“Perhaps much of the energy being poured into art and communications was released by the broad political changes taking place in Europe in the mid-’90s, just as net.art was beginning to take shape.”
This article was a very interesting read, particularly because I do not know much about the Internet’s history. I realized reading this article that people are very weird and do weird things. It fascinates me, but sometimes it also disturbs me.
“By 1996 it was clear that Internet technologies were fast becoming significant cultural and economic phenomena, and the digital economy seemed to offer mysterious new financial possibilities, even for niche content providers.”
It is very interesting to read about the beginning of the Internet. It is hard for me to imagine a world without the Internet, as so much of our day-to-day lives now revolve around and depend on it. Back then, Internet technologies “were fast becoming significant cultural and economic phenomena.” Now, it is a part of human culture, it defines and forges the path of the future. I can’t imagine that anyone in 1996 could have foreseen what the internet has become.
“There were also a number of identity capers that year.”
Internet safety was probably still developing. As the internet grew so did the risks and dangers.
“Web pages, if they hoped to win any attention in this climate, came under increasing pressure either to contain highly volatile content—like Heath Bunting and Natalie Jeremijenko’s Biotech Hobbyist e-’zine (available at www.irational.org/biotech), which offers recipes on how to clone human skin at home, for example)—or to transcend themselves that year.”
It’s interesting to see how web pages were once under risk of becoming obsolete as they are extremely significant today. It is also interesting that volatile, taboo, and perhaps even disturbing content more greatly captures the attention of people.
“Useful for modifying ethnicity, race, and class signifiers in photographs, Heritage Gold (which is, by the way, shareware—downloadable for free) foregrounds issues on which technology is resolutely mute. Very few of the tools and materials—including software and computers—that we work with every day are scrutinized to reveal the ways in which they reproduce, support, or simply permit oppressive social or economic relations.”
The connection between the internet and real-world tensions was very interesting in my opinion. And I definitely agree with this statement. I think this issue has improved since then, but I can see how technology reinforces oppressive social economic relations.
“Originally conceived as an alternative social field where art and everyday life were merged, net.art may now seem threatened by its own success—that is, likely to give in to its own increasing institutionalization.”
I think this statement is very interesting because I see this happen with a lot of things. Something that once started out as special can very well collapse into itself when greed takes over, or when quantity begins to be valued over quality.
“But at the same time, it is important to keep in mind the Internet’s prodigious capacity for hosting and inspiring politicized, “hacktivist” artwork.”
Like the article states, this statement here can coexist with the one above. I completely agree that the increasing institutionalization of net.art had potentially bad outcomes, however it still remained a diverse and inspired social field.
“How do we as consumers use the texts and artifacts that surround us? And the answer, [de Certeau] suggested, was ‘tactically.’ That is, in far more creative and rebellious ways than had previously been imagined. . .. An existential aesthetic. An aesthetic of poaching, tricking, reading, speaking, strolling, shopping, desiring. Clever tricks, the hunter’s cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.”
I have not thought much about how I perceive and interpret the internet. However, I can’t help but generally agree with this statement. The internet is a crazy place to navigate, and one must navigate it tactically to maximize the results.
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