Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs

Kholeif (Time, Forward!), senior curator at the Sharjah Art Foundation, charts the history of internet art in this exciting outing. Beginning in 1989 with the creation of the World Wide Web, Kholeif explains how the internet’s “artists and curators, in tandem with programmers, engineers, and investors, altered contemporary culture forever.” Among the influential players are Andy Warhol, who died two years before the internet’s genesis but whose techniques of “constant... repetition of imagery and objects from popular culture” have become the internet’s lingua franca; Trevor Paglen, who captured aerial images of the NSA headquarters in 2013 and distributed them online; and Judith Barry, who developed a website that enabled users to formulate requests for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Kholeif also discusses how browser art, telematic art, and NFTs have “fundamentally shifted”aspects of art-making, detailing how the proliferation of forms has broadened what stories can be told. Kholeif weaves in personal anecdotes, as well, from connecting with “hackers and tinkerers” whom he “soon discovered to be artists” in the internet’s early days, to advocating for internet-native art as a curator. The history and analysis are informative and fast-moving, and Kholeif’s takes on how art can change (and be changed by) technology are shrewd. Art historians and those interested in contemporary art will find much to gain. Photos. (Apr.)