Digital Technologies as a Medium --Net Worked Digital Art

‘Digital Art’ is a new term in the domain of art. With the fast renewal of digital technologies, art works began to exist purely on the Net as their medium and the forms are varying into new ways. This essay is focusing on exploring this new medium. Net.Art Generator and JODI’s wwwwwwwww.jodi.org will be taken as examples together with some analysis on features of net worked digital art.

Digital art is a collection of new artworks emerging in recent years with the characteristic of adapting new technologies. Net worked digital art is a branch of digital art which takes the Net as their way to exist, i.e. the medium. All the functions of a net worked artwork are generated and shown on the Net.

The first example is Cornelia Sollfrank’s Net.Art Generator.[1] On the page, there are boxes indicating ‘title’ ‘artist’, etc. You type in names for ‘artist’ and ‘title’ then click ‘submit’, it produces artworks according to the instructions. Just like other internet searching engines, it searches pictures, words and texts according to the key words from the whole net and combines them together bluntly. Take generator 04 and 05 as examples. In Generator 04, type in the title ‘wind’ and artist ‘mad’, then it turn out to be a website.[2] On the page, there are many images and texts. Some texts can be linked to a new page. Moreover, from every isolated image, it has something to do with the title ‘wind’: some are geographical maps with wind vanes and one is about windmills. They are the result of internet screening related to the key words. Generator 05 is more fascinating. Typed in a title ‘angel’ and artist ‘nice’ for example.[3] The result is an image (fig.1). (In this generator, every time you open the web, selections will be conducted another time so the images may be different.) The programme randomly selects 4 pictures (fig2,3,4,5) and then combine them together into a new ‘artwork’. It can be tracked that the 4 random selected pictures are laid together and the colours are turned into contrast.
From the generators some typical features can be found. Firstly, Generator 4 and Generator 5 are different in terms of their formula but the basic disciplines are the same: It makes good use of the huge amount of Internet resources and recombines them into new artworks. By random selection, we can get numerous combinations which are beyond human calculations. American digital artist Grahame Weibren called this ‘revolution of random access’.[4] Secondly, as the whole operation is done by the ‘artist’, it is an original-made artwork by this ‘artist’. The originality spread from one artist to all the operators in front of the computer screen. Anyone who has a try on the machine and get a result can be an artist. And the artworks differ. That is a new feature when network becomes the basic medium of art. The generator itself is only a half-finished artwork; only with audiences’ participations can it be a complete artistic creativity process. Thirdly, as Christiane Paul has pointed out, in net art the basic way of ‘Visualization’ is through the net browser so Net. Art Generator is an extension and revision of net browser concept.[5] In this new medium, the ‘meta-browser treats the Net as one large database of files, retrieving information independent from the original design of the data sourse and displaying it as free-floating in space’.[6] All the information is screened from the Net.

To have a view of other aspects of net worked digital art, JODI’s wwwwwwwww.jodi.org is another example.[7] On the web, there are funny words as links. After clinking into a new page, there are more texts and they are still connected to new links. Those links are bound together after certain commands. The content doesn’t make sense at all because the words used cannot generate a clear meaning or convey a message. Users can only use imaginations to get the concept. One image imitates the geography graphs such as contour lines or isotherms (fig.6). Another animation reminds me of the game Super Mario (fig.7). That is interesting.

In this artwork, firstly the artists themselves made it without expressing certain concrete meanings while an abstract ‘concept’ is the emphasis. Again, the work itself is half-finished and the meanings will be completed through audiences’ participations thus the concepts are carried out by the process of attempting on the work. Like in JODI's work, it is a trick of playing 'hacking'. Influenced by Dada, Fluxus and conceptural art[8], the pure convey of concepts are quite easily accepted nowadays. Emphasis are turned on ‘formal instructions’ and focused on ‘concept, event, and audience participation, as apposed to unified material objects’[9] The artwork transfer its function from ‘visual’ to ‘abstract communication processes’[10]. Secondly, to convey the abstract concepts, colours and compositions become important. So in most new media works, the strong visual impact is a norm. Like in Generator5 the colours are dazzling while in JODI’s work the lines, colours and animations are attracting. Thirdly, 'hacking' is taken as a method in artwork creativity. The elements of digital art are codes and commands etc. The basic method is by clicking links which cannot survive without the Net. ‘Algorithms that from the basis of all software and every computer operations’[11] are vital elements in the operation of digital art.

Finally, have a look at the comparison with traditional art. In traditional art, media are paintings, sculptures, photographs, including films… They are fixed. ‘The ‘signature’ and ‘voice’ of an artist manifests itself in aesthetics of visuals and execution’.[12] While when taking digital technologies as a medium an artwork is 'tasted' through the process of audiences participations. Audiences have access to the artwork operations. And interactive cannot be fulfilled without the computer technology and Internet. Computer browsers play roles in the operations following codes and commands written by programmers (or artists) which are the basic elements of digital art. Followed by them ‘the visual results of the artwork are derived from the language of code’[13]. The aesthetics of digital art is more abstract and focus on 'concepts' than traditional artworks. These are all beyond the traditional art domain and can be treated as the features of new digital media.