>
>So the ruse seems healthy afoot! Or so I'd argue. The ease of this
>misinterpretation is perhaps a strength of the medium. I think in being
>able to be fluid and hard to define creates an intrigue both from a
>material and cultural perspective that other mediums rarely approach (or
>only approach through gimmicky redefinition: "Painting as memorial,
>photography as documentary, etc.")

>>>Although I agree with Josephine Bosma (on a lot of things actually, but
>>>here specifically...) on the problem of trying to write a history of
>>>net.art when the name itself obscures some of the facts, like you, I
>>>have also always enjoyed the (as Joh Thomson put it of online art
>>>discussion in general) 'wide recursive loop about what the nature of
>>>net art was and what its relationship to the art establishment was…'
>>>That is, I think the obfuscation of facts and the distinctly
>>>net.art-ish way to appear to name net.art sets up the broader debate
>>>within which net.art (if I can put it like this) placed itself. Just
>>>last week I was teaching my students about Duchamp. They are first
>>>years and the course I am teaching is an elective introduction to
>>>contemporary art. I can talk about Duchamp until the cows come home,
>>>but I find the best way to get students to understand the significance
>>>of his actions is to try to *show* the discussion/debate Fountain (or
>>>any other 'readymade') generates. Sometimes I try to theatrically
>>>(cringe) stage the discussion with the help of props but this time I
>>>did a bit of that (welcoming the class dustbin to centre stage) and
>>>showing a video from the SmartHistory resource that presents the type
>>>of conversation a Duchampian artwork might provoke. What I have always
>>>felt the term 'net.art' did - as it was posted to Nettime in its own
>>>art historical narrative by Alexei - was sample a little bit of this
>>>Duchampian technique. It's a little bit of the art history book
>>>equivalent of a urinal in an art gallery - at least that's how I've
>>>always read it. On the other hand, it's such an 'inside joke' it
>>>requires a lot of explaining to the uninitiated and I'm sure Vuk,
>>>Alexei et al didn't mean to make art history less insular not more...

>
>In some ways the aftermath of net.art is more interesting to me as a
>micro-art history then it's own moment. '

>>>Oh yes, me too! 

>Afterwards artists themselves
>struggled/strived for new terms and new definitions to distinguish their
>work as unique or separate from something that might've been considered a
>jibe. Terms like "New Media" "Digital Art" "Transmedia" "post-internet"
>"net-based" "interactive design" starting cropping up all over the place -
>almost as if these classification were apologetically compensating for the
>ambiguity and openness of net.art. These efforts could be seen as measure
>taken by artists to be more easily identifiable within a contemporary
>canon, but also could be seen as efforts to carve out space/distance from
>a
>previous generation/moment.
>
>I want to say more, I guess, but maybe I'll wait for other topics this
>month,
>Looking fwd + very best

>>>Looking forward to hearing more. Thank you!
>
>
>On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 3:01 AM, Charlotte Frost
><[log in to unmask]
>> wrote:
>
>> Is this post one of the most iconic pieces of net art history?
>> http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/msg00094.html
>>
>> Certainly Rhizome's Rachel Greene believed the story and made it 'art
>> history' in an article written for Artforum in 2000 she put: 'The term
>> Œnet.art¹ is less a coinage than an accident, the result of a software
>> glitch that occurred in December 1995, when Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic
>> opened an anonymous e-mail only to find it had been mangled in
>> transmission.
>> Amid a morass of alphanumeric gibberish, Cosic could make out just one
>> legible term ­ Œnet.art¹ ­ which he began using to talk about online art
>> and
>> communications'. Greene, R. (2000) ŒWeb Work: a history of internet
>>art¹,
>> Artforum, v.38 (no.9): 162
>>
>> But as other writers like Josephine Bosma have argued, the term
>>'net.art'
>> wasn't born this way at allŠ see her book Nettitudes:
>>
>> 
>>http://www.amazon.com/Nettitudes-Lets-Studies-Network-Cultures/dp/9056628
>>003
>>
>> So was it a stunt? A work of net.art itself? And if it is a fusion of
>> artwork and a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the discipline of art history
>> (creating a kind of 'ism' to bait the art historians) what do we
>>describe
>> it
>> as? A kind of new media new art history?  Perhaps Rachel Greene didn't
>> believe the story, but was also invested in crafting this red herring
>>of a
>> narrative? And whatever it was, how do we work with a post like this
>>when
>> studying the history of Internet art forms? How easy is it to
>>misinterpret
>> an list-based archive (or any social media-based archive)? To what
>>extent
>> do
>> we have the license to interpret a list post or should we hunt down it's
>> author and verify we've understood?
>>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Nicholas O'Brien
>
>Visiting Faculty | Gallery Director
>Department of Digital Art, Pratt Institute
>doubleunderscore.net