The article begins by describing how the term “net art” became defined and used in everyday language. It discusses how net artists used email as a major form of communication online. Greene compares the Surrealists and Situationists to net artists in the way that they published a lot of manifestos. The article goes on to discuss how the internet is saturated with American corporations, but Europe was crucial to the beginning of this artistic movement. Green explains how after this the internet became a very cluttered space with everyone’s histories etc. Some cites began to be created for artists and artwork, and it was easy for artists to collaborate in these spaces. Net artists began to try to define their space on the internet and their movement, and then in 1997 net art exploded with popularity. Female artists began to be featured as well, which created cyberfeminism.
I thought this was an interesting article because it made me think about the history of artwork on the internet. I was used to seeing art on the internet growing up, and this article was helpful for me to understand how that came to be and how that changed art online today. It also showed me how helpful the internet can be for artists and for networking and collaborating online. However, this article also points out how saturated the internet can become with creators which I find to be a problem in my life as an artist online. There are definitely pros and cons to net art and how it has progressed, but I thought this article summed up the history of the movement well.
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