Why a "digital revolution" in art in the 90s?

  • Technologies are becoming ubiquitous; hardware and software more affordable

  • The World Wide Web, which started to get widespread use in the mid 90s, has made the Internet more accessible.

  • Artists have always been among the first to reflect on the culture and technology of their time.

What terms are used?

  • Computer Art

  • Multimedia Art

  • Digital Art

  • New Media Art

  • Information Art

The History of Digital and Internet Art



  • History Of Technology; The Computer and The Internet

  • Art History

  • Computer Art History

History of The Computer and The Internet

When you are using a medium you are always referencing its history. Digital technologies have a very different history than most other mediums artists use. They have been developed by science, The Internet and its applications was originally created by military and academia and is now to a large extent developed by corporations.

History of Art

Complex relationship between traditional media and digital media. digital/internet art has to some extent being developed outside the traditional art world. Why?
  • It is too 'high'..elitism, its difficult to understand the work, its too technically involved.

  • It is too 'low'..net art is too related to commercial art, it might be difficult to separate between what is art and what is design, what is a software and what is an art project.

  • Internet art is partially a reaction against the art world. Net artists did not need the institutions because the means of distribution, of reaching the audience were built into the medium.

  • Digital art poses problems for the art institutions: How does one exhibit, archive works which are process oriented and dependent on technologies which might not exists for long.

Still, there are many parallels between non digital/internet art of the past and contemporary digital/internet art Artist doing technically elaborate projects has often not been accepted by the art world. However during the 60ties and 70ties there was a surge of shows and groups of artists doing technological work which were highly regarded. Many of the artist in the shows were artists who were already famous and they were able to produce technically complicated work because they were working together with engineers, some were not using computer technology at all but their work related to computers and information technologies in other ways. EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) , 'Software', 'Cybernetic Serendipity'.
Home