Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art

Out now, the new survey book Art and the Internet features Martin John Callanan, Brighid Lowe, Thomson & Craighead.

Art and the Internet is a much-needed visual survey of art influenced by, situated on and taking the subject of the internet over the last two and a half decades. From the early 1990s the internet has had multiple roles in art, not least in defining several new genres of practitioners, from early networked art to new forms of interactive and participatory works, but also because it is the great aggregator of all art, past and present. Art and the Internet examines the legacy of the internet on art, and, importantly, illuminates how artists and institutions are using it and why. Art and the Internet features newly commissioned essays about the history, development and future of art and the internet from leading writers and curators in the field. By breaking down art on and about the internet into distinct forms as chapters – such as “Net.Art”, “social media influenced art”, “Post-Fordist art”, “activist art”, “surveillance-related work”, “post-internet art”, “internet-enabled participatory, interactive and video art” – the book deals with these challenging categories, with each illustrated by the work of leading practitioners. A selection of reprinted essays and manifestos, along with new interview material, offers an alternative chronology of the internet via the changing ‘of the time’ opinions from the late 1980s until today. The newly commissioned essays foreground the wider cultural context of the subject, laying out a longer history in art, design, technology and software that pre-dates the internet’s wider use, illuminating the cultural conditions and modes that made way for contemporary art using the internet. The changing role of the artist online is discussed. A concluding essay examines how the multifarious global art worlds use the internet, from activism to voyeurism to marketing, featuring organisations such as Rhizome and e-flux and their predecessors, illuminating how the internet has irrevocably altered the art world as a whole. As such, Art and the Internet is an essential book for all those interested in art whether directly involved in internet art or not.