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Net art is an elusive and sometimes anarchic art form which uses the Internet as its primary material. Net art works often draw on data from other Internet materials and websites, which helps give them their distinctive dynamics and transience. Hacking, cloning, copying and appropriation can all be employed to create digital collages where questions about rights and authenticity really become issues. The Internet is itself performative, through its changeability and dynamics.
Project: TWILIGHT - The Screensaver
→ The software works in any ATARI TOS compatible system: TOS itself, Magic Magic Mac, magic PC, MultiTOS, Geneva, MultiGEM and whatever else there is around.
Project: Form Art
→ Used HTML buttons and boxes as the raw material for monochromatic compositions, is at first glance a purely formal study of certain aspects of HTML. But it was alsi absurd: Form Art transformed the most bureaucratic, functional, and unloved aspects of the web into aesthetic, ludic elements.
Project: Hybrids
→ Hybrids are digital collages created remixing “found” works of Net Art with random web pages.
Project: Shredder
→ An Alternative web browser that turns web pages into digital confetti. The Shredder revealed the “soft” nature of the web.
Project: Copies
→ Copies of some websites without restriction. These interventions started a heated debate on originality, autehenticity and uniqueness of art on the internet that is still open.
Project: Automatic Rain
→ One of their first works for the web browser, drew inspiration from the timed sprinklers that kept Silicon Valley’s lawns in perfect order. Playing out across three web pages, it made use of a found image, a photograph, Netscape’s blink feature, and the slow loading times of the mid-90s web to create a simple and lyrical composition.
Project: Versions
→ Versions is a celebration of visual culture as a collective, social project, historically and in the internet-enabled present.
All contexts appropriated form the following sources:
Paul, Christiane (2010) “Context and Archive:Presenting and Preserving Net-based Art.”
Natalie Bookchin and Alexei Shulgin, “Introduction to net.art (1994-1999)”.
“What is net art?”, from the website Netspecific.
Martinez, Ricardo (2015), “Net Art - The Movement and The Impact.”
Kluitenberg, Eric (2011), “Nettitudes. Let’s Talk Net Art." Josephine Bosma, Nettitudes: Let’s Talk Net Art, Rotterdam, NAi Publishers, ISBN 9789056628000, 272 pages.
Cook, Sarah and Ghidini, Marialaura (2015), "Internet art [net art]." PRINTED FROM Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, 2019. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single article in Oxford Art Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy).
→ Dragan Espenschied, TWILIGHT - The Screensaver (1991 to 1997)
→ Alexei Shulgins, Form Art (1997)
→ Eva & Franco Mattes, Hybrids (1998)
→ Mark Napie, Shredder (1998)
→ Eva & Franco Mattes, Copies (1999)
→ Jodi, Automatic Rain (2005)
→ Oliver laric, Versions (2010)