Pool

12.28.11

Jennifer Chan

From Browser to Gallery (and Back): The Commodification of Net Art 1990-2011

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Since its beginnings in the late 90s, internet art has had a fickle relationship with the museum. While commissions and granting initiatives have been established for media arts in Europe and America, the relationship between internet art and its fluctuating appearance in institutions demonstrates that it has not yet been wholly embraced by mainstream contemporary art.

Due to its variable reproducibility, the curation and collection of net art has presented challenges and transformations to the traditional operations of art distribution. Sculptures, digital paintings, installations and performances appear on the internet as documentation of art, whilst animated gifs and videos are moving images that require browsers, screens or projections as the apparatus for (re)presentation. This essay traces the shifts in value of internet art from browser to gallery, and compares disparate examples of curation, collection and selling of net art from past and present. Some questions that started this inquiry were:

- Can internet art make money like other artistic genres?

- Who buys internet art?

- How has value been ascribed to net art as a freely accessible form?

- How has web-based been curated and sold in the gallery system?

- What implications does its monetization have on existing modes of distribution and the definition of the collectible art object?

As a result of decentralized distribution, the media object undergoes reification when the documentation of an art object is reproduced and viewed more than the object that is represented within it. In its move from digital to physical exhibition spaces that may be self-organized or affiliated with professional institutions, web-based art accrues exhibition value. As Nicholas O’Brien has observed with the paradoxical installation demands of media objects:

“…there is an unexpected reliability and expectancy for physicality to substantiate a work – or else to give any ephemerality of a medium some sense of belonging within the gallery.”[1]

Commodification occurs in the physical representation of a digital media object for exhibition in a physical gallery space, where screen-based media becomes an object of culture for visual consumption and contemplation. I will compare traditional approaches to selling with alternative, artist-run exhibitions to explore ways of creating value for net art beyond the computer interface. In this study I trace the shifts in value of net art (in particular, the conception of digital aura and the move from free distribution to spatialized, sellable commodities). Finally, I argue that the most effective way to monetize net art is not through selling a physical analogue of the digital object, but a contextual integration of the buying process into the completion of the artwork.

Featuring discussion of:

Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org) Copies, 1999. http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/copies/index.html

BYOB, “Bring Your Own Beamer Worldwide”, 2010-present. http://www.byobworldwide.com/

Anthony Antonellis, put it on a pedestal .com, HTML/JavaScript, 2011 http://www.putitonapedestal.com

Documenta X, 1997 http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/

Emilie Gervais and Lucy Chinen, artobj(ect)-cult(ure) http://artobj-cult.biz/ 2011

Doron Golan, Computer Fine Arts, 2002. http://www.computerfinearts.com

Etoy 1994. http://www.etoy.com

Aaron Koblin and Taskashi Kawashima, Ten Thousand Cents, 2008.www.tenthousandcents.com

Oliver Laric, Versions, 2010. http://oliverlaric.com/vvversions.htm

Olia Lialina, art.teleportacia.org, 1998. http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/miniatures/

Jstchillin.org, Read/Write curated by Parker Ito and Caitlin Denny, 319 Scholes, NYC. http://www.jstchillin.org

Katja Novi, Post Internet Survival Guide, 2010. http://katjanovi.net/postinternetsurvivalguide.html

Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach, gif market, 2011 http://gifmarket.net/

John F. Simon Jr. Every Icon,1997. http://numeral.com/appletsoftware/eicon.html

Speed Show, 2010. http://speedshow.net/

Teo Spiller. Megatronix, 1999. http://www.netartist.eu/net-art/net-art-sold.html

Rafael Rozendaal Art Website Sales Contract, 2010. http://www.artwebsitesalescontract.com

Alex Tew, Million Dollar Homepage, 2005. http://milliondollarhomepage.com

Eleanor Hanson Wise and Oliver Wise, Art Micro Patronage, 2011 http://artmicropatronage.org