What is Internet Art?

So I started digging through the vast cyber space trying to find out what this internet art thing was all about. Doing my Google search like a good little member of the collective, I stumbled upon an article; 11 Net Artists You Should Know by Marina Galperina . This form of art is entirely new to me being only familiar with the traditional gallery and museum system. All the works are quite different but a treat to experience in such a different way than I am used to. One of the net artists I was drawn to right away was Lorna Mills from Toronto.

She makes animated GIFs that come alive on your monitor and can be strange but familiar having a certain odd yet sexy quality to them. Her style moves from a playful aesthetic to sophisticated organic abstraction. Although these images move, unlike what I am used to looking at, they do have a certain quality that appeals to me. This was not the case with most of the other work I looked at, which was confusing and hard to navigate at best. In many cases, the viewer is drawn into some kind of interaction with the work and I’m not sure how keen I am with having to be a part of the piece rather than sit back and contemplate it. As I dove into this maze of techno-imagery I found out about some of the pioneers of this new art form and the key organizations that brought this genre about, to include; SITO; The Thing; Adaweb, directed by Benjamin Weil; and Alt-X, founded by our own Mark Amerika one of the oldest online art and literary networks. Much of the imagery is very busy and seems cluttered and all over the place but that could be the point, I couldn’t say. I’m sure this “art” needs one to develop a new sensibility but at this point I just don’t get most of it. Take Jeremy Rotsztain’s “Action Painting” series for example, talk about Jackson Pollock meets the 21st century. It is a very cool piece and I do appreciate taking the idea of Hollywood action movies and combining moving visual elements with the perceived action. I’m just not sure about what he is trying to say. I almost wish he would have used music, still very inventive. Apparently with social media facilitating a transformative shift in the distribution of internet art, the direction it will take in the future is anyone’s guess. The production of meaning seems to be externally contingent on a network of other artists’ content which brings us back around to appropriation in this age of file sharing. Call me old fashioned but I still like to look at stuff hanging on the wall.