Amos Taylor: Synopsis for WEB ART article.

This paper discusses the artistic potential of the Internet and defines the many aspects of ‘Web Art’ through exploring various examples of interactive, conceptual, and per formative works. The Internet as an amazing communication tool is also explored as a form of network for artists, that have been central in shaping the international arts, and is a space in which Web Art is best suited.

Discussing the relationship between the Internet and Art, this text works through issues of how web art should be defined, who are the artists making these works, what are the new tools an artist must learn to be competent in this field, and what are the central issues of these works that often have a critical standpoint or exist in a purely fictional technological genre.

After acknowledging the origins of web art from video, experimental film, surrealist painting etc. I discuss the questions that address this new medium, asking is it Art on the Internet? The Internet as Art? Or is it artists networked through the Internet?

Ultimately the aim is to show how to create successful works of art on the Internet. The Internet being important for artists working within an international context as a networking tool has enabled these works to be shown virtually and presented in real situations.

Firstly I suggest that the Internet poses somewhat of a problem for the image (photograph, movie-clip, etc), to have an art status the image must find new potential in its new medium. A photograph for example placed on the internet is not web art on its own, no matter how successful it has been within its own medium. To make an image or composition work on the internet we must think of the viewer of the work and their preconceived idea of what new technology is and how it changes the image. For example if we continue with our photograph on the internet, because it is presented on the screen we have to think of it from a screen/monitor/television perspective where the image is expected to do something, have some technical function so we understand it in its new context. It is the artists job to read that potential and give the image a function that allows us to appreciate it knowing how we should look at it.

Table Of Contents

Through a critical look of examples of web art I seek to show how this effective understanding of the image and composition on the internet can lead to creating powerful works of art on the internet.

I. What is Web Art?

1. Opening The internet as a forum for Art.

a. Introducing the internet as a new space for artists, and with a new form of art

b. Brief history of art from video, computer, virtual reality, to the internet. (how we got here!)

2. (the problem), Is it internet-art or just art on the internet?

a. The image placed on the internet, how has it changed?

b. What makes an image work artistically on the screen

c. Interactive potential, attracting the viewers eye to the work,

d. Framing the web art, how to control your artistic space

e. A successful art work on the internet.

3. Different sides of web art,

a. Is it a style or is it a space-

b. Conceptual,

c. Critical

d. Anti-aesthetic

- ‘Techno’ as a theme vs. ‘humanity’ as a theme

e. Narrative vs. Nonlinear art

f. Hypertext, Flash animation, online broadcast or the internet movie?

4. Networked Artists On the Internet.

a. Making art with someone on the other side of the world (web art community)

b. Conferences, Biennials and the Internet (art made possible through the internet)

c. The web artists

d. Tools for the web artist

5. Collage or Copyright, forming material for the artwork

6. Conclusion