Tilman Baumgartel

Net Art: Artistic Conditions

Interpretive notes by Dani Day...

Net Art is a developing concept that began with the idea of collaborative works and was first visited by mail-art and telecommunications. It is “immaterial” and has until recently been on the outer fringe of the art community as not historically significant. This lack of incorporation into the art world is due to its nature of leaving no traces behind when finished.

The energy state that creates the palette for Net Art is in constant flux and exploration. The breach of material and spirit has caused a “dematerialization of the object” according to Lucy Lippard. The only physical entity involved in Net Art is the machinery used to transmit the information. The information itself and how it can be manipulated is the Art.

The non-technological precursors to Net Art set a chain of events in motion through networks via postal services. These networks involved collaboration between people and ideas. The key to exclusion by the art industry was the lack of marketability of the mail art and the inherent deconstructive nature of the process itself.

Douglas Davis used the television as a two-way communication media as an exploration of the communication process and attempted to “de-mass mass-communication.” This idea was subsequently used by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz to create A Hole in Space, that linked New York and Los Angeles via cameras and monitors and allowed communication between the two cities and the passers by.

The new telecommunication performances were limited greatly to Europe and North America, but were explored by Nicaragua. Galloway and Rabinowitz tried to break through the elitist wall of access to this form of art by creating Electronic Café where teleconference systems and a mailbox connected residents of ethnically diverse neighborhoods.

The Net as art space became more accessible as Internet activity became more readily available to amateur users. “From an art historical perspective, an important aspect of net art is that in the meantime not only texts but also the most diverse media (films, sound, graphics, animation sequences, photographs, 3-D simulations, etc.) are there in the internet next to each other, and can be transmitted. Everything that can be translated into bits and bytes can be brought online.”