Internet Art: Influences

Although my copy of Internet Art has not yet arrived, I felt that I could easily do this blog post based on the notes that we took in class and with the help of the internet of course.  The first artist that has clearly been influential to internet art is none other than Nam June Paik.  I feel a strong connection with this artist especially after learning about him in Santi's Art and Technology class last semester.  The fact that he is being related to another one of my classes is fantastic.  Thanks to Paik's use of electronics, he has inspired the new generation of internet and technological artists.  Despite the many different mediums that Paik has used, he is most well known for begin the founder of video art.  It is almost silly to say how this has influenced internet artists today.  The majority of present day internet art is video art.  The concept of "remixing" and "spoofing" has spread like a wildfire, and youtube is the place where millions of self-proclaimed video artists share their work.  Without it's founder Paik, none of this may have been possible, and we may not have the fantastic video crazes that sweep the nation every day.  The difference between Paik's art and the video artists of today is that Paik went the extra mile.  His work not only incorporated video, but lights and sculpture as well.  Nam June Paik's work revolved around multi-media, and it is said that he created the term "Information superhighway."  To me, this is exactly what Paik's work can be summed up as.  With the many different mediums coming together, each representing or playing their own form of art, a lot of information is being thrown at the audience. This "superhighway" is the act of bringing these different art forms together to create one form of multi-media.  Paik's best example of this is in his piece "Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii."  The piece, created in 1995, brings togethers hundreds of images and videos on television screens, all incased in florescent, colored lighting that creates the shape of the United States.  Looking at the art piece, one might be overwhelmed with all of the information that is being displayed.  Once again, this brings us back to the information superhighway, and to Paik's goal of using it in this piece to inform his audience of America's obsession with the media and with bright, shiny things.

The second artist that I chose in order to show the influence on internet art and the art world in general is not a singular person.  In fact, it is not a person at all, but a movement, the Dada movement to be more precise.  Once again, as someone that has come from Santiago's Art and Technology class, I feel that I truly understand Dada and therefore am able to see how it obviously has influenced the internet art of today.  Dada is the anti-art.  It was artists rebelling and showing the world that art can truly be anything and that it did not have to stick to the rules that society had given it.  Internet art is basically the same.  Since the beginning of the art world, people have thought that art should be something created physically, whether it be painted or sculpted, simply with one's hands.  In today's age, art is being created on machines, and this is something completely radical and new, and therefore it is one hundred percent Dada.  Internet artists often take something that has already been created, such as a song, image, or video, and they make it their own.  This reiterates the idea of "remixing," and shows just how big it is in today's art world.  To make a long story short, the world of internet is new, endless, and has absolutely no boundaries.  It is completely influenced by Dada and Paik for these reasons, and will no doubt continue to grow.