Introduction to Net.Art Response

I found Bookchin/Shulgin’s “Introduction to Net.Art” to be interesting yet also fairly humorous.  It was pretty entertaining that they believed anyone following their “critical tips and tricks” would become a successful modern net.artist.  Bookchin and Shulgin request that the artist choose a mode; the mode either being 1. content based, 2. formal, 3. ironic, 4. poetic, or 5. activist.  Though this was written over ten years ago, I found it surprising that Bookchin and Shulgin only asked that the artist choose one.  Has the world of art only recently become ambiguous?  For decades works of art have held more than one meaning, have been left open for interpretation, and have been categorized in more than one genre.  I found it curious that the authors of these strict guidelines had not forecasted that net.art would follow a similar pattern.  Perhaps I am taking the guidelines a bit too literally, yet the entire article is written in moderately firm protocol.  It simply surprised me that Bookchin and Shulgin did not fully consider the different directions which net.art had the potential to take off in, given that all of the worlds inventions have.  Nothing stays the way it is originally intended to be.  This applies to artists especially, who love to push boundaries and break down old barriers.  

Just as quickly as I spotted the lack of ambiguity in Bookchin and Shulgin’s guidelines, did early net.artists deliver in giving net.art multiple meanings and interpretations.  One piece I really enjoyed was “Digital Studies”, which was made by an array of people.  First and foremost the site explains how it would not have been possible without the important historical figures and innovations we have come to learn about.  But the site also contains links which discuss different net theories (such as “The Shamantic Web” by Roy Ascott which I found very enjoyable), as well as displaying links to actual pieces of net art, (many of which are unfortunately no longer accessible).  A piece that was available however, was one by Tina Laporta called “Shifting”.  She discussed a common theme among many of the works I came across: the division of real and imaginary.  I can imagine this was a major theme during the development of digital art because the artists were literally entering into a new “realm” (cyberspace) in order to create their work.  Artists were suddenly confronted with deciding which space, if not both, they were thinking and creating in, and which space, if not both, was real.  “I project out into the borderless space of the matrix where you and I connect, intertwine and dissolve but never (dis)appear,” (Laporta).  Roy Ascott goes on to help explain this theme in his article “The Shamantic Web”.  

“A more optimistic view is that our concern in digital art with whole systems, that is, systems in which the viewer or observer of the artwork plays an active part in the work's definition and evolution, represents at the very least a yearning to embrace the individual mind by a larger field of consciousness. By this account, the employment of telematic hypermedia is no less than a desire to transcend linear thought by reaching for a free-flowing consciousness of associative structures. It then becomes the artist's imperative to explore every aspect of new technology that might empower the viewer through direct physical interaction to collaborate in the production of meaning and the creation of authentic artistic experience,” (Ascott).