Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art from a Review of Artists' Use of the World Wide

Web
Author(s): Alison Colman
Source: Visual Arts Research, Vol. 31, No. 1, Intersections of Technology with Art
Education (2005), pp. 13-25
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20715365
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Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art from a Review
of Artists' Use of the World Wide Web
Alison Colman
Ohio University
Abstract
From a review of the purposes and strategies
that a number of artists employ in Web art and
from a review of literature on its aesthetic
dimensions, I propose three considerations for
evaluating works of Web art: (a) meaning is
connected to its self-referentiality through
metaphoric references to other forms in such a
way that the content interrogates the Web's form
and challenges hypermedia conventions; (b)
contemplation occurs through "conceptually slow"
navigation; and (c) Web art's social interface is
not reductive to pure presentation. I argue that
Web art's distinguishing characteristics?such as
abnegation of distance, omni-directionality, and
viewer influence on the art?do not define its
aesthetics nor establish an appropriate base for
aesthetic evaluation. In evaluating the selected
Web art for discussion in this paper, I asked: "In
what ways does the work challenge World Wide
Web users and their notions of art?" An analysis
of the aesthetic goals of Web artists provides
criteria to critically evaluate Web art.
Web art, a genre of "Internet art,"
emerged alongside the development of the
World Wide Web. Internet art refers more
broadly to artistic practices that reside
within electronic networks, such as email,
Telnet, Multi User Dungeons (MUDs), and
the World Wide Web (WWW). Web art is
Internet art created specifically for the Web,
that is, a "Web-specific art" (Galloway,
2004, p. 220), and explores its "technologi
cal peculiarities" (Baumg?rtel, 2001, p. 24),
limitations, and failures.
Calling into question commonly held
notions about art and aesthetics, I argue
that Web art constitutes a new experimen
tal visual language that critiques Web de
sign conventions such as frames, banner
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advertising, animated GIFs, changing cur
sors, and rollover effects (Colman, 2004;
Johnson, 1997). Web artists facilitate
meaningful human-to-human and human
to-machine interactions. Web artists also
tend to appropriate, merge, and
recontextualize visual culture media such
as video games, computer graphics and
animation, sound, and photography. How
ever, Web art represents a break from
these media by calling attention to the
uniqueness of the Internet experience,
such as lags in transmission time, busy
signals, computer crashes, and corrupted
code (Galloway, 2004; Grzinic, 2000). I
conclude with an evaluative framework
based on Web art's aesthetic properties
that may enable the viewer/user to thought
fully engage with Web art as well as other
digital visual cultural forms.
I define "digital visual culture" as a genre
of visual culture encompassing technologi
cally based modes of cultural expression
and popular entertainment, including video
games, online games, computer animation,
music videos, and the Internet. Darley
(2000) characterizes the aesthetic dimen
sion of digital visual culture as one that
privileges spectacle, superficiality, self
referentiality, and intertextuality. Digital cul
ture media and digital art media often use
the same material base (i.e., electronic sig
nals, computer data) and the same condi
tions of perception (i.e., computer monitor,
television screen), thus breaking down the
aesthetic typology according to mediums
(e.g., painting, sculpture, photography)
(Manovich, 2001 a). This typology is based
on the assumption that artistic practice
should be categorized according to the
materials the artist uses, an assumption I
argue against. In constructing an aesthetic
of Web art, I focus on the many artists who
use digital technology to heighten viewers'
critical perceptions regarding visual digital
culture.
While these aforementioned forms of
digital visual culture and their aesthetic
qualities are ripe for investigation, I focus
on aesthetics of Web art in particular. I have
chosen to focus on Web art, first, because
it refashions familiar cultural forms such as
television, video, film, and sound (Bolter &
Grusin, 1999). Second, an increasing num
ber of youth are using the WWW, both at
school and at home (Levin & Arafeh, 2002).
Third, art educators I have interviewed who
use computers in the classroom have ex
pressed interest in learning new ap
proaches to teaching students about com
puter art, as well as interest in learning
about artists who use computers to make
art. Finally, Web art is accessible compared
to other forms of digital and conceptual art,
especially if the school has a computer lab
with Internet access. The tools needed to
create it are relatively few1 and students
can look at the "real deal" when interact
ing with Web art. Reproductions are un
necessary; students can establish a direct
relationship with the work as opposed to
experiencing it second hand, or after the
fact through reproduction, which is the case
for many other art forms.
Two related questions guide this study
regarding Web art aesthetics. In what ways
does Web art challenge users of the WWW,
as well as challenge their notions of art's
purpose and function? Insights into these
challenges offer an aesthetic orientation
and art criticism framework to interpret Web
art.
Defining Web Art: What It Is,
What It Isn't
Web art is a relatively new phenomenon,
having come into existence in 1993 when
the WWW, designed by Tim Berners-Lee,
was first made public. The Web made it
possible for users to create electronic docu
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ments integrating text, images, sound, ani
mated sequences, films, 3D simulations,
and photographs (Bolter & Grusin, 1999).
While the first Web browsers were capable
of displaying only text, the first graphic
browsers (Mosaic? and Netscape Naviga
tor^, developed in 1993 and 1994 respec
tively) were able to display images, video,
and audio (Greene, 2004). Early examples
of artistic experimentation with the Web
include Douglas Davis's The World's First
Collaborative Sentence (1994), Joseph
Squier's The Place (1994), Antonio
Muntadas' The Fileroom (1994), Alexei
Shulgin's Hot Pictures (1994), and Hand
shake (1994) by Berlin artist collective Lux
Logis comprised of Barbara Anselmeier,
Joachim Blank, Armin Haase, and Karl
Heinz Jeron. Many early Web artists dealt
with themes such as "information," "com
munication," "interaction," and "systems" by
way of creating opportunities for dialogue
and exchange; this early work also tended
to reflect the text-heavy aesthetic predomi
nant in the Web's earliest incarnations.
Web artists at the time often used "lo-fi"
net production tools such as HTML, digital
graphics and Adobe Photoshop? (Greene,
2004, pp. 31-33).
Much early Web art (or net.art2), created
roughly between 1995 and 1999, was
shaped by technological constraints such
as limited bandwidth and slow computers.
Instead of viewing these constraints as a
hindrance, artists such as Olia Lialina,
Alexei Shulgin, Heath Bunting, and Vuk
Cosic eschewed sophisticated graphics
software and browser plug-ins in favor of
creating highly conceptual, Web-specific
works exploring the Internet and network
protocols as an artistic medium. Due to the
improvements in bandwidth and computer
speed since the late 1990s, Web art prac
tices expanded to include the use of com
mercial animation software such as Flash?.
Since 1999, Web artists have increasingly
explored new media genres such as online
games (e.g., Natalie Bookchin, Anne-Marie
Schleiner, and Jon Thomson and Alison
Craighead) and e-commerce (e.g., RTMark,
eToy, AKSHUN, and Michael Mandiberg),
and use or disrupt commercial software
conventions (Galloway, 2004).
Web art embodies an emerging visual
language that experiments with hypertext
conventions such as nonsequential writing,
branching structures, and spatializing text
by extending narrative over several Web
pages. Electronic networks in which it is
embedded provide unprecedented oppor
tunities for global collaboration and co-au
thorship between individuals. Web art, like
most Web pages, draws on and refashions
earlier media forms such as the telegraph,
books, magazines, film, photography, and
television while providing greater imme
diacy, or "hypermediacy" (Bolter & Grusin,
1999, p. 202). Web art is a continuation of
earlier forms of conceptual and time-based
art such as networks, mail art, environmen
tal art, happenings, video art, performance
art, and the work of groups such as
FLUXUS and EAT (Experiments in Art and
Technology, 1966). In addition, some art
ists such as Robert Adrian, Carl Loeffler,
Sherrie Rabinowitz, Kit Galloway, and Roy
Ascott had been using satellite,
conferencing systems, and electronic net
works since the early 1970s (Greene, 2004).
Web art is not "art on the net"?the use
of the WWW to post imagery created with
another medium (such as paint or pastel)
and scanned into the computer, or the use
of a browser to display digital imagery. "Art
on the net" treats the Internet as a virtual
gallery where artwork can be "hung" and
viewed by clicking on a text link or an im
age. In contrast, Web art uses the Internet
in that both the "network and its content
(technical, cultural and social)" often "forms
the basis for the piece" (Heck, 1999
Colman, 2004, p. 62). In other words, with
Web art, the Internet is integral to the
work's creation and distribution. Web art
can also be described as a form of con
ceptual art in which the artist makes use
of computer networks to implement art
ideas and facilitate meaningful human-to
machine and human-to-human interaction.
One unique feature of Web art that dis
tinguishes it from its predecessors is that it
fosters many different hyperlink-based
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forms of connectivity and participation,
building on connections between remote
persons that evolve into a complex infra
structure, or allows users to make use
of information located in distant locations
(Wilson, 2002). For example, some Web
artists (e.g., Victoria Vesna, Kathy Rae
Huffman, and Josh On and the
Futurefarmers) have capitalized on this
connectivity by creating artificial worlds
and similar structures supporting synchro
nous and asynchronous chat, stretching
across global and political boundaries.
Other Web artists (Andy Deck, Graham
Harwood/Mongrel, and Rachel Baker) have
created work that facilitates participation in
generating, accumulating, controlling, dis
tributing, and manipulating information. In
addition, many Web artists (e.g., Amy
Alexander, Wolfgang Staehle, and Heath
Bunting) have created art reflexively com
menting upon the Internet itself,
deconstructing topics such as the represen
tation of knowledge, Internet commercial
ization, the machine/body interface, utopie
visions of the Internet, advertising, privacy,
censorship, surveillance, and intellectual
property (Wilson, 2002). Web art also dis
solves the boundaries between production
(who is the work's creator? the artist, us
ers, or both?), distribution (where is the work
seen?), consumption (viewing and interac
tion), and critique (reflection upon the work).
Web Art and Institutionalization
Web art's ephemeral nature raises issues
regarding commodification and institution
alization. Since Web art is collaborative and
distributed through networks instead of
solitary and product oriented, artists such
as Robert Adrian have expressed hope that
it will be largely ignored by the art estab
lishment (see Baumg?rtel, 1997a). Other
Web artists, including Shulgin (1997) and
Lialina (1997), have expressed ambiva
lence about Web art's institutionalization,
perceiving the Internet (at the time) as a
democratic medium that gives artists the
means to circumvent an art world
gatekeeping system that designates what
Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art 15
 is art and which artists are worthy of atten
tion (Colman, 2003). For Dirk Paesmans
and Joan Heemskirk, the most troubling
aspect of displaying Web art in an institu
tional setting is its automatic, unambigu
ous labeling as "art" (see Baumg?rtel,
1997b). In their manifesto An Introduction
to net.art 1994-1999, Bookchin and
Shulgin (1999) outline the political ramifi
cations of Web art by situating it outside
mainstream art world structures. They state
first that net.artists "sought to break down
autonomous disciplines and outmoded
classifications imposed upon various ac
tivists' practices" (U 1). They then assert
net.art demonstrates a lack of compromise
accomplished by:
maintaining independence from institu
tional bureaucracies; by working without
marginalization and achieving a substan
tial audience, communication, dialogue
and fun; by realizing ways out of en
trenched values arising from a structured
system of theories and ideologies (K 1).
Early attempts to assimilate Web art into
an institutional vision include Ada'web, run
by curator Benjamin Weil from 1994 to
1998, and the curation of online work by
the Dia Center for the Arts. Years 1999
2001 saw a marked increase in attention
paid to Web art on the part of prestigious
museums including the Center for Art and
Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe,
Germany, the Whitney Museum, the Mu
seum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
and the Walker Museum in Minneapolis.
Stallabrass (2003) states that the "great
est danger of art institutions embracing
Internet art is that in doing so they will
change it to fit their purposes" (p. 119), ar
guing that in order to fit into an institution
alized setting, Web art must be transformed
into a "hybrid techno-craft practice of mak
ing objects and environments" (p. 120).
Transferring the experience of Web art from
server space to the physical space of a
museum or gallery has not been entirely
successful. For example, the workstations
in ZKM's exhibition Net_condition were
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configured to have only one work present
on each machine, forcing viewers to move
from one machine to another just as they
would if they were looking at images hung
on a wall, allowing only one person to view
each work at a time.
How Have Artists Used the Internet?
This description of approaches is not meant
to be exhaustive, as it is impossible to do
justice to the enormous range of artistic
practices on the WWW. Rather, I provide a
very small sampling of what exists. This
description is also not meant to place a spot
light on an artist's use of certain technologi
cal applications. Instead, these approaches
refer to the manner in which artists explore
the cultural and social uses of and assump
tions about the Internet, as well as how they
experiment with Internet conventions and
protocols, such as Hypertext Transfer Pro
tocol (HTTP) and Transmission Control Pro
tocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
Some Web art is "self-contained" in that
the viewer/user navigates only through the
pages within the work, without facilitating
communication or interaction with other
users or other Web pages outside the
site. Some artists who take this approach
investigate topics such as narrative (Olia
Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back from the
War, 1996; Abbe Don's Bubbe's Back
Porch, 1996; Juliet Martin's OOOXXXOOO,
1997), or use the WWW as a platform
for experimenting with Internet browser
protocols (Dirk Paesmans and Joan
Heemskirk's wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, 1995),
digital aesthetics, scripting, and navigational
structure (Ben Benjamin's Superbad, 1997;
Aurea Harvey and Michail Samyn's
entropy8zuper\, 1998). Other artists have
taken various approaches to connectivity,
interaction, and virtual reality, such as
telepresence (Ken Goldberg's The
Telegarden, 1995; Eduardo Kac's
Teleporting to an Unknown State, 1998)?
creating virtual worlds where users can cre
ate avatars and interact with each other
(Victoria Vesna and Robert Niedeffer's Bod
ies Incorporated, 1996), creating works
bridging online and offline experience
(Heath Bunting's King's Cross Phone in,
1994, and BorderXing, 2002; Miranda July
and Harrell Fletcher's Learning to Love You
More, 2002) or visualizing connections
(Josh On and Futurefarmer's They Rule,
2001) and community (Ethan Kaplan's
murmurs.com, 2003). Some artists have
created online games (Natalie Bookchin's
Intruder, 1999, and Metapet, 2003), and
others have endeavored to challenge
WWW design, navigation, and information
retrieval conventions through the creation
of alternative browsers (artist collective
l/O/D's Web Stalker?see Fuller, Green, &
Pope, 1997; and Maciej Wisniewski's
Netomat, 1999).
Aesthetics of Web Art
While notions of beauty and taste can be
applied to Web art, these values may not
be useful when discussing Web art aes
thetics. The lack of a material object (like
a painting or sculpture) in Web art does
not mean a viewer cannot experience it
aesthetically or make meaning from it.
What, then, is the relationship between the
work and the viewer's perception of it?
According to aestheticians Beardsley
(1981) and Punday (2003), a physical ob
ject must be transformed into a perceptual
object before one can respond to it aes
thetically. Therefore, I contend that the
aesthetic qualities of a work depend less
on its actual physical qualities than on our
perceptions of those qualities; in doing this,
I am making a distinction between the work
of art as a physical object and the work as
a phenomenal entity. A perceptual object
is not limited to physical objects per se, as
theatre, ballet, and musical performances
also qualify as perceptual objects. The
perceptual character of Web art can be
compared to these other performative art
forms in that it is predominantly spatio-tem
poral: the work unfolds over time and
evolves through "space."
One distinguishing characteristic of Web
art is its "abnegation of distance"
(Campanella, 2000, p. 24), enabling the
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viewer to visually experience via electronic
networks a temporally and/or spatially dis
tant real environment or performance.
Performative art forms such as dance, per
formance art, theater, and music require
the viewer's physical presence in reason
ably close proximity to the work in order to
experience it. The only way a viewer or lis
tener could experience it without being in
the same space as the performers is
through a reproduction or recording. Web
art, while created by physically situated
artists and programmers, "resides" on an
Internet server, and thus in order to expe
rience the work the viewer logs on to a
computer (located anywhere in the world)
with a Web browser and an Internet con
nection.3
A second distinguishing characteristic of
much Web art is that the interaction
it facilitates is not unidirectional, mono
sensory, or irreversible in that the relation
ship between the image and the viewer, the
machine and the viewer and between mul
tiple viewers is omnidirectional. Contrast
this with a conception of media based on
transmission, dissemination, and centraliza
tion (Stocker & Schopf, 1999). In television
and film, for example, the images are pre
sented sequentially to the viewer, and the
viewer has no input or impact on the im
ages on the screen aside from changing
channels or making a selection from a DVD.
Unlike Web art, there is no meaningful op
portunity for the viewer to impact the work's
content or outcome. With Web art, informa
tion passes between the viewer and the
machine, between real and virtual space.
Internet activity in virtual space influences
the sequence of events in real space, and
events in real space influence the sequence
of events in virtual space.
Web art's aesthetics cannot be reduced
to the technology that makes its existence
possible, its technological sophistication,
or the technical level of interactivity. Al
though the medium executing it contributes
to the work's meaning, I believe Web art's
aesthetics cannot be defined solely through
its materiality: computer hardware, com
puter networks, cables, browser software,
Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art 17
network protocols, graphics software, and
the like. Such a definition implies that ex
pertise in Adobe Photoshop?, computer
programming or computer engineering, for
instance, renders one capable of analyz
ing or creating Web art; and art education,
art criticism, film criticism, or art history is
unnecessary. It is also problematic to de
fine Web art through the medium alone,
as it implies that a particular medium has
essential characteristics rendering it dis
tinct from others. While media such as oil
paint, acrylics, terra cotta, and porcelain
clay have characteristics unique to them
selves, some Web artists appropriate and
refashion a range of earlier media forms.
To quote Marshall McLuhan (1960), "The
advent of a new medium often reveals the
lineaments and assumptions, as it were,
of an old medium" (p. 567). Although
McLuhan was referring to television's re
lationship to radio, this quote applies to the
Web, at least in its infancy. In addition, the
processes, participation, and collaboration
that Web art facilitates (e.g., its form) does
not by itself serve as a basis for aesthetic
evaluation because its form is indistinguish
able from that of other, non-art Web sites.
Although I contend the conceptual core of
Web art is embedded within the participa
tion and collaboration made possible by the
network, participatory exchanges do not
define Web art as such. If it did, all inter
esting threads of online communication
could be referred to as "art." Furthermore,
defining Web art according to its form fail
to distinguish it from mainstream Web sites,
as this definition artificially separates form
from content, implying that it is possible for
works of art to be "content free," a stance
with which I disagree. Content, I argue,
should be synonymous with meaning, and
art has meaning.
Self-referentiality
The modernist notion of self-referentiality
refers to the ways in which artists investi
gate the specific qualities of the particular
media they have used to create their work.
In the case of Web art, self-referentiality
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refers to the artist's interrogation of the
Web's design, programming, and behav
ioral conventions; it is Web art about the
Web. In other words, Web art calls atten
tion to the various qualities of the WWW
users take for granted, such as its connec
tivity, the browser interface, or its function
as a database, to name a few examples.
Therefore, what distinguishes Web art from
an online forum or a chat room, for ex
ample, is that the work's content is the
means by which the artist interrogates the
Web's form through exploring the mallea
bility of Web technology. An online forum,
on the other hand, lacks this self
referentiality. Thus in order to discuss the
aesthetics of Web art, one must address
the connection between form and content
made possible by Web artists exploiting the
Internet's openness to manipulation.
Self-referentiality has been attributed
to Web art by cultural critics Manovich
(2001 b), Baumg?rtel (2001 ), and Galloway
(2004). In a chapter devoted to Internet art,
Galloway quotes Baumg?rtel describing
Web art's self-referentiality:
It has always been emphasized that the
first and most important theme of Net art
is the Internet itself. Net art addresses its
own medium; it deals with the specific
conditions the Internet offers. It explores
the possibilities that arise from its taking
place within this electronic network and is
therefore "Net specific"... It only has any
meaning at all within its medium, the
Internet. (Galloway, 2004, p. 216).
Galloway (2004) presents Alexei Shulgin's
Refresh (1996) as an example of this self
referentiality. Refresh is a Web art project
consisting of a chain of Web pages linked
together automatically; the browser loops
through these pages (using the "refresh"
HTML command) with a 10-second delay,
like a slide show. The project is open to
anyone who wishes to collaborate by add
ing his or her own page as a link. What is
self-referential about the work is how it
makes use of and calls attention to the
Web's network capabilities; the art exists
within the collaboration, rather is than based
on any one Web page or individual content.
 While a significant number of Web art
ists create work "about" the Internet in that
such self-referentiality can be difficult to
avoid, it cannot necessarily be perceived
as a return to Greenbergian modernism.
Modernist self-referentiality was subsumed
under notions of transcendence through
the artist's exploration of the medium's
specific material nature and the repudia
tion of social and political matters (Trodd,
2001). Web art's self-referentiality, how
ever, instead of being a "purely aesthetic
gesture" (Berry, 2004, U 6), highlights the
medium's malleability, changeability, and
lack of specificity, and by doing so ad
dresses the social and political dimensions
of information technology.
Metaphoric References to Other
Media Forms
Metaphoric references to other forms
of visual culture in Web art render
self-referentiality, in the form of
recontextualization of other media, more
transparent. "Media recontextualization"
refers to the ways in which other newer
media?such as film, television, the hu
man-computer interface, computer soft
ware, digital video, computer games, and
photography, as well as print media such
as magazines, books, and newspapers?
are either embedded within the works and
manipulated by the artists and users, or
challenged by the artists outright. The way
in which this recontextualization occurs in
Web art is often purposeful, and depen
dent on the artist's intent.
Therefore, metaphoric references could
enable the viewer to identify the media be
ing refashioned in the work and contem
plate how this refashioning shapes the
work's meaning. For instance, film and tele
vision can be perceived as a rectangular
window two-dimensionally framing a three
dimensional world. The printed word, in the
form of a book, can be perceived as a lin
ear series of stacked rectangles contain
ing information in the form of text. Web
pages can be likened to a scroll. The
recontextualization of the various media in
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Web art ranges from conservative, in which
the conventions of a particular medium are
closely adhered to, to radical, in which the
conventions are subverted, altered, or chal
lenged.
For example, while refashioning media
such as books and magazines, the text's
function in a work of Web art may be con
servative (although the content and purpose
may not be) in that it provides information
or tells a story, and the Web artist has fol
lowed a more traditional graphic design
approach by arranging the text in a manner
similar to the layout of a printed brochure
(e.g., the Yes Men's [2000] gwbush.com).
On the other hand, text may play an
entirely aesthetic/decorative role in the
work, such as ASCII art, or through innova
tive typography. The work may consist en
tirely of text (e.g., Heath Bunting's
['\996\_readme.html (Own, Be Owned, or
Remain Invisible) or be primarily text based
(Keith Obadike's [2001 ] Blackness for Sale).
The work may consist almost entirely of
images, whether scanned artwork or pho
tography, entirely computer generated (e.g.,
Lisa Jevbratt's [1999/2001] 1:1(2)
Interface.'Every' and 1:1(2)-lnterface:
'Migration), or taken from another Web site
and manipulated, animated, or still. There
may be a relative balance between text and
images. The images may change with cur
sor movement or require user input. The
viewer/user also must consider the relation
ship between the text and images in the
work, as well as the relationship between
text elements and the relationship between
imagery, and how they are combined or in
teract to create meaning in the work.
An example of radical refashioning is
the Web Stalker, a browser created by Brit
ish artist collective l/O/D (Fuller, Green, &
Pope, 1997).The work's purpose is to chal
lenge established conventions of informa
tion retrieval on the WWW, primarily the
way Web browsers shape the user's ex
perience. I/O/D members were interested
in portraying the Web through its qualities
as a network, rather than utilizing Web
design conventions that mimic traditional
graphic design conventions meant for print
Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art 19
publication or the television screen (Lovink,
1998). The Web Stalker, which does not
read images, is a network-ready browser
tool similar to Netscape Navigator? or
Internet Explorer?. Instead of displaying
what the Web site's original creators in
tended the viewer to see, Web Stalker
maps the external links from a given HTML
page, tracing out the spaces between Web
pages. The piece disassembles Web
pages, presenting a collection of parts in
stead of an integrated whole. Upon launch
ing Web Stalker, users can create multiple
windows on a black or magenta back
ground field and assign functions to them
such as "crawl," "map," or "extract." "Crawl"
enables the user to connect to a site and
follow every link and subsequent link on
that site. "Map," a basic, real-time dynamic
visualization of the Web's underlying link
node structure, displays all the links from
the selected page, represented as a
bouquet of circles with lines for stems.
The "extract" function pulls the text out of
a Web page and displays it in a scrollable
window. Other functions include "dis
mantle," which enables the user to take
links out of a page and save separately
using the "stash" function.
Contemplation through "Conceptually
Slow" Navigation
One approach toward Web art's aesthet
ics is to address the connection between
the work's spatio-temporality and its mean
ing. I am not using "temporality" to mean
the time it takes for a page or image to
download, or time needed to peruse a par
ticular page. Rather, I am referring to the
amount of engagement needed with a par
ticular work of Web art in order to grasp
and appreciate its underlying concept, the
evaluation of the conceptual depth of the
piece in relation to the breadth of its imple
mentation. The work may contain many
pages, or few. The viewer may need to
navigate throughout the entire work in or
der to derive meaning from it; or perhaps
navigation through a select number of
pages is all that is necessary. The artist
20 Alison Colman
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may have also constructed the work in such
a way that the user's (or previous users')
actions remain visible on the space of the
screen while navigating through the work
over time. The element of time also refers
to the user's navigational pace, in that the
piece may be constructed to slow users
down or enable them to navigate the pages
quickly.
"Navigation" refers to the sequence in
which the user experiences the individual
pages in the work. The sequence may be
linear and predetermined by the artist, or
the user's path may be more open, circu
lar, or random. It may be easy or difficult to
decipher how to navigate throughout the
work. Finally, the user might rely on text,
images, or both as links to guide them
through the work.
For example, the aesthetic notion of
"conceptually quick" refers to a work in
which purpose or meaning becomes clear
after the user has examined a small num
ber of key pages or images. It is succinct,
terse, and compact. A "conceptually slow"
piece, however, is one in which the viewer
must navigate through a large number of
pages while spending a considerable
amount of time with the work in order to
grasp its underlying concepts, its depth, or
scope.
Based on this aesthetic criterion, I dis
tinguish compelling works of Web art from
"typical" or commercial Web sites meant to
be extremely "quick." They tend toward con
ceptual shallowness, designed for efficient
information retrieval and the subsequent
elimination of the confusion that prompts
users to leave the site and not return. Even
if the site has a large number of pages, the
user is not necessarily encouraged or in
vited to explore them?the scope of the site
is neither integral to nor required for the user
to peruse in order to fully appreciate the
site's content and purpose. Much Web art,
on the other hand, is very "slow" in com
parison. To analyze Web art, like other art
forms, one must become accustomed to this
slowness to evaluate the relationship be
tween the work's conceptual depth and its
breadth of implementation.
 One example of a Web art piece that at
first appears to be "conceptually quick" is
Mark Napier's (1998) Digital Landfill. The
title, immediately hinting at the work's
meaning, alludes to changes in perception
regarding the Internet. Once heralded as
a "village" or "community," a rarified digital
space for those in academia, government,
or industry, its explosion into a popular, glo
bal mass media form has rendered it into
a veritable digital "garbage dump." The first
page instructs the user to deposit digital
"trash" into the digital landfill, whether it be
unwanted e-mails, HTML scripts, or spam,
by entering a title and the contents into two
text fields. This content is "added" to the
"landfill," and displayed along with the con
tents submitted by other visitors in a cha
otically layered pattern. While the purpose
of the work can be gleaned relatively
quickly, however, it is the virtual "landfill"
that contributes to the work's "slowness,"
as it invites the viewer to browse through
the large number of submissions inserted
by past visitors as if painstakingly sifting
through an enormous pile of trash. Napier
also uses HTML frames to divide the "land
fill" page in two, listing the titles of previ
ous users' submissions on the left side of
the screen (conflating time and space) and
displaying the contents of the "landfill" on
the right. This allows the user to view the
scope of previous additions without hav
ing to navigate different pages to see past
results.
Another approach to "slowness" in a
Web art piece is Olia Lialina's (1996)
evocative My Boyfriend Came Back from
the War. Manovich (2001b) describes the
work as a "spatial montage" (p. 325) nar
rating a fated romance, in which the user
progresses through the work by clicking on
a multiplying number of juxtaposed black
and-white images and text fragments, di
viding the browser window into increasingly
smaller segments through Lialina's use of
HTML frames. With no set path to follow
despite a fixed beginning and end, the
viewer is left to decipher who is uttering
the snippets of the conversation between
the narrator and her lover. Consequently,
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there are many variations on how the
viewer would navigate the piece and con
struct meaning from the experience. There
are also a few hints regarding the relation
ship between the text fragments and the
visual elements remaining on the screen
over the duration of the user's progression
through the piece. This spatial dimension
contributes to the tension, ambiguity, and
interplay between these elements regard
ing their significance to the meaning of the
work. Like Napier, Lialina makes use of the
Web's conflation of time and space,
"slowly" rather than "quickly."
Web Art's Social Interface is Not
Reducible to Pure Presentation
Regarding the images and text visible on
the computer screen (i.e., the interface) in
Web art works, I find it problematic to con
ceive them in terms of what Lev Manovich
(2001a) refers to as the "informational di
mension," "information-as-representation,"
or the "aestheticizing of information" (e.g.,
this is what artists can do with zeroes and
ones, bits and bytes). I find the "informa
tion-as-representation" approach, while
interesting, reductive in that it (a) presents
Web art's visual qualities solely in terms of
the technologies that facilitate them, and
(b) does not sufficiently attend to the vi
sual language and visual strategies em
ployed by Web artists who shape the com
municative aspects of Web art.
I also find it difficult to perceive them as
simulacra according to Baudrillard's (1983)
theories of the hyperreal (images without
an original referent), as explicated in his
influential essay Simulacra and Simula
tions often cited in writings about new me
dia forms (see Darley, 2000). Although
thought provoking, I find Baudrillard's theo
ries insufficient, as they refer primarily to
the superficiality of the spectacle found on
the screen, such as the television set or
the movie theatre. Web art's social dimen
sions are not reductive to the screen inter
face and thus not purely presentational. I
find it more useful to examine Web art's
screen aesthetics through its manifestation
Constructing an Aesthetic of Web Art 21
of the historically complex relationship be
tween words and images, and how works
of Web art draw upon, refashion, and chal
lenge Internet conventions along with other
forms of digital visual culture.
In traditional Western thought, text takes
precedence over image in a binary rela
tionship (Wysocki, 2003). Theorists such
as Habermas (1989) and Virilio (1994)
have argued that, while text requires inter
pretation (and thus a significant amount of
intellectual work), the visual does not re
quire such interpretation, thus removing the
possibility of reflection (Wysocki, 2003).
When text and image are combined, the
perceived relationship between them pre
sents the overall function of the image as
one that supplements the text through the
reinforcement of its meaning. This relation
ship is ubiquitous in print culture, as one
generally sees text and images juxtaposed
in books, magazines, and newspapers. In
these examples, the real work of commu
nication is done by the words (Bolter, 2001,
2003). However, this relationship has
shifted with the advent of mass culture
forms such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, and the
WWW.
Emoticons are one example of the
conflation of text and image in the digital
media environment. With emoticons, text
symbols are used to create images con
veying a particular message, semantic or
rhetorical meaning, or expression: :-) (1 am
smiling at you"); :-( ( am unhappy"); >:-(
( am angry"); :-D ( am laughing"), @?
>?> (a rose); or O?|?<[: (a person riding
a skateboard). Another example of text
symbols being used as imagery is ASCII
art, ranging from the simple to the highly
elaborate. Nevertheless, when it comes to
forms designated as "art," many students
still tend to perceive word and image as
mutually exclusive (Colman, 2004). For
instance, despite a familiarity with contem
porary art, secondary- and university-level
students I have worked with have insisted
the presence and communicative function
of text in Web art negated its status as "art."
The students privileged the text in the
works, conceptualizing and labeling them
22 Alison Colman
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accordingly: The text made "stories," "nar
ratives," or "Web sites," not "art." This could
perhaps be attributed, at least in part, to
the relatively unfamiliar experience of look
ing at art on a computer screen, which is a
much different "art experience" from that
of wandering through a museum or gallery
(Colman, 2004). Nevertheless, a viewer of
much existing Web art is confronted with
the transformation of text into something
aesthetic and symbolic, forced to consider
the communitive and conceptual weight of
the images within the work in relation to
the text.
Conclusion: Deconstructing
Web Art's Aesthetics
Art educators commonly adopt a formalist
stance, relying on the elements and prin
ciples of art as a starting point when in
structing students how to analyze artworks
created with oil paint or marble, for ex
ample. While one might utilize the elements
and principles to appreciate Web art, I have
been discussing how its distinct aesthetic
properties serve as the basis for a frame
work that would enable the viewer to make
meaning of its experiential dimensions. I
intend this framework as a starting point,
not a comprehensive guide. I have also
tried to explain how formalist concepts such
as self-referentiality have been trans
formed by Web art in such a way that such
concepts cannot be extricated as easily
from social or political discourses as they
traditionally have been. Furthermore, I
have also tried to demonstrate how art
works created exclusively for the Web have
posed a range of challenges to art's sta
tus, the relationship between the viewer
and the work, and the notion of distance
and proximity.
There are a number of possible direc
tions to pursue regarding the critical evalu
ation of Web art beyond what I have pre
sented here. One possible direction is the
investigation of the aesthetics of specific
genres of Web art, such as games,
telepresence, tactical media, or "lo-fi"
(Greene, 2004). Another possible direction
might be a further investigation into the
question of formalism as it relates to Web
art and other forms of art relying on com
puter networks. A third possibility would be
an investigation of what Web art brings to
bear on contemporary issues of the infor
mation age, such as globalization, surveil
lance, rampant commercialization of pub
lic spaces, and the Internet's influence on
perceptions of self and identity, to name a
few. Last but certainly not least, a fourth
possibility is the continued exploration of
Web art aesthetics in the K-12 and college
level art classroom.
Endnotes
1. The basic tools one needs to create
Web art are a computer, Web browser, Web
authoring software, and a word process
ing program, if one chooses to write com
puter code in Hypertext Markup Language
(HTML).
Bolter, J. D. (2001 ). Writing space: The computer,
2. See http://amsterdam.nettime.
org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9703/
msg00094.html, submitted by Internet art
ist Alexei Shulgin, for an explanation re
garding the origins of the term "net.art."
This explanation was later revealed by
Internet artist Vuk Cosic to be a hoax
(Greene, 2004).
3. I do not wish to imply here that the
Internet does away with the constraints of
distance, location, or the body. For a dis
cussion on the limitations of the Internet
with regards to embodiment and
situatedness, see J. Malpas (2000).
Correspondence concerning this article
should be addressed to Alison Colman,
School of Art, 528 Seigfred Hall, Ohio Uni
versity, Athens, OH 45701. Electronic mail
may be sent to speciarchy@columbus.
rr.com.
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