Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31664/zu.2023.112.05
Internet Art: Critical Aesthetics of Digital Culture
Vera Mevorah
orcid.org/0000-0002-4313-475X
; Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju Univerziteta u Beogradu, Srbija
Abstract
Internet art, which reached the peak of its activity in the period from the 1990s to the beginning of the 2000s, significantly influenced the creation of digital culture and critical reflection on the information society. The text explores three important areas that characterise critical aesthetics of Internet art: computer code, hypertext and interactivity, as well as democratisation and massification of the Internet and art as key aspects of the transformation of this practice in the 21st century. We present and analyse examples of the practice of Internet art in these spheres from its appearance in the 1990s until modern times and the development of the culture of Internet memes, post-Internet art and AI art. Unlike art on the Internet or the impact of internet technology and digital culture on art institutions and discourses, Internet art is difficult to distinguish from the World Wide Web from which it came. Internet art can never escape from the technological framework—the interface in which it is created and the contexts of that framework are always an integral part of the work of art. The work of net.art artists (Vuk Ćosić, Heath Bunting, Olia Lialina, Alexei Shulgin and the duo Jodi) produced alternatives to early applications and understanding of the impact of information and communication technologies on society. They explored hypertext as a new approach to reading, software art as alternative ways of presenting information, and Internet platforms and interactive art as models for pushing the boundaries of communication and collaboration in cyberspace. Internet art, as a specific artivist movement characterised by the intertwining of the spheres of digital activism, programming culture and the world of art, went further than all of its predecessors in the realisation of the avant-garde’s dream of erasing the boundaries between art and life, and its successor—the culture of internet memes seemingly makes this work complete. We point to the practice of Internet art as an important critical model of paradigms of information society, technology, and digital culture, which predominantly started to frame contemporary societies by the second decade of the 21st century
Keywords
internet art; digital culture; technology; critical aesthetics; media
Hrčak ID:
315659
URI
Publication date:
1.7.2023.
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