Abstract
Internet has been incorporated into our lives for almost two decades now. Within this time, it has proven itself to be so much more than a new technology for a new machine or “a medium of mediums.” Its relation to every aspect of life from a social, political, economic, and cultural perspective makes the Internet the most formative technology we have ever developed. Today, the length and depth of Internet’s role in our lives means that the Internet becomes part of our reality. We no longer see our lives with or without the Internet, it simply becomes “life” as “life with the Internet.” During these last twenty-five years, Internet art – from net art, to post-Internet art today – has been co-evolving in relation and in response to the Internet. As a cultural product of Internet technology, Internet art has been reflecting the multifarious changes we have been experiencing by living with the Internet. Copyright, open-source software, convergence, remix and appropriation culture, mixed-reality, and network sociality are all issues that are being raised and explored by Internet art. This chapter reviews Internet art’s evolution along with Internet technology and it highlights Internet art’s importance and potential for Internet research. It begins by tracing Internet’s technology evolution as reflected through Internet art’s brief history. Important Internet artworks are being reviewed in relation to these changes. It then extensively analyses post-Internet art as a unique cultural product of contemporary life with the Internet. Through this analysis, it presents an overview of the major areas of change in relation to art and the Internet through specific examples. This chapter’s important contribution is to offer a better understanding of Internet art as an art form in direct relation with a world shaped by Internet technology.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Barber S (2014) Dina Kelberman’s I’m Google. Art21 and Cue Art Foundation
Bishop C (2012) Digital divide. ARTFORUM
Bosma J (2003) The Dot on a Velvet Pillow. Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo
Bretthauer D (2001) Open Source Software: A History. University of Connecticut, Storrs
Connor M (2013) What’s Postinternet got to do with Net Art. Rhizome.org
Connor M (2016) Speaking in net language: my boyfriend came back from the war. Rhizome
Clusterduck Collective (2018) Internet Fame Exhibition. The Wrong Biennale
Greene R (2004a) Internet Art (World of Art). Thames & Hudson, London/New York
Greene R (2004b) Interview. The Guardian [Interview]
Halsey H (2016) Amalia Ulman: excellences and perfections. Jungle Magazine
Ippolito J (2002) Ten myths of Internet art. Leonardo, Oakland, Vol 35, pp. 485–487 , 489–498
Langley P (2012) Ryan Trecartin: the real Internet is inside you. The White Review
Lichty P (2016) The wrong biennial: the wrong project that’s so right – a metacritique. Furtherfield.org
Manovich L (2001) Post-media aesthetics
McHugh G (2011) Post Internet. Notes on the Internet and art. Link Editions, Brescia
Olson M(2006, 15 September). Net results [interview]
Olson M (2009) Conference report: NET.ART (SECOND EPOCH). Rhizome
Packard C (2015) The real-life applications of “Post-Internet” art. Hyperallergic
Richert JLL (2015) The materialization of the Internet art object: the evolution of Internet art and its contemporaru market
Rifkin J (2001) Age of access: the new culture of hypercapitalism, where all of life is a paid-for experience (Jeremy P). Tarcher/Putnam
Shulgin A (1997) Nettime
Silver D (1997) Interfacing American culture: the perils and potentials of virtual exhibitions. Am Q 49(4):825–850
Stallabrass J (2003) Internet art. The online clash of culture and commerce. Tate Publishing, Londres
Steyerl H (2013) Too much world: is the Internet dead?. e-flux, Issue 49
Stofner L (2014) Post-Internet-Art: Moderne Archaelogie? Eine Bestandsanfnahme zum Einfluss der Digitalisierung auf die Gegenwartskunat. BA Thesis, Universitat der Kuenste Berlin
Tanasescu V (2008) Spatiotemporal metaphors and Internet technologies. FIS 2008 Symposium, Vienna
Thomspon J (1995) The media and the modernity: a social theory of the media. Polity Press, Cambridge
Troemel B (2011) Peer Pressure. Link Editions, Brescia
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature B.V.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Christou, E. (2020). Lessons from Internet Art About Life with the Internet. In: Hunsinger, J., Allen, M., Klastrup, L. (eds) Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1555-1_40
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1555-1_40
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1553-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1555-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences