Why Art on the Web is not net.art

Beverly J Williams

Why Art on the Web is not net.art.

            Once upon a time you could enjoy art only by visiting museums, exhibitions or going to a gallery. Today art on the Web can be found in numerous forms, such as: interactive audio, network performances, graphic design sites, Pinterest, and web sites. There are web sites, some of which contain mind blowing graphics, flash movies, and images. These web sites are not net.art. If a person decides to create their own web page, they have not created net.art.  Online places that allow you to show images of your artwork, in order to sell it, is not net.art. Those are just a few things that net.art is not. A better understanding of what net.art is will help in determining the difference.

Credit for the term Net.art was created somewhere around the mid 1990’s by Vuk Cosic. A net.art specific definition is difficult, at best, to pin down. It may be easier to explain some more of what it is not. It is not email, twitter, software projects, Pinterest, Flickr, YouTube, websites, or the internet. Net.art sometimes uses the internet as its material. Net.art often gets its material from websites or other sites on the internet.  Net specific defines net.art as a site-specific art form bound to its own presence and impact on the internet. Well, that cleared up what net.art is. Still scratching your head on the different between art on the web and net.art. Artsy.net describes net.art as a wide range of works created by artists using web browsers, developer codes, scripts, search engines, and various other online tools. Net.art artists use gif animations, gif images, html, images mined from other sources, webcams, QuickTime, JavaScript, mp3 streams, flash, Linux and more for their artistic creations. One can achieve a better understanding of what net.art is by knowing what artists use to produce it.

So, maybe the best way to define net.art would be art that is made specifically to be viewed on the internet, from sources mined from the internet, and coding for the internet. A way to describe art on the web could be a place on the internet where one can show their artworks.