Reading Blog #3

The article Web Work: A History of Internet Art was interesting to read but had a lot of unnecessary names of websites and artists that made the article hard to follow at times. Only in the depths of the digital art world would readers recognize some of the names mentioned. Nevertheless, the main aspects I got out of the article was that the beginning of the internet ended up bringing a whole wide array of possibilities to the art world. From it initially being a software glitch, artists used communication and digital means to create art. There are many ways in which the digital world was (and still is) used, such as politics and building community. It is fascinating that for how short of a time the internet has been prevalent, it continues to advance and a skyrocketing pace.

The article described the emergence of the digital art world as "software as culture". Everything from emails, text messages, links, shopping, memes, etc., there is always something out there for anyone to enjoy.

The ending of the article stuck out to me the most, where Rachel Greene writes, "How do we as consumers use the texts and artifacts that surround us? And the answer, [de Certeau] suggested, was ‘tactically.’ That is, in far more creative and rebellious ways than had previously been imagined. . . . An existential aesthetic. An aesthetic of poaching, tricking, reading, speaking, strolling, shopping, desiring. Clever tricks, the hunter’s cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.”

The internet is like a whole other world that anyone can manipulate and distort to their own liking and imagination. Overall, there is a great history to how the Internet was able to connect artists through an intimate and digital landscape.