| Web.art (the Internet art) has
undergone great expansion in the recent years, both as a form
of artistic expression and in terms of its technical potential
and number of innovations. Almost every day, there are some novelties
in the way these works are made; technical improvements and new
program languages are introduced, new software is used. This progress
is accompanied by the emergence of numerous new sites, web magazines,
galleries, discussion panels, festivals, competitions, etc. All
this makes web.art extremely varied and dynamic and therefore
difficult to define. However, there are parameters common to all
forms of this art, common denominators by way of which we can
still determine the nature of web.art, particularly in relation
to the so far existing forms of artistic expression.
It should be said at the outset
that web.art does not denote the very widely spread passive presentations
of artists and their work on the Internet. They represent a reproductive
approach to the Internet. In these presentations, paintings, sounds
or moving pictures of works created in other media are reproduced
on the Internet, that is transformed into a medium different from
the original.
Web.art works are created exclusively
for the Internet, for its language and technical capacities, and
they address solely the users of this world wide computer network.
Therefore, not only are they created in the language of the network,
but are the most comprehensible and most effective in that environment
and communicable by network distribution and presentation, i.e.
through computer monitors and speakers. It is the configuration
in which those works are at their most natural and in which they
facilitate an active attitude of the viewers during reception.
In fact, one of the common characteristics
of web.art works is its interactive nature, which means that the
viewer becomes an "accessory" to their creation. He
chooses the paths and links he will take to move through the work,
he is often in a position to build into the work his own text
or visual or other contents, as a kind of commentary or an essential
element of work, or to activate numerous elements of the work:
picture, sound, animated and video fragments, thereby developing
his appreciation of the work through an active experience. The
web.art works, as we said, most frequently take their final form
thanks to the viewer’s activity, and since they are open
in character, they continuously acquire new forms. As opposed
to the up-to-now dominant art forms, in which the artist presents
to the viewer a ready-made work, of certain form and dimension,
a web.art work may further develop in an unpredictable direction,
being totally unlimited in time and space.
This brings us to a second essential
characteristic of web.art - its hyperdimensionality. Namely, a
work that is unlimited in time and space, just because of its
openness and interactive participation of its user in its shaping,
cannot be framed by dimensions. Works develop in many directions,
thanks to numerous web page connecting links and numerous information
such as images, texts, sounds and animations which induce the
user to move through the works and to complete them. Often the
user, usually a computer fan and web-artist himself, devises entirely
unexpected paths and solutions, thus building his own creativity
into the "given" framework, surprising the original
creator of the web-work himself. In this way, we perceive the
web.art as a constant exchange going on among creative people
round the world, their cooperation and mutually complementary
work aimed at the creation of an art network, ultimately leading
to a global spiritualization of mankind. Because, computer art
and communication, due to its evasive electronic nature and immateriality
of the media, is the closest to the spiritual categories of mankind.
We have thus come to the third common
characteristic of web.art - immateriality. As a matter of fact,
a web.work does not exist in real space and material form, but
only as a digital code on a computer disc. It can be perceived
only on a monitor, in the form of thousands of glimmering pixels
and sounds. A web.work is thus an evanescent visualization of
the creator’s and user’s ideas, a reflection of their
minds’ impulses and a reaction to sensual irritations, always
remaining immaterial, intangible and predominantly mental.
In a way, digital art is a realization
of the strivings in the 1960’s modern art movement, coinciding
with the appearance of ideas concerning dematerialization of art
object and transition of creative art work into the mental sphere,
which was best reflected in the appearance of conceptual art.
This art movement also coincided with artists’ efforts to
create a multiplied, modular, democratic, non-commercial and planetary
art, the characteristics of which are multimediality, process,
interaction and telecommunicability - precisely what the Internet
has made possible.
In this connection, there is an
apparent similarity between the Internet and web.art concept and
principle and some earlier forms of communicative art such as
mail-art in the early 60’s and network art in the 80’s.
Having sprung from Fluxus and conceptual art, mail-art was based
on international communication among artists, who exchanged ideas,
art works and cooperation projects. The appearance of this art
movement is associated with the American pop artist Ray Johnson,
founder of the New York Correspondence School of Art in 1962,
which, at the beginning, involved the exchange of art works by
mail among about a hundred artists from New York, later to become
more international in character. In Europe, this kind of exchange
art is associated with the work of artists gathered around the
French movement New Realism, also in the early 60’s, two
members of which, Ives Klein and Ben Vautier, were known for their
activities supporting the exchange of art works by mail. Not only
did authors distribute their works throughout the world, finding
new poetics in the process - which very much looks like the essence
of present-day Internet - rather, works of art were being created
in an interaction of artists, by adding their own individual subject-matter
to a certain matrix; in this way, numerous international art projects,
exhibitions and publications were realized.
Indeed, it was typical of mail-art,
and later of the network movement, that the majority of works
were created as a reaction to received works, or artists launched
projects with a defined subject to which hundreds of others addressed
their contributions, from their own viewpoints, and applying techniques
they were accustomed to. Ever since the early 60’s there
were projects where intervention was requested on an original
that was sent - either by each artist on his own copy, or by more
artists on one and the same original which was circulated through
the network. Clearly, these are the characteristics of interactive
art, such as the present-day web.art.
Multiplication of matrixes and originals,
on which interventions by the participants were called for, leads
us to a conclusion that mail art and network communication were
characterized by hyperdimensionality as well, where collective
work was created on a global scale, without spatial and time limitations,
in an open process, with entirely unpredictable results. Also,
the international communication among artists, based on the exchange
of ideas, gave the mail-art and network a predominantly mental
character.
Within the mail-art exchange, there
was a worldwide circulation of texts, images, collages, audio
and video tapes whereby a desire for a multimedial character of
art was achieved. Soon, phone-art and fax-art came into being
as part of the mail-art, and it brings us quite close to the Internet
as a field of international creation and communication.
The concept of network, the artist’s
becoming part of the network, typical of the early 80’s
all over the world, as a logical continuation of mail-art, was
aimed at gathering a large number of artists around joint international
projects, initiating discussions about the essence of this movement,
cooperation on live actions and performances, and publication
of joint books, fanzines and anthologies. Such were, for instance,
the Decentralized Networker Congresses in 1986 and 1992, which
took place, as the name says, at the same time at many different
places all over the world, with several hundred participants,
who sent their ideas and conclusions to one center, to be published
and further distributed. All this irresistibly reminds one of
the present-day mailing lists and discussion groups on the Internet.
Some of the most important and most
active mail artists and networkers indeed provided a bridge to
the Internet, having started their activities in this medium as
early as mid 80’s, which was obviously just a continuation
of their previous way of communication. So, for example, Ruud
Janssen (the Netherlands) launched a bulletin called "TAM"
which could be read through modem as early as 1986. In the same
year, Charles Francois (Belgium) foresees in his computer communication
an "electronic tourism" in the future, and an American,
Chuck Welch has been active on the Internet since 1991 with his
fellow-countrymen Honoria and Mark Bloch, particularly in 1992,
during the Decentralized Networker Congress.
In January 1994, Welch issued the
first electronic mail-art fanzine "Netshaker On-line",
and in 1995 launched an Internet campaign called "Telenetlink",
in which he invited the former mail artists and networkers to
join the Internet. Today, all of them and hundreds of other networkers
have their web-sites, Janssen is in charge of a sizable cyber-magazine
and Welch of the Electronic Mail-Art Museum. Similar museums on
the Internet already exist in Hungary (Gyorgy Galantai's "Artpool"
), in Italy ("Mail-Art Gallery and Museum") and in
Japan ("Sora"). In this way, mail-art and network
movement have naturally flowed into the Internet, rightfully taking
the credit as being the predecessors of this global phenomenon
of human civilization.
The present Internet is a dream
of the world-without-boundaries come true, where there are no
geographic or time distances. Just like once for mail-artists
and networkers, there are no racial, national or ideological barriers
for today’s web-artists. A dream of the global work of art,
simultaneously and permanently available to the entire population
of the planet is coming true. This form of art has managed, thanks
to an increasing number of the Internet users, to become a part
of everyday life, thus in the best way carrying out a mission
of changing the awareness of mankind - something the artists working
in traditional media could only dream of.
1998
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