In this module we will explore the relationships between art and the Internet, from the birth of the World Wide Web in 1989 to the present day. Beginning with an analysis of the construction of the digital as fundamentally ‘immaterial’, together we will think about how and why this gave rise to a model of the Web as a utopian arena of promise. In the first half of the course we will survey some of the earliest artistic practices to engage with the Web – including Net.Art, Tactical Media and Cyberfeminism – and consider both their aims and limitations in addressing questions of representation and identity, witnessing and surveillance, and authorship. In the second half we will focus primarily on the emergence of so-called ‘post-Internet Art’ in the last decade, and the shift to re-thinking the digital as ‘material’ through an attention to embodiment, infrastructure, and the environmental effects of new technology. This course will draw on a wide range of theoretical debates, from the discourses of postmodernism to the recent theories of the Anthropocene.
By the end of the course students should have acquired:
Module Code HOA00052H