Net Art: Building Something Out of Nothing -Josephine Bosma

(more subtitle) Self Education, Collaboration and Networking article

B.I. (Before the Internet) - wow, that's great. Never heard that before.
Moving on.

History is written by the winners. Net.art history is written by your friends. This review of an article written on net art history was written by me.
Moving on.

Bosma argues that net art is and has been: writing, cinema, radio art, sound art, music, kinetic art, conceptual art, performance art, mail art, digital art and video art. It is now popular, however, because of advances in technology. Particularly the small one in 1999 when Netscape created RSS, not built specifically for blogging, but blogging florished because of it anyway and with it: online writing, cinema, radio art, sound art, music, kinetic art, conceptual art, performance art, mail art, digital art and video art.

In the early days before the internet (b.i. - I just love that) it is interesting to read about the early experimentations with rudimentary shared networks, old crappy computers and really expensive and faulty internet access. We know - it sucked! That is why we have Moore's law; technology will always improve and make things a bit easier. It probably really sucks right now, although we won't realize it until many years from now when we look back and say "I can't believe I had to blog using my fingers."

When the machines are on and your fingers are on the keyboard, you are in connection with some space that is beyond the screen - I got turned on by the space! - Robert Adrian

Net Artists! There is division amongst our ranks. If we are to continue to beable to afford our high-priced broadband and upgrades to our hardware and software, not to mention food and shelter for our weak organic bodies, we must ©UNITE! Apparently there are those of us who prefer to create art for the screen a.k.a. 'click and go' web art, and those that prefer to create complex net projects that involve (and depend) on many end users to furnish the content, or by simply just "being" - are in fact, the art itself. Cheap shots are being taken from both sides of the aisle. We are also divided into independent artists doing it solo and those that seek sponsors in larger institutions such as the government, universities and god forbid -art galleries. While we were squabbling and fighting over virtual air time we have unleashed an attention economy (LOOK AT ME ;)

What we have with net.art is, we have a sort of shifting paradigm in art from the idea of representation to the idea of communication. For communication you don't need a lot of skills. You can use very simple software, which is widely available -Alexei Shulgin

Final note, I met Mark Napier in 2002 when he presented and spoke about potatoland.org at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I would have liked to have read Bosma's article that did not exist until three years later. Anyway, it was nice to learn that he was a painter before net art and that in 1995 he started experimenting with html by posting his paintings on his home page. Then he realized his paintings were no longer paintings and if he screwed with their pixels they became something totally different. This happened to me, exactly.

Crazy.