These are some issues to be discussed at the Net Aesthetics panel tonight, emailed around by moderator Ed Halter. These questions will be divvied among specific artists to get the conversational ball rolling but I have "answered" some of them here.
- What is the relationship of internet art now to contemporary art as a whole? Can internet art work in a gallery setting? Has this relationship changed over time?
Whether internet art can work in the gallery setting: see BLOG, the exhibition.
- What are the boundaries between internet art and other cultural production online—creative memes, design, “digital folk culture”—and how important are these distinctions between art and non-art online?
See my panel "notes."
- Contemporary discussions of internet culture now stress the concept of the “wisdom of crowds”--the idea that the true creative power of the internet is collective, not individual. How does this relate to the idea of individual artistic production, or the phenomenon of surfing clubs?
"The ego in the egalitarian"
- Is there a dearth of political content to contemporary internet art? If so, does this mean we’re in a more “formalist” period?
Glad formalist is in scare quotes. I don't believe formalist is the opposite of political.
- Internet art today often feels “minor” in its mode—momentary, ephemeral, and attuned to elements like satire, parody, historical referencing, rather than grand statements. So, can internet art (by its nature perhaps) produce a “major”, longform work of art? What would be the online equivalent of the novel, the symphony, the epic poem?
