stuttgart group / school from the beginning of the 1960s. The organizations of Joseph Beuys (as art with networks) or Robert Adrian X with ARTEX (as digital network art) consciously made social and technical networks subservient to artistic networks.

In divided Germany, if cross-border, net art, often as mail art, was a confrontation with post censorship, as well as a visiting network that brought artists and networkers from many countries together, precisely because of the GDR's travel restrictions. There were artistic networkers who crossed the borders of the power blocs as couriers between East and West in order to transport Mailart. In spite of the obstruction by “state organs”, individual connections could even be established between Mail Art networkers and actors of the samizdat .

One of the first known examples of German-language digital net art was the Handshake website from 1993 to 1994.

Until March 2003 there was a structured "net art list" on netzwissenschaft.de , the homepage of the media scientist Reinhold Grether from Constance. The names of the net artists and net art projects listed there offered a general overview of the various forms of net art that had existed up to this point in time. In 2008 this list ( blocked on webarchive.org ) was reconstructed by some net artists and put back on the Internet.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jon Ippolito: Ten Myths of Internet Art. New York Digital Salon, p. 1,1 , accessed September 12, 2010 (English, Jon Ippolito, curator for media art at the Guggenheim Museum NY).
  2. ^ Rhizome - Mission Creep: K-Hole and Trend Forecasting as Creative Practice . In: rhizome.org .
  3. ↑ The digital cultural asset . In: deutschlandfunk.de .
  4. ↑ POST INTERNET MANIFESTO . In: postinternetart.de .
  5. ^ National Library: Web 2.0 Identity - Internet and Art . Ralph Ueltzhoeffer, Marion Seifert, Publisher: GAK Media Berlin.
  6. ↑ Brendan Jackson: Brendan Jackson & Natalie Bookchin. In: CRUMB Interviews. Retrieved November 4, 8 : "On the other hand there are hacktivists and net activists who do not see themselves as artists per se, but I would argue that their practices can often be seen as a form of art (.. .). "
  7. ↑ Brendan Jackson: Brendan Jackson & Natalie Bookchin. In: CRUMB Interviews. Retrieved November 4, 8 : “Early net art tended to have an activist bent to it, in part because it emerged in the context of an on-line scene active in the free distribution of information, software and ideas in the face of the imminent commercializing and 'malling' of the net ... "
  8. ↑ Electronic Civil Disobedience and the World Wide Web of Hacktivism: A Mapping of Extraparliamentarian Direct Action Net Politics ( Memento of the original from May 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / switch.sjsu.edu
  9. ^ André Chahil: Vienna 1985: Phenomenon Fax Art. Beuys, Warhol and Higashiyama set an example for the Cold War. . accessed on October 14, 2015.
  10. ^ Tilman Baumgärtel: Immaterialien - From the prehistory and early history of net art. In: Telepolis , June 26, 1997.
  11. ↑ Barbara Aselmeier, Joachim Blank, Armin Haase, Karl Heinz Jeron: Handshake (1993-1994): on the website of Joachim Blank & Karl Heinz Jeron. In: handshake. Retrieved November 18, 2017 (Handshake Archive).
  12. ↑ Golan Levin and Collaborators: Dr. Reinhold Grether's Media Arts List (web science) (accessed November 26, 2015)

literature

Online literature

Web links