Reading Blog 2

The article “Web Work” written by Rachel Greene is about net.art. The term was originally coined by Solvenian Artist Vuk Cosic when an email he received got all mangled in translation and the only legible word he could make out was net.art. The article talks about what net.art is and how it grew very fast in the early stages of the internet. The term net.art “stood for communications and graphics, email, texts, images, referring to merging into one another; it was artists, enthusiasts and techno culture critics trading ideas, sustaining one another’s interests through ongoing dialogue.” The article goes on to talk about how net.art was different in different parts of the world. There are mentions of multiple domains that contained net.art such as irrational.org, rhizome.org and syndicate. Continuing on, the article essentially talks about the growth of the world of net.art and how more net.artists joined the movement with the growth of the internet itself. Jodi.org became a sort of ‘cult’ in ‘new-media art’. With the expansion of net.art, the development of some personal movements became prominent. Cyber-feminism became a popular movement. The feminists were told to take their interests ‘elsewhere’ but one particular ‘femail’ net.artist Olia Lialina continued to actively publish which subsequently won her praise and awards. Her work “My boyfriend Came Back from War caused quite a stir. The article concludes by talking about how net.artists are virtually derivates of Marcel Duchamp and his theory of ready-mades. There was a documenta that states that net.artists are “Duchamp’s ideal children”. Overall I thought this article was very interesting. It was quite difficult to read and understand but once completed I found the movement quite interesting considering that this was during a time when the internet itself was growing exponentially. I would say that our class today is just a progression of net.art considering we make digital art from our computers these days. We could be considered net.artists.