The reading Web Work by Rachel Greene, was a very interesting read regarding the history of web art and its journey to being a popular source of entertainment and information. Initially, Net Art stood for communications, graphics, e-mail, texts and images which became a place for artists, enthusiasts and techno-culture critiques to trade ideas. This article was particularly appealing to me as web searching and the internet has become a major influence to the ideas that consume my mind and influence certain actions that I do. One of the first interactive projects was jodi.org which prompted the visitor to type in an entry in the site’s dialogue boxes but whatever someone submitted, they would get hacked.
This shows the intricate possibilities that computers can have when programmed and can ultimately hold lots of power to receive information and gather information from its web viewers. There is a wide variety of sites and ones which I have visited that can become problematic in the long run due to viruses. Similarly, in the reading they showed sites that actually allowed you to change your race to which Heritage Gold “foregrounds issues on which technology is resolutely mute”. This site was one of many that showed the uses for web addresses and its capability. I appreciated the movement of women’s art presented and praised in the article which showed strong feminism and became a place for many to view and share their opinions and views on the topic. However not favored by many, it shows the value of some sites and further, and unpredictability of content that can be shared virally. The last words of the article were particularly appealing to me as Garcia Lovink shared her hopes for web art to become an “existential aesthetic”. I agree with this and feel like web art can become an influential place for people to share their art and ideas if it is used properly.
