10 myths of Internet Art

Myth n1: The internet is a medium to deliver miniature forms of other art mediums
Myth n2: Internet Art is appreciated only by an arcane subculture.
False because more people see art works through the net, via links or search than people that actually go to the museum.
Myth n3: To make internet requires expensive equipement and special training.
The "right attitude" is what you need, nothing else. You must want to do things yourself and have the motivation, and start learning how things are done by watching webpages sources and designs.
Myth n4: Internet art contributes to the "digital divide".
people in countries "affected by the existing digital divide" have shown that they can create art works much more interesting than people in richer areas of the worlds. They come with different styles and influences and have the same "world audience".
Myth n5: Interet Art = Web Art
Myth n6: Internet art is a form of web design
Art is not only design, art is beyong just visual appeals. "design is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for art."
Myth n7: Internet art is a form of technological innovation.
The continuous misuse of objects and its original display is what makes art art. Today's innovations might be tomorrow's cliché.
Myth n8: Internet art is impossible to collect.
Myth n9: Internet art will never be important because you can't sell a website.
Internet in the early 90 s was not a profit-maximizing invention, but a way to circualte free ideas. Now many artists have evolved to the internet for exposure and money. An actual price can be placed on a website now; domain, certificates and others can be bought.
Myth n10: Looking at Internet art is a solitary experience.
Internet is a social mechanism: online communities, forums, articles....Artists can be known not because of originality but because of good SEO and numbers of visits.
I found this article a little difficult to read, but what I understood from it actually taught me somethings, or simply reminded me of uses and aspects of art on the internet.

Lev Manovich's "Generation Flash"

This reading was a reflection of Mr Manovich' son the evolution of mutlimedia arts, and the expanding variety of tools. he explained the difference between ART, MEDIA ART, and SOFTWARE ART, which I found very interesting, and continued on by comparing the types of people in these art categories and why they are there now, and how they are seen.
In the whole article, there were some points made that strucked me. I did not agree with everything that was being said.
One of these things was that the media artist was a "parasite who leaves at the expense of the comemrcial media". I thought he went kind of strong in this statement, it is true that media artists do reuse bits and pieces of other people's work but calling them parasites is an open insult. These people are still creating new works of arts, and that is nothing parasite-like.
This comment is based on his point that we, the present generation, are a generation of loopers. We do many things with loops: song beats are loops, commercials on the internet are little movie clip loops, popular songs are remixes of older ones, games' interfaces are based on repetition of actions with different levels......
One other example of him being to extreme in his sayings is that kids don't get about critiques now a days, they do their own things, freely in the comfort of their homes to please themselves...This is true in a sense that the internet culture created this whole new culture of anonymity, and they don't go for the fame or anything in that genre. But this is a huge generality, many many people have access to the internet now and create their pieces, games, sounds, etc....and then create legal companies, groups, member-ony websites, where they sell their name and products.
He went on by talking of specific projects lile UTOPIA, which I had never heard of before. he also mentionned a website that we had seen in class theyrule.net, and how simple and effecticve programming and interfaces can have a greater impact on the public when you make them do a good portion of the thinking. Given explanations/messages are just other sentences that you and I hear everyday, but you know that if you are taking the time to explore the website, then you are focusing on it enough to make the connections between the infos given to you, and you lay out the message, the way you want it to look like, it's briliant.
His last paragraph was dedicated to flash, and its impact on the art seen on the web today, how its low size and high quality graphics makes it available to everybody.....
His main focuses in that paragraph, though, was on one hand, the comparison to life and death: Trees, birds and clouds don't die; and o the other the "amplification": how one click/action leads to a sequence of others. but it's only the beginning of the flash age, more and more people handle this tool and works in general become more detailed and complicated.

THE CORPS POURATION

This movie is crazy. I had never seen it in class and wish we could have finished it in class......guess that means I have to download it now. ok, I. m back. What I really like about this movie was its structure. Unlike other dicumentaries, it did not start from a point, then go to the next, finding a link, and finding another one to another point, etc.... What the director did is to edit the movie as a checklist of everything a corporation is doing wrong to others and the planet. At first, I did not understand where this was going, as I had never heard or read anyting about the movie, but when the list was all checked, it was proved that since a corporation is dealt with as a person, then that person is a psychopath. A psychopath is a highly anti-social person who "is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism."
Each of these points was proved during the movie with interviews of actual CEOs, documantarist Michael Moore, top level executives, cirtics, historians....
Like Michael Moore's movies, this movie has a strong impact on you when you are done watching it, especially if it is the first time. But you soon realize that his technique to tell you these infos are just as deceitful, he gives you all the bad sides of corporations and sets up the flow of the informations given to manipulate your thoughts better. This is what a movie is about, take your mind away on a trip, no thinking involved, just cruising. THIS is a documentary, it should make you think, not scare you. I believe that such informations have a much better impact on the long run if the viewer does a fair portion of the analyzing.

jamais un sans deux or the hisory of the internet by geeks

The readings assigned for this beautiful third week of this semester of higher education was, I found, closely related to the readings of last week......
What I just read is the history of the internet from a geek's point of view. I learned a couple extra things by taking the online quiz, where I got the oustanding grade of 30%, like the material of the first computer mouse......wood!! haha! The reading was more centered on the effect that the internet had on companies and how smart computers geeks used their geeky brain to understand before others (less geeky I suppose) that they could form multi-million companies out of this new technology.... A thing that I learned which was quickly mentionned is the fact that the internet is the product of "thousands of people" back to the summary.... As I was saying these groups of geeks got together and developped on their own and together new protocols, and other technologies which helped considerably the devolpment of computers and the internet. Without them I would not be able to talk about it the way I am doing it right now. That is talking to myself in front of a screen....Hell! I would not even be studying what I am studying now....Because if you read my bio page you would know that I would be one of the last one to develop such things....and to even think about such a process. back to the summary.... Along with the refreshing history lesson, I learned the existence of the influential Rep. Frederick Boucher from Virginia who helped develop internet commecialism with his bill drafted to the US congress.
Overall I would say that even though I knew a fair share of this history, it was interesting to re read it, because the more details we know about something, the clearer the image is....Today my image got clearer when I learnt that it was Microsoft who copied on Netscape simply for profit making....and not for the urge to benefit global commuinication....hahaha! Ce soir je te paye un coup poto!

http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/

History of the internet by www.livinginternet.com

The assigned reading of this first week is about the history of the internet. The reading was composed of 6 little readings each presenting an aspect of the history. All readings are interconnected through historical points; therefore I will not summarize them one by one but will condense them together. The origins of electronic correspondence with the visions of Vannevar Bush are discussed; M. Bush also envisioned the MEMEX, which stands for memory extension, which was an idea that started the desktop presentation that we use now on our computers: the ability to access all books, records, communication and any other files by simple inputs. Norbert Wiener is the man who invented cybernetics, the theoretical study of communication and control processes in electronic systems, which inspired a whole generation to see computers as a means to extend human capabilities. The SAGE program (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) originated at the MIT, it is a started in 1954 research for the US air force “to develop a continental air defense system to protect against a nuclear bomber attack from the Soviet Union”.
We also learn about the first network created, ARPANET, created by the ARPA agency. The ARPA agency was created in 1957 as a reaction to the soviet launch of Sputnik1 which was interpreted by the Americans as a temporary lost in a race to the monopole of technology and a threat to a permanent exposition to bombs being launched from the space. This reaction was successful since the 1st US satellite was created under 18 months. ARPA is a program that was developed by the government but was later achieved in collaboration with famous universities, which would help for research and testing. The ideas of Artificial intelligence emerged in 1956, one year before ARPA’s beginning. Scientists knew that the rapid growth in electronic capacities and the falling prices would soon enough equally balance the intelligence of machines and humans. The prediction could just not be accurately estimated.

I like this history lesson because I find it is interesting to know the origins of a medium of communication I use everyday. How people envisioned such a process and how people could believe in computers at a time like that. Computers are such an important part of our lives nowadays and I believe it is good to know how they originated and how they developed in order to stop taking things for granted.

http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii.htm