RACHEL GREENE A HISTORY OF INTERNET ART THE TERM “NET-ART” is less a coinage than an accident, the result ofa software glitch that occurred in December 1995, when Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic opened an anonymous e-mail only to find it had been mangled in transmission. Amid a morass of alphanumeric gibberish, Cosie could make out just e term—"net.art”—which he began using to talk about online art and communications, like a virus among certain interconnected Internet communities, the term was quickly enlisted to describe a variety of everyday activities. Netart stood for communications and graphics, ‘e-mail, texts and images, referring to and merging into one another; it was artists, enthusiasts, and technoculture critics trading ideas, sustaining one anothers interest through ongoing dialogue. Netart meant online détournements, discourse instead of singular texts or images, defined more by links, e-mails, and exchanges than by any “optical” aesthetic. Whatever images of net.at projects grace these pages, beware tha, seen out of ther native HTML, out oftheir networked, socal habitats, they are the netart equivalents of animals in 200s. From the very beginning, netartists had grand ambitions. For much of netart’s brief history its practitioners have been self-consciously staking out theie collective goals and ideals, exploiting the characteristics peculiar to the Interne, like immediacy and immaterality. E-mail, the dominant mode of communication among and within net.art communities, enabled anyone who was wired to com= ‘municate on equal ground, across international boundaries, instantaneously, every day. This was of paramount importance to those talking about net.art in the mid- and late "gos. Building an equitable community in which art was conspicuously present in one's everyday activites was a collective goal.Fie tat Vow 352 EB asc year beeen 2904 ad 958 when many of the extant ar-oriented communities formed, the Inernet allowed netartiss to work and talk inde pendently of any bureaucracy or at-worldinstetion ‘without being marginalized or deprived of comma sity. The on fous, and there was an eager audience for nevart, inchuding the subscribers to mailing lists like Rhizome (www.thizome.org), one of the first sites dedicated to new-media art; Syndicate atmosphere was lively and gregar- (oeww.va.nl/syndicae), alist focused on Eastern European polities and cultures and Nettime (weww.nettime.org), a politically and theoretically ‘oriented platform that hs been important to many inthe technoculture intelligentsia Not unlike the Surreaists and Situationsts, nnetartsts had from the beginning a penchant for publishing manifestos and firing off polemics— which were often made available through publica: Joc nn @ at in ae tions such as Nettime's ZKP Series (www. ae Z ———nettime.org/pub ml and Read_me (hich fers to the instructions one consults afte installing software; an anthology of writings posted on the late ite was published last year as ReadMe? ASCII Culture and the Revenge of Knowledge. Perhaps ‘much of the energy being poured into art and communications was released bythe broad political changes taking place in Europe in the mid", just as netatt was beginning 10 take shape ‘While the Internet has recently become dominated by American corporations, Europe—especially Eastem Europe—and Russia were crucial its early years as an artistic medium (ust asthe military and the academy were citcal to its early years a a communications too), The birth and development ‘of “civil society” (ead “post-Communist and neo-liberal) in Eastern Europe during the ealy and ini9os was characterized by media openness an pluralistic poles. During this period, for Eastem European artists and new-media types, the Internet had a utopian halo, George Soros's Open Society Institute and other NGOs ha funded media centers—such 2x Ljudla in Lublin, Slovenia an Open Society tative where Vuk Cosistll works—and sofware and computer education programs, making it reaivelyexsy for motivated enthusiast to participate in the brave new word of international communications. As Eastem European markets opened up to the Wes, media centers and the technology they espoused were often held §upas proof positive of political and cultural reform and international collaboration, In 1994, the Internet was sill comparatively uncluttered. Populated largely by homepages flaunting hobbies and personal histories, advertising technology com ‘panies, or promoting online communities ofall strpes, the Net was far removed fom the asceticism of whitecube galleries or the high itonies of neo-Conceptualism expt a ae Inded, the exhausted, commercially exploited art culture that had soared inthe Sos SS amel and cashed in the ary '90s was in recovery when the Intemet began to take of Sheela ona Very few people associated with at-world institutions were logged on at that time Racer soot Jn 1994 and 1995, smal adres of leis imllectual tech whizes, subversive, a anata begun congegating at online nodes ike The Thing, Echo, Nettie, ‘oi src and The Well Mailing ists and the BBS bulletin board system) were more than ie ar structures fr dxrbtion and promotion: They weresimulhaneousy conten and Seine community. Like Andy Warhol's Factory, the people as well asthe methods of eat et production and distribution were al part ofthe projects meaning, ‘ted sre Sagn Among the more memorable sites that went up in those years were ddalweb, Siraeaemomee Irational org and Jodiorg. Adaweb curator Benjamin Weil ecently appointed as curator of media arts atthe San Francisco Maseu of Moder Ar [nce Jia, iaumeoe B. 166), who had been activ in the art worl before founding ida with John aoe Borthwick in 1994, took a foundry approach to Web-hased at: Wei invited artists omar epone 9, 108 such as Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, Julia Scher, and Vivian Selbo to experiment=& IN JODILORG’S WORK, THE PROGRAMMING IS 3 EXPOSED TO FORM THE PRIMARY CONTENT IN AN ALPHANUMERIC SOUP SO THICK IT OFTEN STUMPS EVEN THE MOST COMPUTER LITERATE.Behind the playful parody of iber-corporate nev media and the corporate juggernaut. Around the New York artist Paul Gatrin started Name-Space, expanding the limited set of URL components (¢ cedu, org, jp]. The logic of Name-Space was that if rations or individuals to monopolize Web addresses. ject entailed an intricate lawsuit ro break the domain had no pretensions to artmaking, it nevertheless sha rary works by Muscovite Alexei Shulgin and Heath in the literal organization of the public space of and Bunting’s projeets from the same time—L nb) and Own, Be Owned or Remain Invisible (c.g, wwww.artforum.com, www.love.com) may defin -xtualized and recupe ways. These artists’ “hypertext” projects mapped per Interet, dramatizing the sul tiating a highly c tive (and bewildering) smmercalized and very public space. ul works like 7-0 (an e-mail list, archived at 7-1.0rg Desktop Is (cur by Shulgin www.easylifeorg/desktop), Form Art (also curated by. Shulgin Documenta Done (Vuk Cosic, www. lud mila.org/~vuk/dx), and Easylfe (Shulgin's domain, www.casylife.org) swwwc3.hu/collection/form) were born, as well as mote serious works such as Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back From the War (www.teleportacia.org/wat) and Web Stalker software (www backspace-org/iod/iodgWinupdates.html). Around the same time, female netartists began to win a fairer share ofthe limelight, Rachel Baker, Beth Stryker, Josephine Bosma, Shu Lea Cheang, and the VNS Matrix are just a few of the women who were doing strong work, The VNS Matrix (read the V/O/D collective’s groundbreaki ts exploring feminist issues. A collective of Australian women living in and around Adelaide Australia, VNS had published their “Cyberfeminist Manifesto” in 1991 They wrote, for examples “we ae 1e modern cunt / positive anti reason anbounded unleased unforgiving / we see art with our cunt we make art with our cunt / we believe in jouissance madness holiness and poetry / we are the virus of the new world di within / saboteurs of big daddy mainframe / the clitoris is a direct line he matrix VNS MATRIX” (sysx.org/vns/manifesto,html Cheat sites in 1997 and 1998. Buy One Get One (www.nttic.orjp/HOME3), now Part of the collection of the ICC, explored technology and access in Asia, order / rupturing the symbolic from he filmmaker behind Fresh 1994), made a series of web: Africa, and Australia from Cheang’s adopted position asa “cyberhome steader.” Cyberhomesteading, in Cheang’s project, had her livin ‘digital bento box,” presumably a laptop and some equipment, whic allowed her to post her findings on the ICC servers. Around this time, P CCheang was commissioned to produce the Guggenheim’s fist website Brandon (www.brandon.g based on the life of Brandon Teena (the subject ofthe recent film Boys Don’t Cry), evolved over a yeat starting in 1997. Expanding on the life of the biological female who lived .ggenheim.org hosted gender play online with Cheang and her team chatting. There was also a substantial off-line component: One forum was held at the Theatre Anatomicum, a Dutch ws filter CNN was a ne of Net.Art Per 2 project intent on 1 com net, co.uk, there were a more dificult for ¢ While Garin Bunting an interest the Net. Shulgin’s ink X (www.desk, hheathy/_readme.htmi), respectively—prove that though domain names experience of negonew-media performance theater once used for experimental gender surgeries on prisoners; a forum on cyberlaw took place at Harvard, resuscitating a case of “cyber-rape,” reported when a man was discovered masquerading, as a woman in an intimate chat room. While most participants prided themselves on their net.community’s relative enlightenment, cyberfeminism turned out to be an issue of interest to few. There was a flame war when Anne de Haan’s e-manifesto “The Vagina Is the Boss on the Internet” was posted to Nettime in June 1996. (The text is archived at ‘www thizome.org/cgi/to.cgi2q698.) Those who cared about cyberfeminism were told by list moderators to take the discussion elsewhere, to women’s platforms like the Old Boys Network (www.nettime.org/oldboys). ‘One “femail” net.artist, Russian Olia Lialina, continued to publish highly elegant projects, out-progeamming many of her male peers and winning regular commissions and awards. My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, for example, isa filmic narrative of fated romance. Lialina’s work, which often takes an inter- est in physical beauty and personal aspects of romantic relationships, distinguish- ing her from other net.artsts, has recently explored, variously, legal documents, art dealing, and the address bar of browsers. “War,” which made use of basic “frame” programming, was discussed by Lev Manovich, an art-history professor at the University of California, San Diego, in “Behind the Screen,” an insightful essay about various influences peculiar to the work of Russian netaartists. Manovich notes that the visual legacy of screens, parallel montage, and frames is rethought in “War.” Visitors to Lialina’s site are encouraged to experiment, creating frames within frames and new combinations of text and ‘Leonardo magazine and edited the proceedings of the 1998 conference “Vital Museums on the internet” in Saburg, Austria From 1998 unti his appointment at SF wows, Weil had served a tho diroctor of new media at the Institute of Contemporary Arts In London and was, 8 cofounder and ‘curator of adatwed (www. ‘museum's ongoing “Contem- porary Series," is scheduled to ‘en inthe a. (n the other coast, Well wil be “redefining” the post vacated by Rober R. Rite ‘in December. SF mowa’s Department of Media Arts, founded by Riley in 1987, focuses on ‘imebased art forms utlizing advanced technologles—trom video to electronic fart in any guise. An online musie event, perhaps in collaboration with another Intitution, ie said to be in ts planning stages under Well and is tentatively seheduled to debut in 2001. “Both Christiane andl ace tying nd solutions for showing media atin en ‘institutional’ US Net Workers IN THE INTERNET UNIVERSE, time moves faster— sites debut and die, companies launch and go pub- ic quicker than a download on a DSL line. And the same rapid pace seems to apply to the rato of increase in institutional recognition and endorse: ‘mont of Net arin the United States, which is finally catching up to Europe and Japan. The growing roster lof Wobsawy mediaan curators. at major US institutions which includes Steve Dietz founding director of new-media initiatives at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center, and Web artist and theorist Jon Ippolito, assistant curator of media arts at the Gurgenneim—was sigifanty augmented by recent ‘beck-o-back appointments at two major American ‘museums of curators with Web art weighty resumes: for original Wob art. 7 ‘Well also cotounded ‘The Thing. an interactive computer network that pro In the frst two weeks of January, the Whitney Museum of American Art named Christiane Paul 8 adjunct curator of new:media arts, while the San Franciseo Museum of Modem Art named Benjamin Weil as curator of media ats. ‘Both Paul and Well have played integral roles in the shaping of major websites dedicated to the showcasing of online art and the theoretical ds course that surrounds it. Paul curently publishes and serves as editor in chef for Intelligent Agent (www intlligentagent.com), an anline (and print) Journal addressing the use of interactive media in art ‘and education. She nas also writen for MIT Press's ‘vides an eine forum for etica!tneory. His curatorial CV fnchides the international Netart exhibition “Ploin.htmi,” a selection of websites presented in conjunction with “Net_ Condition,” the first major ‘museum presentation of online artworks, which 100k place last fal at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Mociontechnologain Karsrune, Germany. Paul wll bring her knowledge and experience to ‘bear on the collection, preservation, and presenta tion of works that fll under the ubric of newmedia ‘2. which includes clgtalfrms beyond the Web. Her frst curatorial project atthe Whitney, an exibition of ork by Net asts presented as a component ofthe museum contest,” Weil observed. “In Europe, the festival paradigm has worked. But what about here? ‘Should we be more instiutona? Less institutions? Or should we ty to formulate adferert modo or metaptor {or presenting and collecting media arn general?” ‘Time wil el ow Paul's and Weil's onine training ‘might affect theie museums’ respective program: ‘ming and permanent mediaart collections. As Weil ‘notes, “We have en amazing opportunity to carve Net art's place in the historial continuum of Video, experimental cinema, past media—and, ‘of course, other forms beyond the Web that have yet tobe invented, —Reena Jana(One could argue that My Boyfriend Came Back From the War i an update of Eisenstein’scheories tage within the confines of the Web browser. Taking an overview of 1997, one might argue that formalism prevailed, with projects such as work using a defined set of objects or HTML pro- tocols, Desktop Is was a seminal net.art show. Its premise was simple: Participants would submit screen shots oftheir CPU's desktop, which is what you see when you turn on your compater and are snot worki inany application. I's user’s home base, the location where nd downloaded pag wratorial statement explains, network interface exe nd, the everyday face of the computer, oF perhaps just the last thing one sees before shutting dow, Subs ow a range from coy personal revelations (lke a folder icon. titled “bakerssexuality,” as in R ichel Baker’ sexuslity—if only we could rangements of desktop iconography, like the one submitted by M@, ic., Matt (Baker's submission is at www. itational.org/tm/desktop gif and MG's is at www easylife.org/desktop) look inside?) to more davai desktops/M@ipg “There were alo a numberof entity capers that yea An as-yet-unideniied SLOVENIAN BAD-BOY ARTIST VUK COSIC CLAIMED THE POACHED DOCUMENTA SIT HIS READYMADE AND CALLED NET.ARTI “DUCHAMP’S IDEAL CHILDREN.” prankster published texts to Rhizome and Nettime under the names of eitics Timothy Dauckrey and Peter Weibel, using purloined e-mails from them. (Only one of these texts seems to be currently available: The councerfeit review of Heath Bunting by The Artist Claiming to Be Tim Drackrey is archived on Nettime at www nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/ 19971 ‘msgooo36.html,) There was also the fictitious Keiko Suzuki, who started a new lst. serve, borrowing the name 7-11. On the Net density tricks are relatively easy to pull olfand effective at destabilizing (complacent or boring) communities, and these capers imbued eyberspace with an air of mischief the irrational and the excessive, Operatio: People posted to it and read from i several times a day. 7-11 was junk, e-mail at, do, jokes, notes from people who mistook it for a servi provided by the convenience-store chain. Keiko Suzuki, who disappeared into t the list eventually dwindled, was likely the shared avatar of onli er “discourse” typically posted to lists like Rhizome and Nettime ‘But the crowning case of stolen identity had to be the cloning of the Documenta X site, Documenta Done, by Slovenian bad-boy artist Vuk Cosic. Cosic, who has recently done a brilliant ASCI film series (including Deep Throat rendered in ASCI characters!) used a readily available robot program, or “bot,” to copy the site when Documenta announced that it was soon to be taken down. The Helen of Troy of the off-line art world, the Documenta X website was, in Cosi’s opinion, too institutional and pretentious to pass up, not least because its disappearance was treated ceremonially. Cosic, who was vilified in the press as an “Eastern Enropean hacker,” once com n hat the poached Documenta site was his readymade and proclaimed that netartists are “Duchamp's ideal children.” Perhaps the most ambitious artwork of 1997 came from the collective /O/D, which published 2 Web browser. When I asked 1/O/D member Simon Pope about the decision to develop software, he replied, “We tried to expand on the idea of ‘software as culture” and to break through some of the assumptions made by mainstream software developers. When operating systems start to be desesibed as natural resources, alarm bells should ring,” A network-ready software tool,GREENE /NETAART cnn eer Web Stalker reads HTML differently than traitional browsers lke Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Instead of displaying what the designers and producers intended you to see, Web Stalker maps the external inks from any given HTML page Simply put, 1/0/D’s browser traces out the space between Web pages. From a broader perspective, Web Stalker signaled a paradigmatic shift in netart: Web pages were suddenly recherché; networked applications were the new thing. ‘The move away from Web pages continued in 1998, as software, cultural terorism, radio, and the incipient insttutionalization of net.art became hor areas of investigation. Web pages, ifthey hoped to win any attention inthis climate, came under increasing pressure that year cither 10 contain highly volatile content—like Heath Bunting and Natalie Jeremijenko's Biotech Hobbyist e-zine (available at wwwrational.org/biotech), which offers recipes on hhow to lone human skin at home, for example—or to transcend themselves, New York artist Mark Napier, for instance, made two interesting pieces that destroy or disfigure HTML objets. His Digital Landfill (www: potatoland.org/Tandil) and Shredder (www.potatoland.org/ shredder) tear the components of any Web page away from their code and either reconfigure them into a new design (Shredder) or add them to a dump pile of components from ‘other pages (Landfill. These works are dynamic and fun, abit ike voodoo doll for websites Entera URL and watch the chosen ste get trashed, In 1998, the British collective Mongeel released an impressive shareware software product called Heritage Gold (www.mongrel.org.uk/heritagegold), Based on che ubiquitous graphics software Adobe Photoshop, Heritage Gold replaces its banal tools and commands (“Enlarg,” “Faten”) with terms pregnant with rail and as signticance ("Define Breed,” “Paste into Host Skin.” Rotate Word View"). Graham Harwood, a member of Mongrel, describes Heritage Gold's abilities: “You can invent a new family... you can have immigration, reparation.” The software's ‘menus allow users to add, modify, or reduce the levels and inflections of ethnicity in their own photos, from Chinese to African, Eas Indian to Caucasian. The meta-beauty of Heritage Gold ists candor asa socially engaged software tool Useful for modifying ethnicity, race, and clas signifier in photographs, Heritage Gold (whichis, by the way, shareware—downloadable for fee) foregrounds issues on which technology is resolutely mute. Very few ofthe tools and materials— induding software and computers—that we work with everyday ae scrutinized to reveal the ways in which they reproduce, support, oF simply permit oppressive socal or economic elation 390 ARTFORUM Netaart produced a very different vibe in 1999, a8 netartists were seemingly empowered by their sense of pending popularity and relevance. New York-based artist Ma designed Netomat(wwewnetomat.net), a project he and Postmasters curator Tamas Banovich have been shopping around tothe industry. With ts ability to yoke together words and images, unlike normal search engines, which only return Web pages, the Netomat software produces compelling, one-of-a-kind collages, Mary artists started making use of ecommerce capabilites, whether on eBay or by building their own online gallery, as Ola Lilina (art.celeportacia.ong) arensq html) and John Simon Je. (www.numeralcom/everyicon.html) have done. Wolfgang Stachle, Tamas Banovich, Marie Ringler, Rachel Baker, and other netart luminaries began receiving what is now a flood of invitations to speak on panels and at conferences about the Internet. Indeed, netart had acquired such cachet, if not prestige, that it came as litle surprise that about a sixth ofthe artists” grants issued by Creative Capital, a new arts-funding resource, went to persons working on Internet-based projects. And, of course, this year nett was not only included for the first time in the Whitney Biennial, but well represented, with a broad range of projects, including works by Fakeshop, Ben Benjamin, ‘Annette Weintraub, Mark Amerika, Ken Goldberg, and &®™ark, among others. Originally conceived as an alternative social field where art and everyday lfe were merged, nnetatt may now seem threatened by its own suecess—that is likely to cede a degree ofits freewheeling, antestablishment spirit as itis further beoughe into the instivutional fold. But the Internet’ prodigious capacity for hosting and inspiring politicized, “hacktivst” artwork shouldn't be underestimated. And as the Net moves precipitously toward convergence with television, new strategies are urgently needed to maneuver freely, sovereignly, through an increasingly factitious, total-media environment, In theit essay “The ABC of Tactical Media” (1997), David Garcia, an artist and media activist, and Geert Lovink,a member of the Dutch media collective Adilkno and moderator of Nettime, eloquently describe the approach that netart’s most ambitious cultural workers have taken and continue to take: “How do we as consumers use the texts and artifacts that surround us?” And in Michel de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life (1974) they found theie answer: “Tactical.” “That is,” Gare and Lovink continue, “in far more creative and rebellious ways than had previously been imagined... An existential aesthetic. An aesthetic of poaching, tricking, reading, spel strolling, shopping, desiring. Clever tricks, the hunter’s cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.”