Internet-art and its Medium: Exploring Hypermedia Structure and Multimedia Environment of the World Wide Web through Net-art Projects

Abstract: The work examines the problem of interrelation between Internet-based art and its medium – the World Wide Web. It elucidates the ways of how net-artists employ and reconsider the basic qualities of the Internet-medium in their virtual projects. All the net-art works are subjected to the terms of the Web-environment, which drastically differs from the context of real exhibition space or traditional artistic media. Net-art, however, does not only accept the rules of its Medium, but also builds a specific strategy to reflect upon them – it forms its own critical standpoint. The research is centered around two crucial conditions imposed by the Web-medium on practices of net-art: first, - functioning in hypermedia environment, second, - necessity to deal with multimedia content. The both hypermedia and multimedia are essential features of the Internet: they define the ways of how virtual information is processed, structured and, finally, displayed. Likewise, the notions of hypermedia and multimedia establish specific rules for art, existing in the Global Network. What the net-artists do, in this respect, is that they take hypermedia and multimedia as thematic subject of their works, considering these two conditions from their own perspective. Thus, net-art enacts as powerful tool for critical reflection upon the World Wide Web. The general argumentation of the work is supported by 5 particular examples of Internet-art, which are incorporated into the course of the discussion. These are the projects by single internet-artists -Lisa Jevbratt, Mark Napier and artistic groups such as “Jodi”, “I/O/D”, “0100101110101101.org”. Each of the case studies is directly related to one of the two Internet-aspects – either hypermedia or multimedia. In general, the work investigates the self-reflective character of Internet-art and identifies the impact which is, due to this self-reflective quality, exerted on the Web-medium. Different modes of self-reflexivity are revealed. One of them is, for instance, how net-art reconsiders hypermedia components of the Web such as data, graphic interface etc., while the other is critical reevaluation of multimedia contents. The self-reflexivity and self-reference is the primary focus of current analysis, which brings to a new understanding of the Internet-based art.