Internet vs. Art vs. Culture

The speed with which the World Wide Web has developed, and the extent to which artistic projects have been devised in a communication network that was originally set up to support scientific exchanges, how all too willingly artists have discovered and shaped it

          ... ] suddenly, amazed, found myself standing between them - a strange language - a strange feeling. seeing that their reality is the same as someone's from another continent - just wanted to observe - not really learn the language [ ...

as an opportunity for creating artistic forms of expression, as a space for Utopias is, without doubt, an astounding phenomenon. The Internet is seen as a medium in which artistic ideas that were already being considered during the 50's and 60's can be realised:

          ... ] drawn to the banks of the blue light, i stand there with them - how am i to reach any form of understanding with them - that this blue is transposed to some other level in their hopes and peril [ ...

the idea of collective creativity, the attempt to find a non-commercial form of art, and the search for the possibility of a world-wide form of communication bridging cultural frontiers. Concepts that then, as now, stood for the desire to dissolve the traditional status of artistic works.

          ... ] no big brother, forcing their monitoring systems upon us, no foreign power, it is we that with all our energy wire ourselves up and enmesh ourselves in nets. dont see - or wont see
[ ...

Since as early as the mid-nineties, the guild of art historians has been busy differentiating between various methodical approaches towards artistic projects on the Internet. Categories that include a spectrum ranging from art that is purely passively received right up to art that only comes into being through the activities of many. But these divisions - however helpful and correct they may be - are certainly not final.

          ... ] rightly and yet again overtaking reality, for it is not the state and its insignia that are now the subject in question, that makes our tendencies and movements visible, but credit cards, booking systems, mails etc - first and foremost over the internet
[ ...

For the Internet, in terms, too, of the forms of artistic expression, is still at the beginning of its development; because its further technological development cannot now be predicted and; above all, because it always takes a certain length of time for us humans to come to grips with different cognitive and medial forms and structures.

          ... ] no longer an identity tied to a location through birth, culture and ways of thought - that once characterised me - but what I consume and my marketability as distinguishing features [ ...

And we will probably not have absorbed the new medial form, the Internet, anywhere near as quickly as the speed with which the medium builds up our hopes.

          ... ] never thought it would matter so much to me the first time i heard the fragmentary sound of a classical concert piece on the net. ripped apart between codices, differing compression rates - sound nonetheless - i still ask myself whether the lack of clarity gives my imagination room to roam or robs me of its beauty [ ...

But looking back at artistic projects from the early years of the Internet also shows that we have already matured in tandem with the medium. That, with the computer and Internet, a universal medium is available for us that does not merely absorb all the other media into itself, but actually also mutually transforms them within each other.

          ... ] if i had then had the opportunity to stop it from going on - i would have tried - isolated the moment - that she did not really understand me when i called her to listen to it - already another language - tangential echoes between the peaks [ ...

What original Internet-specific art forms are yet to come about is still a matter of speculation. The opening up of social, cultural and artistic interaction with the Internet is the only important consideration. And this is precisely what Continental Shift will do.