Introduction to net.art

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a thing for the tongue-in-cheek and the ironically self-aware. The piece pictured above is Introduction to net.Art by Alexei Shulgin and Natalie Bookchin. It consists of a outline-format guide to becoming a net artist and includes section headings such as "Critical Tips and Tricks for the net.artist" and "Utopian Appendix (after net.art)". In 1999 it was engraved in stone (Rhizome). 

I particularly like the "Critical Tips and Tricks" section: 

exerpt from Introduction to net.art (1997), Shulgin & Bookchin

I chose this piece because I think it successfully achieves what I going for with my Instructables piece, which I wasn't entirely satisfied with.

I think it is important that art movements be capable of making fun of themselves. Here, the artists are humorously pointing out all the potential traps net.artist may fall into: excessive preoccupation with hits on one's site, extreme pretentiousness, and egoistic pride in one's own exceptionalism -- the kinds of things artists of any generation may on occasion be found guilty of (except that first one I guess).

But I like this piece as well because of its form. They could have written a manifesto in long rambling paragraphs, but chose instead to break it up into an outline. What is more, though net.art consists of entirely digital media, they chose to engrave the piece in stone -- one of the most ancient means of publishing there is. It's almost as if they are feigning insecurity – as if they are satirizing a net.artist who secretly lacks confidence in the durability of his medium and thus ultimately wants to fall back on archaic methods to make heard his manifesto.

There's something deliciously ironic about creating an outline to describe an art process. When I wrote my instructable, I was thinking about the irony of using a DIY website format to give instructions on how to make profound art (and having the product created be something that is, if possible, even more silly than the source material). I am not sure what creativity is, or how it happens, or where it lies, but I am sure that it doesn't break down into something that looks like lecture notes.

Introduction to net.art attempts to reign in the potential arrogance of the avant-garde. Whenever you a group of artists identify themselves as a movement, they risk allowing their philosophy and politics to outrun their actual acts of creation. What I like about this piece is how it navigates not only the larger questions of how to be hip without being hipster, but also hones in specifically on the digital artist's task of asserting the validity of their work as it exists virtually, entirely independent from physical creation.