Net.Radio and The Public Space (Josephine Bosma)

The two main arguments presented by Josephine Bosma are:
1) Net art needs to be presented in physical public spaces
2) Net art needs to be documented and archived

I experienced "net happenings" through John Hopkins (the net artist not the hospital -slightly different spelling) while he was at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His classes spent the semester preparing and then hosting a net happening. The actual event itself lasted 24 hours and the physical space turned into a crazy twisted hallucinogenic party with everything from techno sound pumping to video projects covering most wall space (there may have even been a disco ball). It was incredible for a college course, we felt pretty privileged that we were having a pyschodelic party in the middle of campus and we were blown away that people from all over the world were joining us via web cams and IRC. Net artists half way across the globe would send us streaming video that we would remix and send back out. I went home in the middle of it to find what everyone outside of the university was experiencing. It was ok, certainly not on the same level as what was happening in the physical space.

Just as Bosma pointed out in her article, our net happening was neither documented or archived. John has left the building (actually the country) and all the students in his class have graduated and are gone. If I were to host another net happening I would have to start over from scratch and make all the same mistakes and have all the same technical difficulties that John had.

Moral of the story (and Bosma's article) - next time you create net art, do it in a public space and please document it.