It was interesting to better understand the history of digital art through this article, especially how projects started off as e-mail lists and websites. The internet today and especially social media give us so many opportunities to find like-minded people who share the same interests and hobbies. It’s really cool to me that this community building was starting in the net.art community in the 90’s and has grown into what it is today. Similarly, these website projects were not profitable at the time and were fueled by passion, but they paved the way for profitable digital art like NFTs. I love how these pieces were interactive, like My Boyfriend Came Back From the War where users click through the story. The possibilities of a website are so much broader than an art museum where people would just stand and observe.
A quote I loved from the paper was the following: “Whatever images of net.art projects grace these pages, beware that, seen out of their native HTML, out of their networked, social habitats, they are the net.art equivalents of animals in zoos.” This means that you can’t get the full vibe of the art and everything it was when it’s screenshotted and you can’t participate in the same way, just like a caged lion versus a lion out in the wild. I also find it fascinating that now old webpages from the net.art era are kind of considered as an aesthetic, and I’m curious if that cycle will repeat with how webpages look today as technology continues to improve.
