"Developing a theory of its own could enhance the value of net art. At the moment it is understood in the context of media art, of computer art, of video art, of contemporary art, but not in the context of the Internet: its aesthetic, its structure, its culture.” (Olia Lialina, nettime 199801/msg00038).


Just one of the possible choices
Limited concepts, stubborn ideologies and smallminded definitions are boring for someone who is codewise in daily life, additionally maybe even in fine art or social- and information sciences. Each code appears as just one of the possible choices. On the other hand i need a bit of order to clear my view. Therefore, just for myself, i operate with an always draft and strict definition of "Net Art". Net art that i like is touching the medium "network" itself, its conditions and its impact on our cognition and life: "The medium is the message". A presentation of Gutenberg-Age-Art on the internet can't be Net Art.

Assembling the common broad misunderstanding of the terms which in real netlife have become interchangeable and meaningless: The term netart mostly is used by artists for their work with the internet, in the last decade(s) mostly for web art. Often it is assumed that net art is just an other word for webart or internet art, and in the general consciousness, all internet art began with webpages. So far, the usual hodgepodge.

The origin of net art before the internet
The first artform including masses of participants globalwide was netart from the fifties and sixties, electronic and non electronic. Mail art and correspondence art after the sixties could have been described as "artists analog telematic networking". Digital netart on the internet came much later. The elder types of netart used postal systems and other analog networks, as well as the open and available electronic network for everyone in this time, the telephone and later fax. Telephone phreaks in this sense were creative networkers and artists, although most of them saw themselves possibly just as technically clever freaks with a sympathy for anarchy. The participants of the globally spread networks (Africa, Japan and Korea South, Australia and the Pacific included), finally mostly called it mailart or correspondence art. Gutai in Japan and Fluxus in the west involved. Such net art reached over the borders of the political systems in the cold war. There were links between samiszdat and mailart for example.

My netart log 1980-89
Involved in east-west mailart networks since 1980, when i started to live in Berlin for 9 years, I played the courier, bringing forbidden catalogues and other art information over the border, to share with my friends there. I was interested in advanced theories about telmatic contexts and telecommunication as well as in experimental telematic communication with the "high tech" of that time, however, it lasted until 1992 until i could involve an own Atari TT.

Beginning of the eighties i used the aka "anthroart" and the term "networking art" for what i was doing. In 1984 with the book "Correspondence Art" (by Michael Crane and Mary Stofflet) started a discussion among a few european and angloamerican artists, whether we are doing mailart or correspondence art. The discussion was disappointing, i decided to escape and call myself and my work "netart". I would have preferred to discuss the broader context of artists working with media in human networks, but my private life was problematic, i had no power to put the theme on the agenda. A bit of my parallel running exchange with Chuck Welch became part of his book "Networking Currents".

Then Robert Filliou died, who in his lifetime created the idea of the "eternal network" and had made us smiling globalwide. Thereafter everyone felt honoured to be called a "networker" instead of a "mailartist" or "correspondence artist". The spirit finally had arrived. So what do networkers do all the day? Some chose being a networker instead of being an artist. Others felt no contradiction. I noticed, i am doing NetArt, netart, and net art. I am netart.

The sign at my doorbell until 2001 said netart, my mailbox still is for netart, my archive tells about netart correspondence globalwide and postal objects must be in a lot of artist archives, stamped with: "netart, box 1406, D-51495, germany" (forerunners with anthroart or netart from an address in Berlin). The address might be still accessible, although I did not participate in mailart activities anymore and the postal workers may have forgot that mail with this name belongs into that box.

I continue with my favourites : Hiding, forgetting, covering, disappointing expectations about art, using multiple identities, faking identities of others, showing up as an idiot and living with a few sympathic people. Communication needs trust, but it also needs concentration. We cannot react always on all media blah blah that is reproduced in our heads and behave as if the helpful forms of authenticity naturally work in all media.

A flood of creation myths of the term "netart" simply illustrates, it was lying in the air. I am only one of many who had or have linked their identity with it. Alexander Shulgin wrote a story, how net.art (with dot) appeared. It warms my heart with humour. It was accessible from natalie bookchin´s "story of netart". The story is fitting the interest especially of the net.art group nicely, and the good people involved in his story deserve it. It's not the question, whether he knew, net art like mailart and correspondence art and telematic forms existed before the internet. It may matter only for arthistorians, whether those stories reliy on facts or artistic inspiration. I like arthistory and scientific research be vaccinated with cultural virii. It keeps the code creative, to hit truth, the moving target. In rhizomes the fruits can grow at different places at the same time, appearently without connection.

Net Art 2005
The first rush is over, net art became "established" and some now use the term for nearly any digital art presented in the internet. Since 2001, at the Venice Biennale 0100101110101101.ORG had presented a virus as software art, it seems like net art is pregnant with something beyond itself, a new integration of digital and social codes, mastered on another level. Like techno and rave in music represent the situation end of the last century, net.art (net-dot-art) that fell under the term in the stricter sense represents it for the digital arts. While continued by sharp and creative heads, the next flowers of the thread already taste different and will blow away the categories used here for an introduction.

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