Into the Web: Artists On the InternetContemporary electronic artists can hardly be blamed for clinging to the comfortable notion of art as object. Up until very recently, there hasn't really been another viable option. But the rise of the Internet, and particularly the emergence of the information-rich World Wide Web, has changed all that.
At its site of origin, electronic art exists only as a signal, as a pulse on a screen. This transitory and immaterial aspect has been in direct opposition to many of the fundamental expectations we bring to the production and viewing of art. But with the emergence of a networked electronic community, art as signal becomes decidedly advantageous, allowing artists to distribute work instantaneously to multiple locations. This provides the missing piece in the puzzle of how digital tools might be of use to artists. Up until now, electronic artists have been attempting to fit a round peg into a square hole. The traditional gallery and museum venues deny the very characteristics that make electronic art unique, but the lack of a viable alternatives gave artists no where else to turn. The emergence of electronic communities will provide digital art a context in which it can flourish and develop its own vocabulary. This will involve more than just escaping the confines of the art object. Art on the Internet exists in an environment more open and interactive than any typical gallery setting. Roles on the Internet are fluid. Citizens can shift almost seamlessly from listener to speaker, from consumer to producer, from audience to author. These dynamics provide artists with challenges and opportunities that haven't even begun to be explored.
One thing that is certain, art schools will soon feel the pressure to accommodate a kind of art it has never seen before. Photography programs will be hit particularly hard by this development, because of the medium's strong ties to both the technology and popular culture.
I don't pretend to have the inside track on knowing where this will take us. But I'd like to offer as a possible response to this challenge, a course that I have been teaching recently called Artists on the Internet. In the last few years I have become very involved in the Internet and the Web, constructing both my own Web site called the place, and also co-founding the @art gallery with a colleague. In an effort to try and combine my teaching with my own creative interests, I developed Artist on the Internet, and was allowed to teach it for the first time in the Fall of 1994.
The first six weeks of the course followed a workshop format in which I trained students in both Internet literacy and the authoring of artwork. This included everything from the basics of e-mail, to creating sound and digital video files, and eventually the coding of the HTML documents that Web browsers actually read. After this initial phase the students were ready to begin creating work and actually open their own internet "gallery".
At this point, something surprising happened. We met one afternoon to begin plans for the gallery, and the first question that was asked was, "Will this gallery continue to exist after the semester ends?". I have to admit that this question had never occurred to me, but after a moment's hesitation, I promised to serve as "caretaker" for the gallery beyond the current semester. In that moment, I realized that my students had just become artists. They were doing exactly what I always hope my students will do, namely to begin thinking outside the semester system and begin to see what they are doing as part of their life; not just something they do in a class at school.
I don't attribute this to any pedagogical brilliance on my part, but rather to the inherent qualities of the Web that I was able to exploit, particularly the public aspect of the Internet community. Typically, students are limited to showing their work in officially sanctioned student galleries, which while serving an important function, still exist within the somewhat make-believe world of school and classes. But I had reminded the students several times that when their work became available on the Net, that it was "for real"; meaning that the work would exist outside the confines of an art school, that people from all over the world would be viewing their work, and that their audience would come to the work with very real expectations. This gave the students a degree of seriousness about their work that I have not often experienced. Reinforcement was provided by detailed summaries of how many people were visiting the site, and what part of the world they were located at. These summaries were generated several times a week and forwarded to students via e-mail. It was routine to have logged visits from all over Western Europe, Japan, and Australia; in addition to daily visits from sites across United States.
Bolstered by this feedback, my small group of students decided to form an artists' collective known as Dialect, which now maintains an active and evolving WWWeb site, and functions beyond the context of any official class structure.
If you visit Dialect, remember that the majority of the work you will experience was done by photography majors. This is significant, because virtually every piece combines images and text, some of the work incorporates either sound or video, and there are pieces in which the images are clearly secondary elements. This serves as an example of what kind of choices students might typically make in the digital realm, given the opportunity, and provides perhaps a glimpse of the curriculum of the future.
Teaching Artists on the Internet that first time was not a stroll in the park, particularly because it was as humbling as it was exciting. This continues to be the case. I have had to surrender my role as the Great Authority and tell my students the truth: I am just one step ahead of them, and making it up as I go along. And in some cases, I am the one behind the curve. There are huge gaps in my knowledge, and consequently my students are often the ones with the answers. If you've never taught a computer course before, brace yourself. There are students out there with vast amounts of computer savvy, and there are even more on the way. In Artists on the Internet, students are often able to answer a question better than I. By the end of the course, after I have shared all the technical information I know, and students have begun giving workshops - with me taking notes along with everyone else. This has served as an important reminder to me, not to be afraid to let the teacher become the student, and visa versa. Its one of the greatest lessons one can teach. I must also keep reminding myself that anyone can learn technique. And that my most important asset as a teacher is my understanding of the process of art making; my beliefs and values, which is largely an issue separate from pixels or pigment. But this can be easy to forget as a student shows you a new technique while the rest of the class looks on.