Editing Net.art (section)

== Critique of the art world ==

During the heyday of net.art developments, particularly during the rise of global [[Dot-com bubble|dot.com]] capitalism, the first series of critical columns appeared in German and English in the online publication [[Telepolis]]. Edited by writer and artist [[Armin Medosch]], the work published at Telepolis featured American artist and net theorist Mark Amerika's "Amerika Online" columns.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/special/ame.html|title=Amerika Online|publisher=Telepolis|access-date=2009-03-12|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090504081712/http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/special/ame.html|archive-date=2009-05-04}}</ref> These columns satirized the way self-effacing net.artists (himself included) took themselves too seriously. In response, European net.artists impersonated Amerika in faux emails to deconstruct his demystification of the marketing schemes most net.artists employed to achieve art world legitimacy. It was suggested that "the duplicitous dispatches were meant to raise US awareness of electronic artists in Europe, and may even contain an element of jealousy."<ref>Mirapaul, M [http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70/personal_archives/codework/7-11/7-11.mbox%7C/MBOX-MESSAGE/1628 War of the Words: Ersatz E-Mail Tilts at Art] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930040919/http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70/personal_archives/codework/7-11/7-11.mbox%7C/MBOX-MESSAGE/1628 |date=2007-09-30 }}, ''New York Times''</ref>

Many of these net.art interventions also tackled the issue of art as business and investigated mainstream cultural institutions such as the [[Tate Modern]]. Harwood,  a member of the Mongrel collective, in his work ''Uncomfortable Proximity''<ref>[http://www2.tate.org.uk/netart/mongrel/home/default.htm Uncomfortable Proximity]</ref> (the first on-line project commissioned by Tate) mirrors the Tate's own website, and offers new images and ideas, collaged from his own experiences, his readings of Tate works, and publicity materials that inform his interest in the [[Tate]] website{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}}.

net.artists have actively participated in the debate over the definition of net.art within the context of the art market. net.art promoted the [[modernist]] idea of the work of art as a ''process'', as opposed to a conception of art as object making {{Citation needed|date=March 2009}}.  [[Alexander R. Galloway]], in an e-flux article entitled "Jodi's Infrastructure" argues that Jodi's approach to net.art, which involves the very structures that govern coding,  is uniquely modernist: the form and content converge in the artwork.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.e-flux.com/journal/74/59810/jodi-s-infrastructure/|title=Jodi's Infrastructure - Journal #74 June 2016 - e-flux|website=www.e-flux.com|language=en|access-date=2017-03-15}}</ref>   The presentation of this process within the art world—whether it should be sold in the market, or shown in the institutional art environment, is problematic for digital works {{Citation needed|date=March 2009}} created for the [[Internet]]. The web, as marketable as it is, cannot be restricted to the ideological dimensions of the legitimate field of art, the institution of legitimation for art value, that is both ideological and economical {{Citation needed|date=March 2009}}. ''All for Sale'' by Aliona is an early net.art experiment addressing such issues. The WWWArt Award competition initiated by Alexei Shulgin in 1995 suggests rewarding found Internet works with what he calls an "art feeling."{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}}

Some projects, such as Joachim Schmid's ''Archiv'', ''Hybrids'', or ''Copies'' by [[Eva &amp; Franco Mattes]] (under the pseudonym of [[0100101110101101.org]]), are examples of how to store art-related or documentary data on a website. Cloning, plagiarizing, and collective creation are provided as alternative answers, such as in the Refresh Project.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://redsun.cs.msu.su/wwwart/refresh.htm|title=A Multi-Nodal Web-Surf-Create-Session for an Unspecified Number of Players|date=1997-03-14|access-date=2009-03-12|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929135932/http://redsun.cs.msu.su/wwwart/refresh.htm|archive-date=2007-09-29}}</ref>

[[File:Teo Spiller net.art.trade (net.art) 2.jpg|thumb|A Screenshot of Teo Spiller's net.art net.art.trade]]
Olia Lialina has addressed the issue of digital curating via her web platform Teleportacia.org, an online gallery to promote and sell net.art works. Each piece of net.art has its originality protected by a guarantee constituted by its [[URL]], which acts as a barrier against reproducibility and/or forgery. Lialina claimed that this allowed the buyer of the piece to own it as they wished: controlling the location address as a means of controlling access to the piece.{{Citation needed|date=March 2009}} This attempt at giving net.art an economic identity and a legitimation within the art world was questioned even within the net.art sphere, though the project was often understood as a [[satire]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/drfuturetext.html|title=Net Art Market: What Happens Next?|last=Wright|first=Richard|date=1998-08-25|access-date=2009-03-12}}</ref> On the other hand, [[Teo Spiller]] really sold a web art project Megatronix to Ljubljana Municipal Museum in May 1999, calling the whole project of selling the net.art.trade.<ref>Mirapaul, M [http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/cyber/artsatlarge/13artsatlarge.html "There May Be Money in Internet Art After All"], ''The New York Times, 1999-05-13''</ref>

Teleportacia.org became an ambiguous experiment on the notion of originality in the age of extreme digital reproduction and [[remix culture]]. The guarantee of originality protected by the URL was quickly challenged by [[Eva &amp; Franco Mattes]], who, under the pseudonym of [[0100101110101101.org]], cloned the content and produced an unauthorized [[mirror]]-site, showing the net.art works in the same context and the same quality as the original. ''The Last Real Net Art Museum'' is another example of Olia Lialina's attempt to deal with the issue.

Online social networks experiments, such as the [[Poietic Generator]], which existed before<ref>[http://www.donforesta.net/ Don Foresta]{{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131018143723/http://www.donforesta.net/ |date=2013-10-18 }} : ''Chronologie historique résumée d'échanges artistiques par télécommunications. Les précurseurs, jusqu'en 1995, avant l'Internet'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20140517132711/http://195.194.24.18/~donforesta/mambo/images/stories/other_docs/annexe_ga2.pdf (PDF)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131018143723/http://www.donforesta.net/ |date=2013-10-18 }}, [http://www.gilberttoprado.net/ Gilbertto Prado] : CRONOLOGIA DE EXPERIÊNCIAS ARTÍSTICAS NAS REDES DE TELECOMUNICAÇÕES ([http://www.cap.eca.usp.br/wawrwt/textos/gilbertto3.html Web] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090425191023/http://www.cap.eca.usp.br/wawrwt/textos/gilbertto3.html |date=2009-04-25 }})</ref> the net.art movement, was involved in it,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20000524140000/http://simsim.rug.ac.be/mariemont/fr/prog.html Musée Royal de Mariemont, Belgium, 1999 : ''art en ligne · art en réseau · art en mouvement''], [http://www.x-arn.org/?doc=x-00 Festival X-00, Lorient, France, 2000], [http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-fr-0005/msg00005.html ''Théophanie assistée par ordinateur'' BREAK21 festival - Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2000]</ref> and still exist after it,<ref>A call to finance the mobile version of the Poietic Generator [http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/fr/projects/generateur-poietique/news/poietic-generator-english (KissKissBanBank crowdfunding platform)]</ref> may show that the fashion scheme of net.art may have forgotten some deep theoretical questions.<ref>[[:fr:Anne Cauquelin|Anne Cauquelin]]: ''Fréquenter les incorporels'', PUF, collection « Lignes d'art », 2006. ''Que sais-je ? L’art contemporain'', PUF, 9eme édition, mai 2009.</ref>