'Ten Myths About Internet Art'

(plus a whole lot of digression)

Ten Myths about Internet Art
Myth 1: A miniature medium
Myth 2: An arcane subculture
Myth 3: Expensive & esoteric
Myth 4: The Digital Divide
Myth 5: Internet art=Web art
Myth 6: A form of Web design
Myth 7: A form of innovation
Myth 8: Uncollectible
Myth 9: No economic value

Myth 10: A solitary experience
[From essay Ten Myths About Internet Art by John Ippolito - 2002]

John F. Simon Unfolding Object (2002)

I've just discovered that the Guggenheim Museum website has an Internet art page that hosts commissioned net art projects. On this page there is also an interesting essay which discusses what author John Ippolito states are the myths about Internet art. Firstly, this website is peculiar because it seems to only host 4 works, the most recent being from 2002. I've just gone back to the main Guggenheim exhibitions homepage to see if I can find perhaps any other pages with more recent net art-works but I've had no luck. Actually, I had real difficulty re-finding the initial Internet art page I was looking at, because there are not prominent links to it from the homepage. I wonder why that is? Have they given up on commissioning Internet art and subsequently relegated this page deep into the hierarchy of the site? I wonder why?

Mark Napier's net.flag (2002)

Anyway, the two lonely most recent works that are on the site are the sort that necessitate your interaction for their full realisation - these are John F. Simon's Unfolding Object, and Mark Napier's net.flag. I really enjoyed net.flag, which is a programme wherein you can design a flag by copying and pasting different parts of world flags - my creation this one on the left. While Simon and Napier's works are interesting, I have to say they are both pretty dated - but then again we have advanced technologically in terms of software quality quite a bit since 2002. I can't help but feel that the Guggenheim Museum has kind of let itself down here, I mean there's a lot of awesome net artist out there doing great stuff, and a number of contemporary art museums have inaugurated net-portals for net artists to submit their works. Take for instance the Whitney Museum's ARTPORT- which incidentally is very easily found from the homepage. But again, I've just been looking at that, and while there are a few more than a handful of works their latest commissioned work Screening Circle by Andy Deck was launched more than 2 years ago on March 22nd 2006!

The Tate also has a net art portal, it's latest work is Watercouleur Park by French artists group Qubo Gas, launched in March 2007 - so still a year ago. By the way, this work is totally RAD! Still, I wonder why there hasn't been any new commissions for over a year. I wonder if Rhizome's ArtBase has filled that need for net artists to have an online venue or forum to host their works and prefer that to a museum's site? This warrants further investigation I think.

When I sat down this evening to blog I didn't intend to rant on like I have - I really just wanted to share the Ippolito's Ten Myths essay which I found quite enlightening. Ippolito has explained in detail, for those interested, the history of Internet art (as he sees it) and tried to distill any misconceptions of misgivings people might have about Internet art. I found it useful to read as it explains and discusses in easy language theories and opinions on Internet art. I'm sure some of it could be contested, but so can any writing about any type/style or indeed history of art.

I was interested to read about the range of different types of Internet art, created by the exploitation of many different types of online protocol, such as "email art, peer-to-peer instant messengering, video-conference software, MP3 audio files, and text-only environments like MUDs and MOOS." Just reading about this has lead me to think more broadly about net-art practice which helps me in trying to figure out the types of art works I want to include in my curatorial project.

Finally, something interesting I just found under Myth # 8 Uncollectible:

"...the Guggenheim is bringing a particularly long-term vision to collecting online art, acquiring commissions directly into its permanent collection alongside painting and sculpture rather than into ancillary special Internet art collections as other museums have done."

The section further explains that this approach has seen the Guggenheim put net art works into something they call the Variable Media Initiative - put together to in preparation for "the obsolescence of ephemeral technology by encouraging artists to envision the possible acceptable forms their work might take in the future." The initiative enables this by working to pair artists with museum and media consultants (not sure what they are) to "provoke comparison of artworks created in ephemeral mediums." For example, this comparison, which I think is slightly tenuous and warrants sharing: Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Untitled (Public Opinion) & Napier's net.flag project from above. I know comparison they are trying to make is less about similarity in appearance and more about their ephemeral nature, but they do look quite strange next to each other.



I've had a look at this site just in case the site makes mention of any other net artists working as a part of this interesting initiative, but it seems pretty evident to me that there's been no new activity since 2004. It doesn't seem to be a terribly proactive campaign - maybe they thought they were getting a bit a head of themselves in 2004 with worrying about the obsolescence of ephemeral technology. Who knows, I could be completely wrong, but you'd think it there was initiative was still initiating they'd keep their website up to date with all the exciting new things they are doing. I'll have to keep a watch on it - no RSS feed on this site.