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.
Myron Turner
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