(edited by) Tom Corby – Network Art

Tom Corby

Routledge
ISBN 0415364795

The attempt of writing a piece of the net art history means on one side to collect different opinions of a cultural movement that took the network as its own founding element (hence an horizontal collaborative structure) and on the other side to frame it in an historical perspective. About that it’s worth to note that there are different elements that are similar between the net art movement with other avant-gardes (a legend created to establish it, the strong opposition to the art market as a founding point, the declaration of death after some years). In this book there’s a selection of relevant texts written by artists and critics in different sections. The former deals with historical reconstructions concerning well researched nodal topics (like the videogame) but without leading to another “net art classic” compendium. Actually the published texts outline this artistic movement as the first to really have questioned the default feautures of the net, re-writing the rules of communication that are actually part of our current complex inter-modal grammar. So the outcome is that this book is another piece of the net art historiography, bringing visions and practices whose major part are not present elsewhere.