I think Wilfried is too impatient. There are quite a number of artists who,
over a decade ago, adopted the net as their medium, or as one of their
media, still producing new and vital work with it. For every retired
net.artist there is an equivalent old-age pensioner deciding to take late
retirement. They say it is a trend.
Art is like wine. It needs time (of dear, I sound like a certain Dutch beer
ad).
Best
Simon
Myron Turner wrote:
> Subject: "Netart", definings
>
> A rather despairing post arrived this morning from Wilfried Agricola de
> Cologne, who most of you will know as the organizer of javamuseum.org. He
> has clearly committed an enormous amount of energy, time and resources into
> this project but has decided to call it quits and for reasons which are
> apropos of our recent discussions. I thought I would excerpt some of what
> he said; I hope that I am not misinterpreting.
>
> After JavaMuseum published. . .really a lot of "netart" features,
> I personally still doubt, that "netart" represents an art genre of
> its own. It is still not accepted widely as a specific form of New Media
> art working, not even the term "netart" is defined in an approximately
> acceptable way, and it is going round continously in circles, as the
> active artists and their working remain in a kind of ghetto'
>
> He feels that the typical netart generation "does not last longer than
> two or three years" and that those artists with longer term commitments
> only "confirm. . .this general impression." If I understand him correctly,
> he is arguing that because artists don't stick with it, they don't give it
> enough
> time for serious exploration:
>
> due to the fact that "netart" as it is practiced currently, represents
> only an intermediate phase in nearly any art working. . .there is no
> real continuous art working possible which would be able to explore the
> entire potential of the Internet for artistic purposes and look for the
> innovative. . . .So, the motivations to explore seriously and
> continuously what net based art could represent, are existing for most
> artists only during a kind of intermediate state.
>
> He concludes:
> from my personal point of view the current structures of "netart" have,
> if any perspectives at all, only short term, but no long term
> perspectives, and remain therefore in a really desolate state.
Simon Biggs
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http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
Research Professor
Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/
Senior Research Fellow
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge
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