I read an article on the history of internet art- labeled net.art - for class and there are a few things I found notable. Not much was surprising as majoring in art makes it hard to be surprised by anything related to art history, but a lot I found interesting.
One thing that I didn’t exactly expect (granted I was not surprised by it) is that Russia played a large role in the progression of net.art. This article spans the early 90’s to late 90’s and I have no clue why, but I did not expect Russia or any of eastern Europe to play a large role in internet art, especially not this early on. The reason I am not surprised though is because art tends to arise with any sort of political-societal conflict. Eastern Europe is not a stranger to this. This so-called net.art acted as a utopia (verbatim) for citizens.
The second thing I found interesting yet not surprising was how by the late 90’s, internet art became something that had to have its boundaries pushed. As is with most contemporary art styles, the art always starts out as art-for-art's-sake; the existence of the medium is valid enough, however as time progresses, artists feel the need to push the limits of what falls into the medium. Similar to the pushing of performance art, digital art found itself in the same pattern. Suddenly the stylized HTML pages were not enough and instead the art had to be challenging some norm.
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