Drawing from my last post and in an essay by Jennifer Chan I feel that it is important to look into the question if new media ,digital art and internet art can in fact be called art. I feel that with each level of study I do, I come across this question and must address it whenever I create work that is outside the common and may I say boring traditional mediums (and yes, I said it and I can because this a blog haha) like painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking ect…

So instead of starting to unpack this question with the obvious by jumping straight into Duchamp and the readymade, I think we should look at it from a more modern/relevant perspective and address it from the post- internet art movement.

According to Chan ( 2012:107) post internet art was coined by Marisa Olson in 2008 and it can be defined as art that is created and informed by or on the internet and then disturbed on networks in the internet itself. In more simple terms the internet can be thought of a form of a mass artistic medium. When looking at that definition it is clear to see that the artworks created are not in a physical form but are digital or you could say screen-based art, which unfortunately is seldom shown in galleries (ibid) this then leads us back to the question on hand can this be art?

Well in short Chan mentions that it can be art if the work goes through a further transformation, by taking its art net-based formats and transferring the work into a gallery friendly form, for example taking a GIF and rendering it into a MP4 video that can then be projected onto a galleries wall. But then I ask is this still internet art? And why does the art have to be gallery friendly in order to be considered art? Gene Mc Hugh (2011:9) states that “Post internet art leaves the internet world. It goes through the art world and mutates itself to correspond to the conventions of the artworld. It is artworld art about the internet” and therefore is no longer net art.

The commodification of art and the art- market have always made the rules of the artworld new media, net and digital artist are busy breaking down these institutional controls and hierarchies. In fact, Chan mentions that many of these artists are no longer having physical exhibitions and are doing so as career moves as the internet and social media networks provide spaces that the artist themselves can control, they decided what work they show, how much it can sell for and who they sell it to. Chan (2012:113) further states that “net art should retain its anti-institutional ethics and stop conforming to the moors of the contemporary art world which is ultimately conservative, and profit driven”.

So, to conclude new media art which includes net and digital art can be considered art and do not have to transform to conform to art world art. We should rather look at these new movements in art as a form of activism as they fight to break down the hierarchy of the art world as we currently know it. In my art practice looking into the way I exhibit my final exhibition is important, as the work I make is purely digital and by printing it out or projecting it making it physical could take away from my overall concept. Therefore, it will be important to me to show my work in its true digital form, but I just need to find away how to, and will my VR idea that I mentioned in a previous blog post work?  

Chan,J.2012. Notes on Post- Internet. Available: https://www.academia.edu/7508373/Notes_on_Post-Internet (accessed 12 July 2018)

Mc hugh,G.2011. Post internet. Brescia. Link editions