[Nettime-bold] net art definitions

[josephine bosma <jesis@xs4all.nl>]

Here's an unedited excerpt from a text of mine, which also written for
that
infamous conf in Moscow, pro@contra. You can read the entire text at
Switch:
 http://switch.sjsu.edu

:

Although there are interesting, sometimes rather obscure conferences and

festivals on special aspects of net art in Europe and elsewhere, the
perception of net art both online and in the mainstream media is more
and
more colored by the state of net art in the United States. The creation
of
the Webby by the SFMOMA certainly has caused mainstream media to finally

wake up, but the Webby seems to be almost the logical consequence of an
opening up of the traditional artworld to net art from within an
American
context. Its mailings don't have the atmosphere of a TV show for no
reason.
Ironic gestures aside, the Webby looks like an early step in the
direction
of a Web TV award. The loss of a conscious, cross-continent,
cross-disciplinary discourse on net art has brought American art
discourse
into an advantageous position, due to its dominance in a few respects.
Firstly language (the German speaking countries have a strong art
theoretical discourse and a forerunner position in the field of net art
theory that is obscured because publications are not being translated
into
English), and secondly 'the Americans' have a highly dominating input
into
the development of the Internet. We now face a net art discourse that is

strongly influenced by American economic traditions and mechanisms.
Especially the role of web designers and their connection to soft- and
hardware designers becomes more influential. Rules of web design slowly
gnaw away at net art practice and theory like acid gnaws at iron. The
term
net art gets confused with or replaced by web art as if the two were
interchangeable, without many questions asked. Traditional art
practitioners too easily turn to the structurally (in terms of basic
development of net.technology) and economically important 'group' of web

designers for what they think is the highest form of knowledge of a
medium they know little or nothing about. Art historical analysis is
barely applied to net art, and if it is, it usually happens through
the slightly younger tradition of video art. A historically deeper and
therefore more radical analysis of the difference between the Internet
and mass media, like TV and radio, that includes global economic and
political developments as well is rare. Replacing the term 'net art'
by 'web art' causes a negligence of art history within a political and
economic environment. The radical implications of net art are replaced
by the much less threatening aspects of web art. It therefore of course
also becomes more compact, easier to grasp and more marketable.

<


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold