1 Art - Internet - Post-Internet - Between - Theor

Art, Internet, Post-Internet:
Between Theory and Practice
By
R ASIT M UTLU
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

U NIVERSITY OF W ESTMINSTER
AUGUST 2015
A BSTRACT
lthough the term post-Internet emerged in 2008, since then many writers, critics
A and curators have been involved in the discussion of what it might mean. Some see
it as the ’translation’ of net.art to fit the ecosystem of contemporary art (Quaranta,
2008), whereas others understand it as a form that is ’aware’ of its own environment and
still carries the flag of institutional critique. Instead of using the Internet just as its material,
post-Internet practitioners also take the Internet as subject matter and problematized topics
like surveillance, infrastructure and control over the Internet.
This dissertation puts an emphasis on theorizing the concept of post-Internet by referring
to invisible infrastructures that shape the Internet, conceptualized by James Bridle as ’the
New Aesthetic’; critique of neoliberal agents on the Internet as discussed by Zach Blas;
the validity of distinction between digital and physical culture in the age of ’digital natives’
and the problems of authenticity, performativity and temporality in the post-Internetage.
Opening chapters gives a non-linear development of the Internet as a medium and the
subject of artistic practice, thus distinguishing net.art that is made using material gathered
online from post-Internet.
After ’defining’ post-Internet, the dissertation looks into real life applications and case
studies in order to explore curatorial strategies and processes, especially focused on the rep-
resentations of such works in physical spaces. Methodologically, theories are handled and
explained using the practices of artists and other producers to point out the disappearance
of difference between the theory and practice in life after the Internet.
Keywords: post-Internet, net art, new media, the New Aesthetics
i
D EDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Dedicated to invisible infrastructures that make this work possible.
This document compiled in LATEX
iii
Your canon was Dada, Warhol and Duchamp; mine is Cantopop, Pokemon
and young boys performing cover songs.
Jennifer Chan
v
TABLE OF C ONTENTS
Page
List of Figures ix
Introduction 1
1 Locating post-Internet 5
1.1 "Old" and "New" Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 Art, New Media Art, net.art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.1 From Stamp to Spam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.2 Conceptual Basis for net.art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 Art After the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 Internet as Tool, Internet as Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Post-Internet Condition 15
2.0.2 Making of post-Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1 Theories, Practices, Provocations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.1 James Bridle and ’The New Aesthetic’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1.2 Contra-Internet: Zach Blas, Hito Steyerl and Others . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3 Exhibiting post-Internet 31
3.1 Some Basic Concepts Shaping Exhibition Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.1.1 Authenticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.1.2 Ephemerality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.1.3 Performativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.2 Physical Applications of Post-Internet Art: Theory & Practice . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.1 Transformation: Gene McHugh - Post-Internet (2010) . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3 Re-interpretation: James Bridle - Five Eyes (2015) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4 Crowd Curating: Jogging - Ready or Not It’s 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
4 The Future & Conclusion 43

4.1 Personal Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
A Appendix A 47
B Appendix B 49
Bibliography 51
viii
L IST OF F IGURES
F IGURE Page
1.1 Eadweard Muybridge, Woman jumping over barrier, 1887. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.2 MTAA, Simple Net Art Diagram, 1997. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Ray Johnson, Dear Whitney Museum, I Hate You, Love Ray Johnson, 1968. . . . . 8
1.4 Works by Olia Lialina & Mark Napier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.1 Jason Huff, Diagrams v1.0, 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.2 Emoji Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 James Bridle, Drone Shadow, 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4 James Bridle, from Drone Series, 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5 Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite, 2011-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.6 Works by Hito Steyerl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.7 Facial Recognition Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.8 Email Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.9 occupy.here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.1 Work by Painting FX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.2 James Bridle, Hyper-Stack, 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3 Jogging, Ready or Not It’s 2010, 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.1 Guido Segni, After Post Internet there will be only, and always, Past Internet, 2015 46
ix
I NTRODUCTION
et.art sensationalized the art world when it came to existence in the late 1980s. It
N used the Internet as its material to produce works, and by nature challenged the
ways in which curation, market and artistic production were understood. Later
on it was associated with "New Media Art", which also uses any means of digital product
to create artwork. Consequently, curating "new media" in visual art has been an issue for
professionals working in the curatorial field. Therefore, new media’s need for production,
display, preservation and market value demanded a new theoretical framework, which is
arguably provided by writers like Sarah Cook, Beryl Graham and et al.
On the other hand, during the mid-2000s, post-Internet came to existence, which distin-
guished itself heavily from "new media". Instead of using the Internet just as its material,
post-Internet practitioners also take the Internet as subject matter and problematized topics
like surveillance, infrastructure and control over the Internet.
This dissertation looks into the implications of this recent phenomenon of post-Internet,
its discontents and representation in the art world, and is divided into four chapters in order
to handle the topic profoundly. Each chapter is shaped around certain research questions
and tries to set a general framework for the following chapter(s).
C HAPTER - 1: L OCATING THE POST-I NTERNET

Although it emerged during the mid-2000s, post-Internet is an increasingly expanding
field for artistic and curatorial practices. Hence, it would be practically impossible to handle
each and every aspect of it. In addition, trying to start from predecessors of post-Internet (i.e.
since the late 80s and the birth of net.art) would suggest the same impossibility. Therefore,
this chapter refers to net.art and other ’movements’ like new media art, network art, cyber
performance, and digital art where necessary to define and distinguish post-Internet, but are
not mainly built on them. The chapter does not document and/or give a linear development
or history of post-Internet.
Acknowledging the difficulty and necessity of presenting a solid definition for post-
Internet will serve as a reference point throughout this dissertation; accordingly questions
1
INTRODUCTION
presented for this chapter aim at discussing "what post-Internet is NOT rather than what
post-Internet is" (in other words the dichotomy between post-Internet and other forms of
new media).
As the title and methodology presented suggest, this chapter positions post-Internet
(art) in the broader context of new media art and evokes the basic questions that define
this research: What is new media and what makes it new? Is net.art/ computer generated/
networked art part of new media? How does a tool differ from a medium in terms of how
artists use technology? (Hope & Ryan, 2014) What does post-Internet have to do with net.art?
(Connor, 2013) Do they share a common history? How and when did the term post-Internet
first occur? Is it an art movement or just a current tendency?
C HAPTER - 2: T HE POST-I NTERNET C ONDITION

This dissertation puts an emphasis on theorizing the concept of the post-Internet; there-
fore, this chapter presents thought on the cultural implications of the Internet today and
how it is understood by cultural theorists, artists as well as scientist.
Hence, this chapter handles this condition not solely in artistic terms, and puts forward
the defining questions of: What does the prefix "post" stand for? What makes it "post-
Internet" (expanding the discussion from the first chapter)? What were the physical and
sociological conditions that led to post-Internet? How do surveillance, commercialization
and control mechanisms affect the supposedly free nature of the Internet? Is the division
between virtual and physical space necessary in the age of "digital natives"? What is the
value of the Internet as a public space? What are the some new approaches and systems
proposed by the people working in the field towards this condition?
By setting up a basis for understanding what shapes the Internet today, this chapter
can be read as a "behind the scenes" part of the works produced within the context of
post-Internet, and draws a picture of how producers perceive their environment.
C HAPTER - 3: E XHIBITING POST-I NTERNET

This chapter of the dissertation is dedicated to the presentation strategies of post-
Internet art. Its unique ways of production and distribution blur the roles and titles. Some
practitioners define themselves in a more traditional style like artists and curators, while
others are known as coders, hackers or hacktivist. Similarly, it is also common to see artists
who team up with professionals to build their works.
While discussing these changes in a wider spectrum, the dissertation questions: What
are the main problems in exhibiting post-Internet art? Are these problems sourced from
2
INTRODUCTION
the art world or ’nature of medium’? Does the temporal and instantaneous structure of the
Internet have a positive or negative effect on exhibition strategies? What is the authenticity
in immaterial works? What is the cultural significance of Internet based works (if there is
any), and what do they tell us about our contemporary culture? How are the relations of
production defined on the Internet? What is the relation between production on the Internet
and performative act?
C HAPTER - 4: T HE F UTURE & C ONCLUSION
Although speculating about the future of the arts and technology is no better prac-
tice than fortune telling, this final chapter employs some implications of networked art-
work/cultures, their distribution, presentation and preservation.
The main questions for this chapter are: How will (if in any way) post-Internet affect the
broader cultural climate of the world and traditional ways of thinking? What comes after the
(post)-Internet?
A PPENDIX -A
This section of the work includes abbreviations and descriptions of some technical terms.
A PPENDIX -B
The second appendix explains why certain spellings are preferred through the disserta-
tion (e.g. the Internet, post-Internet etc.).
3
CHAPTER
1
L OCATING POST-I NTERNET
1.1 "Old" and "New" Media

ainting and sculpture dominated art history for hundreds of years. After the turn of
P the twentieth century though, art movements such as "surrealism and conceptual
art ... participated in a profound questioning of traditional painting" (Rush, 2005).
Hence, when existing techniques and mediums lack new possibilities or hinder the artistic
production, artists turn to search for materials that have never been used in an artistic
context. This occurs sometimes in the form of decontextualizing objects from daily life, such
as in the case of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1971), or employing new advancements in
technologies to arts like Eadweard Muybridge’s Woman jumping over barrier (1887).
However, the problem with using technology in arts is that these works blur the line.
Does Muybridge’s work belong in an art or science museum as one of the first examples of a
moving image? Is he making a scientific or aesthetic statement with his work?
In fact this confusion might be one of the defining qualities of ’new media’ which stands
on the line between science and culture, video art, for example arises the questions like
What makes an ordinary video ’art’? What distinguishes it from a video broadcasted on cable
TV for entertainment purposes?
Mark Tribe & Jana Reese suggest that new media art is a "(project) that make use of
emerging media technologies and are concerned with cultural, political, and aesthetic
possibilities of these tools" (Tribe & Jana, 2006). Hence, the answer to the aforementioned
questions is the relation with the medium. An artist using photographic or video medium
5
CHAPTER 1. LOCATING POST-INTERNET
F IGURE 1.1.
Eadweard Muybridge, Woman jumping over barrier, (1887), collotype, Source: SFMOMA
(usually) is not trying to amaze his/her audience with the wonders of the technology, but
rather to critically and aesthetically engage with the medium s/he is using in one way or
another. As Christiane Pauls points out "(n)o object or art form (painting, sculpture, or
photography) can be separated from its own materiality, and one could argue that every
painting also is ’about’ painting and comments on its own medium..." (Christiane, 2008).
Accordingly, one might define new media as art engaged with the ’new’ technology, but
especially in the twenty-first century what is ’new’ in technology is redefined every day,
and it is impossible to grasp the meaning of new media art. Are photographic cameras and
computers still new technologies? More importantly, what is NOT new media in today’s
increasingly technology driven world?
Apparently, there is a certain difference between saying for example ’abstract expression-
ist art’ which defines a medium/ tradition, and ’new media art’ which covers a mass area of
production from video art to overly specialized networked art.
Given that framework, it would be useful to discuss the position of net.art, specifically by
distinguishing its structures from other forms of new media art.
6
1.2. ART, NEW MEDIA ART, NET.ART
1.2 Art, New Media Art, net.art
Before considering net.art as a part of the ’new media art’, one could look back seat at
its early ancestors in the works of artists associated with Dadaism, Fluxus and Conceptual
art. It is also worth mentioning that as pioneer new media critic Lev Manovich asserted in
a 2014 interview, net.art "is an art defined by its medium (i.e., the Net). But this is an old-
fashioned logic of modernism! During modernism every art tried to find its unique language
and define the essential properties of its medium. At least since the1960s (conceptualism,
etc.) art moved beyond medium-specific boundaries" (Manovich, 2014). Likewise, in the
following chapters net.art is studied in relation to conceptualization and historical relevance
of the term rather than medium specificity.
Furthermore, the distinction between Net Art and net.art is important in context of this
chapter. Net.art is a term used to define a group of artist, a movement, an area within art
history (active since mid-90s), whereas net art or Internet art is referring to the broader
medium of digital artwork(s) which uses the Internet as its medium and/ or distribution
network.
F IGURE 1.2.
MTAA, Simple Net Art Diagram, (1997) digital image, Source: MTAA-RR
7
1.2.1 From Stamp to Spam
F IGURE 1.3.
Ray Johnson, Dear Whitney Museum, I Hate You, Love Ray Johnson, (1968), Source: 1stdibs
Net art in its most simplistic terms can be defined as art that needs a network or system to
happen. Its usage through this research, though, refers to a very specific computer network
called ’the Internet’ which has evolved into a commercial use from scientific research on
packet networking and ARPANET. Yet the use/ manipulation of networks such as mail, fax
and telegram for artistic practice was common before the introduction of commercially
available Internet service.
net.art projects are simply manifestations of social, linguistic, and psychological net-
works being created or at least made visible by these very projects, of people entering the
space of modernity
A good example to demonstrate the link in this case would be Ray Johnson, who is
associated with neo-Dada, Fluxus and Conceptual art and a forerunner of mail art (Johnson,
De Salvo, & Gudis, 1999). He started sending drawings, writings and even stickers to his
relatives, friends and complete strangers, sometimes accompanied with instructions, which
in turn added a performative aspect to his works. Although, what made mail art peculiar
during that time was its approach against the institutionalized structures of the art world.
Artists associated with this movement tried to by-pass gatekeepers of contemporary culture
(museums, galleries, curators, critics, etc.) by creating an alternative network of distribution
8
1.2. ART, NEW MEDIA ART, NET.ART
for their works. Johnson’s "Dear Whitney Museum, I Hate You, Love Ray Johnson" (1968) in
this respect not only shows a rejection of the art system but also an important critical stance
against it.
Ironically, in 1999, Ray Johnson had a solo exhibition in the Whitney Museum at the same
time Natalie Bookchin and Alexi Shulgin published their ’Introduction to net.art’ manifesto
in which they declared "(b)eyond institutional critique: whereby an artist/individual could
be equal to and on the same level as any institution or corporation" and set their strategy as
"(e)xpansion into real life networked infrastructures" (Natalie & Alexei, 2014)
The question of whether net.art shares the same fate as mail art or institutional critique
in terms of neutralization by the very institution(s) they are critique of is the topic of the
following chapters; but in retrospect, both mail art and net.art rely on a publicly available
network system rather than the restricted system of the art world in their inception. Further-
more, in more practical terms, early net.art artists/ activist and other creatives used e-mail
groups and newsletters to establish a geographically unrestricted and open sharing platform
for all 1 following the very same spirit as mail art.
1.2.2 Conceptual Basis for net.art

One of the most important theoreticians of the recent history, Lucy Lippard, opened a
completely new perspective on how art is seen and perceived with her concept of ’demateri-
alization’. Lippard, and later Sol LeWitt (LeWitt, 1967) (Lippard, 1973), created a framework
for conceptual art by praising the conceptualization behind the works rather than their
physical presence. LeWitt himself, both as a pioneer of minimal and conceptual art, worked
with instructions and ideas rather than objects like his contemporary Joseph Kosuth. More
often than not, their works were found in the form of written instructions in museum col-
lections. Therefore, although the work itself is in the ideas and instructions, it is not visible
to the human eye, just like software art which "is clearly both concerned with art as idea
and action, which both on conceptual and technical level describes source code and its
execution" (Cox, 2007). At this point, it would be more than fair to suggest that software art
and net.art share the same basic concept of coding, which is initially invisible to the end
user/ audience.
In conclusion, net.art can be read neither solely as an artistic practice without any
reference to the other forms of cultural production, nor just as a technological advance in
human history without any cultural connotations. Internet and art made on/ around/ about/
1
Although it should be acknowledged that considering the availability, ease of access to the Internet and
private mailing lists, these groups were not essentially for all in practice(Obrist & Assange, 2015).
9
after the Internet is as culturally significant as it is politically and technologically. However,

the question of how the medium of the Internet is used, manipulated and understood over
time is still yet to be discussed.
1.3 Art After the Internet

Artists have been using the Internet either directly working with the medium or indirectly
through finding inspiration, exchanging ideas or simply accessing information since the
early 1990s. In Michael Connor’s terms, the second group of artists takes whatever they need
from the online environment and produces their work ’after’ the Internet (i.e. ability to stand
outside the Internet to some extent). However, in an increasingly networked culture, one’s
ability to stay outside of the Internet is getting impossible. Today’s world runs, works and
spends its leisure time online. Moreover, thanks to online profiles and social networking,
one’s avatar/ virtual body is floating in the network at any given time, even if one is not
connected to the Internet. Everyone is online anytime, anywhere. In such a world, "artist,
even art itself, is assumed to be fully immersed in networked culture and is no longer quite
able to assume the position of an observer" (Connor, 2014), because the distinction between
producer and consumer is no longer exists. Artists are shaping and are shaped by this culture,
quite simply, artists working with the Internet memes are both consumers of something
native to the Internet culture and producers of the culture at the same time with their critical
interventions. In this respect, it is important to investigate how the Internet is used by artists
associated with net.art and post-Internet art which, in turn, will provide discrepancy as well
as common histories behind the two ’genres’.
1.3.1 Internet as Tool, Internet as Awareness
John Perry Barlow in 1996 published a very strong declaration of independence of cy-
berspace in which he wrote "(g)overnments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh
and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you
of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where
we gather (sic.) (Barlow, 2014)." Like many others, for Barlow the Internet in the 90s was the
other place where one can could get away from the ’real world’, a place where the rules of
the governments did not apply and was certainly away from art institutions. The Internet
was the "T.A.Z. (temporary autonomous zone) of the late 90s: Anarchy and spontaneity (sic.)
(Natalie & Alexei, 2014)."
10
1.3. ART AFTER THE INTERNET
[a] [b]
F IGURE 1.4.
a) Olia Lialina, Agatha Appears, (1997), Source: YouTube Still

b) Mark Napier, Pulse, (1999), Source:ADAweb
Up to some point this was true for that time, surveillance and commercialization of the
Internet was not an issue, and with the introduction of graphic browsers and standards
like HTML and CSS, artists began to experiment with these tools to produce works online.
These works sometimes take took the form of visual presentations through manipulation of
manipulating the capacities of new browsers (e.g. Mark Napier’s Pulse (1999)), URL based
narratives (e.g. Olia Lialina’s Agatha Appears (1997)) or the spam art/ ASCII art projects of
Jodi. All these works "(employ) the networked, decentralized structure of the internet as
both medium and environment" (Chan, 2014), and as a result distanced themselves from
the art market, with exceptions like Olia Lialina who managed to sell her works for around
$1000-$ 2000 band in these early days.
Although there was a distance between the market and the artists, net.art was part of
the critical discussions and contemporary culture of that time. Chan explains different
approaches as follows;
1. The historian’s approach: net.art was never part of mainstream contemporary art.
Net.art should retain its anti-institutional ethics and stop conforming to the moors of
the contemporary, which are ultimately conservative and profit-driven.
2. The commercial gallerist’s perspective: net art is new and shiny. It’s the next Pop art.
11
3. The non-new media art critic: net art (and new media art) are terms that should be
retired in favour of newer, relevant terms like ’web art’ or ’social media art’.
4. The net veteran’s reprieve: real net art (net.art) is dead. Long live net.art (Chan, 2014)
Ultimately, all these contradictory approaches to net.art lay the groundwork for what
is now called post-Internet (art). The terms itself was first used by Marisa Olson in a 2008
interview with we-make-money-not-art.com. Since then many writers, critics and curators
have been involved with the discussion of what post-Internet might be. Some see it as the
’translation’ of net.art to fit the ecosystem of contemporary art (Quaranta, 2008) , whereas
others understand it as a form that is ’aware’ of its own environment and still carries the flag
of institutional critique.
Post-Internet was not a sudden break in the history but rather a process. Hence, though
the term emerged in 2008, Olia Lialina in 2007 writes, "(u)sers are really busy and the medium
is totally invisible, and if I want to attract attention of users to their online environment and
make the work about the WWW, I’ll better do it offline. Net art today is finding its way out
of network. In different senses actually." (Lialina, 2014). She was drawing a framework for
post-Internet by pointing out the discontent of net.art in the mid-2000s.
As Lialina pointed out, net.art was slow in responding to the fast pace of changes hap-
pening online and offline. Contrary to what Barlow foresaw in 1996, the Internet was turning
into a profitable market for corporations and an apparatus of control for the governments,
which in turn affected how the Internet is structured and experienced by the end user. On
the other hand, all these changes were (and are) hiding behind the promises of freedom and
openness on the Internet, or as Foucault suggested: "power is tolerable only on condition
that it masks a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to an ability to hide its
own mechanisms" (Foucault, 2012).
Net art was engaging with the Internet on a superficial level, taking advantage of the
medium and what it is offering but lacking the investigating infrastructures and/or control
mechanisms to make it possible. If net art understands the online environment as a tool,
post-Internet perceives it as an awareness. Moreover, as the Internet started to take over
offline lives as well, it was essential to "translate" what is intangible to the tangible realm
in artistic terms. Post-Internet, in this context, "has one foot in the art history and another
foot in the experience of network culture" (McHugh, 2011) . Though this is not to say that
post-Internet is a complete rejection of the legacy of net(.)art, there are many artists like Jodi
and 0100101110101101.org who have been active in the field since the mid-1990s and have
produced works associated with both tendencies.
12
1.3. ART AFTER THE INTERNET
As Chan suggests "post-internet is (the) bastard child of net.art and contemporary art ...
(and it is) characterized by hybridity and hyper-mediation of existing genres, platforms..."
(Chan, 2014). It is the example of postmodern culture where high and low culture disap-
peared and genres dissolved into one. It is reaction and submission, elegance and kitsch,
physical and virtual, tranquillity and anxiety, all at the same time.
It is still too early to tell whether post-Internet is a movement in art history or not, but it
exists one way or another. Besides, with all the cultural connotations it has, post-Internet
deserves to be studied as a contemporary experience and condition.
13
CHAPTER
2
P OST-I NTERNET C ONDITION
nderstanding the contemporaneity of the Internet as a condition in which every
U artwork, whether online or offline, is produced enables us to grasp the idea of post-
Internet as a cultural rather than just an artistic or a technological phenomenon.
"Post-Internet, specifically within the context of art, simply could be understood as a term
that represents the digitization and decentralization of all contemporary art via the internet
as well as the abandonment of all New Media specificities. Post-Internet then, is not a
category, but a condition: a contemporary art"(Doulas, 2012).
In this perspective, the usage of "post" becomes problematic, like many other cultural
terms such as postmodernity or post Fordism. Does the prefix always suggest an end and
new beginning, a rejection of predecessors? Although no consensus has been reached so far,
as asserted earlier, in the case of post-Internet, it neither means rejecting the net(.)art nor
the declaration of the end of the Internet.
Marisa Olson defines the term as "(my) online and offline work was ’after’ the internet
in the sense that ’after’ can mean both ’in the style of’ and ’following’. For illustration, I
referred to the concept of postmodernity coming not at the ’end’ of modernity, but ’after’
(and with a critical awareness of) modernity" (Olson, 2014). Olson’s understanding, in this
sense, reinforces the idea that post-Internet is about its environment and predecessor as
much as it is about the contemporary culture.
Michael Connor understands it as "less for a clear demarcation of ’before’ and ’after’
than to represent a continuously evolving critical dialogue"(Connor, 2014) , and as pointed
out earlier, this is a plausible description for the prefix as it underlines the element of
15
CHAPTER 2. POST-INTERNET CONDITION
F IGURE 2.1.
Jason Huff, Diagrams v1.0, (2011).
criticality and does not offer a sharp distinction for genres coming ’before’ post-Internet.
Zach Blas, on the other hand, against the over use of the prefix ’post’, first establishes
that "’post’ announces ... challenging instances of passage and transformation can only
be articulated through what they proceed" and then uses the term ’contra’ instead (Blas,
2014a), borrowed from the queer theory of contra-sexual (Preciado, 2011), to indicate the
revolutionary possibilities of the Internet. His usage of ’contra’ rather than ’post’ suggests
that normalization of a certain way of thinking -such as in the case of sexuality- is the biggest
challenge when deconstructing an idea. Against the normalization of commercialization
and capitalization in the digital world, Blas suggests "Contra-internet aesthetics disallows
the internet to determine its horizon of possibility" (Blas, 2014a). Though,Although the
contra-internet approach of Blas will be discussed in details, it is important to point out
that seeing post-Internet as a deconstructive and critical tool is a common practice among
critics.
Whereas Jesse Darling argues that "’post’ should not be understood as ’the successor’ to
but as ’the crisis’ of. Having established this, let’s get one thing straight: every artist working
today is post-internet artist. Let’s move on (sic.)" (Darling, 2014). Although Darling hurries
to move on to other discussions he will be having, defining the condition of the Internet
as a ’crisis’ and saying every living/ working artist is a post-Internet artist has some strong
connotations. First, it implies that Darling sees the Internet in a state of crisis with all its
16
discontent, and secondly claims that artists as a part of the broader cultural ecosystem
neither ignore nor run away from the effect of the Internet (culture) on their practice and/
or daily lives (see Chapter 1.3).
2.0.2 Making of post-Internet

The internet persists offline as a mode of life, surveillance, production, and orga-
nization - a form of intense voyeurism coupled with maximum non-transparency.
Imagine an internet of things all senselessly "liking" each other, reinforcing the
rule of a few quasi-monopolies. A world of privatized knowledge patrolled and
defended by rating agencies.
(Steyerl, 2015).
Post-Internet, as a condition, is a complicated cultural environment and needs to be

examined through elements (i.e. commercialization, surveillance and control) that shapes
it. This chapter investigates these elements by referring to contemporary examples such as
data policies and examples of commercialization of the Internet culture.
Hence, methodologically, the best way to understand the environment enclosing the
Internet seems to be handling it as a public space and analyse the units that make the whole.
However, before the discussion of the Internet as public space, it is important to point out
tension between spaces of virtual and material (real) gathering, which will also provide a
better understanding of the effect of the Internet on daily lives.
In the past it was thought that the Internet was just a virtual place where fictitious char-
acters chat and play. On the other hand, for today’s world this is not the case. There comes
a "digital native" generation who "live much of their lives online, without distinguishing
between the online and the offline. Instead of digital identity and real-space identity as
separate things, they just have an identity" (Palfrey & Gasser, 2013) . The new generation
of users shop, interact, find love, learn, and enjoy online. The Internet is neither a separate
culture nor a separate life; therefore it does not matter whether the Internet is virtual (there-
fore not real) or not. The distinction is no longer needed, as the Internet is just culture now.
Traditions, words, images, and memes that are native to the Internet are common knowledge
now.
Recently, McDonald’s started an advertisement campaign in which emojis are the only
means of communication, replacing the actual words and thus coined the term ’emoji
17
marketing’, while Chevrolet issued a press release composed entirely in emojis (#ChevyGoe-
sEmoji, 2015). On the other hand, UK based company Virgin Media used an Internet meme
known as ’success kid’ to promote its services (Success Kid, 2015).
[a] [b]
F IGURE 2.2.
a) Chevrolet’s First Emoji Press Release Source: Chevrolet Website

b) An anonymous image mocking McDonald’s Emoji Campaign
It could be suggested that the messages behind these works might not be understood
by everyone immediately, but they are not the target anyway. These ads appeals to a very
specific audience, and that is ’digital natives.’ Furthermore, every culture creates its own
sources and histories; the art world, at least up until today, has always had its history
written in prestigious journals and big, heavy books or in encyclopaedias, which were
eventually replaced by digital alternatives. This in itself is a very clear statement that in an
age defined by immateriality and constant knowledge production, material ’things’ can no
longer sufficiently provide information that ’digital natives’ need.
In this context, it is not a utopic design to see knowyourmeme.com, a website dedicated
18
to definitions and origins of the Internet memes, as an art or social history ’book’ of the
future. If culture is produced and consumed (at the same time) on the Internet, its archives
and histories will be naturally written online.
Ultimately, the Internet is a place shaped by people using it, and it is as real and virtual
as its users. "Maybe it is time we move beyond discussions around the production of public
space, both online and off, given just how private and corporatized both the virtual and
physical realms have become" (Bailey, 2014b). What really matters today is: How this space
is used? Is it as free as it is promoted? Most importantly, is it a public space?
Public spaces are developed naturally and horizontally by the public in places that
hold enough significance and historical connotations. Though it may change from one
country to another, these sites "by law" belong to the public, which means they are not
private properties, such as parks, city squares et cetera. Public spaces do not require people
to have a prior knowledge, a certain look or social class to enter and interact with other
people.1 What is striking about this definition is its emphasis of the free movement of
bodies in the space; however in today’s neoliberal economy, the concept of public space
has changed and the term has been also used for very commercial and private spaces
such as malls, although they are simply gathering places for a certain class and "dictate a
certain identity to enter" (Becker, 2008). Following the same fashion, websites like Facebook,
Twitter and Google, though treated as if they are public spaces in essence, are all owned
by a company and therefore they are private spaces. They are arbitrary, controlled and
not open to everyone. "These distinct spaces are at once ’controlled public spaces’ and
monitored private spaces - neither public nor private, neither here nor there: heterotopic"
says (Dullaart, 2014). Therefore, bodies in these spaces are not free in any way, and though
they provide the content/ context for these websites they are still desperately in need of the
infrastructure provided by the website. This structure mostly stays invisible until times of
crisis, when access is limited for various reasons. During social movements, activist groups
rely heavily on these technologies in their attempt to organize in times when conventional
media is not available, inadequate or censored, for example. Although glorified as a driving
force behind movements like Arab Spring, the intentions and motivations of technology
giants should be approached with doubt.
From the commercialization perspective, the Internet is getting more privatized each day
and as saying goes ’there is no such thing as a free lunch’. Free accounts and services provided
on the Internet come with indirect, hidden costs. Companies continue to collect massive
amount of data from their users every day without their knowledge, and concerns regarding
1
This sentence used previously in an other article.
19
ownership of data, surveillance and right to privacy are getting bigger in an information
driven economy.
According to Facebook’s data policy, the company can share information they have about
its users (i.e. basic data, interests, locations, interactions, devices, networks, etc.) as well as
"non-personally identifying demographic information" with third party advertisers, vendors
and service providers to "show (the user) relevant ads on and off ... (Fcebook) Services" (Data
Policy, 2015) . Beyond data collection policies this also shows how bodies are understood in
neoliberal information economics; bodies are turned into statistics and measurable entities
to satisfy market needs.
Brian Droitcour uses the term ’neoliberal subjectivity’ to explain this condition which
"is a popular shorthand among critics for expressing the way bodies behave (are handled)
because of (by) capital now. The new spirit of capitalism is about subdividing the individual
into nameable affinities (Facebook likes, dating profile stats) or competencies (the school
assessment report, the HR office reviews), in order to incorporate bodies as other, more
usable substances" (Droitcour, 2014).
On the other hand, in relation to surveillance and censorship on the Internet, same
technology magnets play an important role. Again, according to Facebook data policy, the
company "may access, preserve and share your information in response to a legal request
(like a search warrant, court order or subpoena) if we have a good faith belief that the law
requires us to do so. This may include responding to legal requests from jurisdictions outside
of the United States where we have a good faith belief that the response is required by law
in that jurisdiction, affects users in that jurisdiction, and is consistent with internationally
recognized standards. We may also access, preserve and share information when we have a
good faith belief it is necessary to: detect, prevent and address fraud and other illegal activity;
to protect ourselves, you and others, including as part of investigations; or to prevent death
or imminent bodily harm" (Data Policy, 2015). Although, what ’good faith belief’, ’illegal
activities’ and ’protect ourselves’ mean is unclear, it is an undeniable fact that with all its
infrastructure and services, Facebook is one the best tools to gather data about people, their
tendencies and communications.
In the second half of 2014, according to Facebook’s transparency report, the company
received 9707 content restrictions (of which from India: 5832, Turkey: 3624, Germany: 60);
35501 user data (of which from USA: 14274, India: 5473, UK: 2366) requests from gov-
ernments and prosecuted 37% of it by providing information about its users (Facebook
Government Report 2014 H2, 2014) . In a similar report published by Twitter, the company
prosecuted 52% of 2871 account information requested by governments for the same period
20
2.1. THEORIES, PRACTICES, PROVOCATIONS
(Report, 2014).
Once again, it is clear that the Internet does not develop as Barlow anticipated. Today,
it continues to influence every aspect of life, therefore "the more we write about what
takes place online as if it occurred in some other world, the more we fail to relate this
communication system, and everything that happens through it, to the society around us.
To understand the Internet, we have to destroy it as an idea" (Silverman, 2015). Destruction
here neither implies any negative meaning nor suggests to unplug the Internet, as if it is
a single entity, but rather finding ’glitches’, ways around, responses or even creating small
crates on the surface of power structures, creating a sceptical and critical dialogue on how
an increasingly networked culture can be re-interpreted.
2.1 Theories, Practices, Provocations

The current shape of the Internet (and culture) requires new thinking on how the world
is perceived. This section looks into two approaches that offer novel perspectives into
production in an overly networked, surveilled and commercialized realm of the Internet.
What they all share is their understanding of post-Internet as a part of a broader discourse
rather than just looking into how artists engage with the idea, writers/ practitioners carry the
concept further to investigate routines of daily activities and their political consequences as
well as the relations between political power and its subjects.
2.1.1 James Bridle and ’The New Aesthetic’
Bridle, in his conceptualization of the New Aesthetic, informs that "(it) is concerned with
everything that is not visible in ... images and quotes, but that is inseparable from them, and
without which they would not exist" (Bridle, 2014).
When looked at, Bridle’s works, especially the drone series, are less about captured image
and more about how the work as it stands in front of the audience has come into existence.
Readers would also notice that this work itself is dedicated to ’invisible infrastructures
that make it possible’ in reference to the New Aesthetics. During the writing and researching
phases, lots of systems are used which readers would not necessarily realize, though they
play an existential part in this paper.
My travel information between the libraries and home could be traced on the TfL website,
my loan history could be provided by the University of Westminster Library Systems, while
my computer usage history could be provided by the IT department. I compiled this docu-
21
F IGURE 2.3.
James Bridle, Drone Shadow, (2012). Source: MoMA
ment in LATEX, which was made possible by thousands of people working voluntarily there
since 1984. I am using very popular formats such as .docx and PDF, which were developed by
two of the biggest technology companies in the world, Microsoft and Adobe Systems. If the
reader decides to print this work, s/he will also use set of protocols and systems which s/he
is not even aware of, to get a physical copy. Furthermore, here and only in this paragraph by
using first person narrative I am also revealing the author of this paper, myself. After making
what is invisible visible, I would go as far as to suggest that my work is not only a dissertation
but a post-Internet work, and this is what culture and post-Internet looks like today. There is
no escape but only awareness, and this is the main concern of Bridle and the New Aesthetic.
After explaining invisible structures, Bridle refers to production and informs that "the
New Aesthetic project is undertaken with its own medium. It is an attempt to ’write’ critically
about the network in the vernacular of the network itself: in a Tumblr, in blog post ..."
(Bridle, 2014). He goes on to acknowledge that these methodologies, though effective and
meaningful within themselves (i.e. Internet culture), might not always fulfil the expectations
of academia. Then again, as discussed earlier (see Chapter 2.1), the New Aesthetic puts
forward new mediums of production to understand the new age, but at the same time shows
"illegibility of technology itself to a non-technical audience" (Bridle, 2014).
Another important theme both in Bridle’s works and the New Aesthetic is the power
relations. The works which use aerial images taken by drones/ satellites work at two different
22
F IGURE 2.4.
James Bridle, from Drone Series, (2015). Source: NOME Project, Berlin
levels. First, drones/ satellites are literally constructing a top and bottom relation in the
sense that they are standing above the ground and they are invisible to eye, so there is a
physical distance. Secondly, drones/ satellites, in service to governments as surveillance
and/ or offensive tools, creates a master and subject relation or a new kind of panopticon;
they are invisible in the culture and ideology, so there is metaphorical distance.
Although there are no prison walls in the modern world, surveillance is everywhere and
one may never be sure that s/he is not being watched at any given time. In retrospect, this is
a very good control mechanism, as already proved by Foucault.
Moreover, there is something sinister in this methodology; something makes them
invisible and it is not just their physical absence. Bridle explains this as the individualization
effect, which "is seen at every level of technology, from dot which places each of us at the
centre of the digital map, up to the robot sensor networks which rely on a codified abstract of
the world to guide them, rather than truth on the ground" (Bridle, 2014). These technologies
make themselves ’useful’ to individuals while constantly gathering data about its users to be
send to big data centres somewhere in the world (see Chapter 2.1).
In brief, the New Aesthetics is about awareness of how underlying structures, though
invisible, can determine how bodies behave and are treated in a networked culture. It
underlines again and again that "(t)echnology is political. Everything is political. If you
cannot perceive the politics, the politics will be done to you" (Bridle, 2014).
23
2.1.2 Contra-Internet: Zach Blas, Hito Steyerl and Others

What differentiate contra-Intenret from the New Aesthetic is its reactive approach. In
addition to making invisible infrastructures of the Internet possible, as its prefix foreshadows,
contra-Internet also suggests a ’fight’ against them.
As mentioned earlier, Blas borrows the prefix contra from Beatriz Preciado’s the contra-
sexual manifesto. Preciado proposes a kind of social contract against already existing het-
eronormativity and other forms of social normalization. Therefore, both contra-sexual and
contra-internet are deconstructive in their essence and "assault against normalization and
oppression, they also insist on alternative forms of understanding, pleasure, knowledge,
and existence". Thus, as " contra-internet aesthetics could strive to bring the internet to
ruins, it does so to create positive alternatives" (Blas, 2014a). What Blas is suggesting is
acknowledging the present and taking a ’militant and revolutionary’ stand against it. The
question is if the Internet is an arena of control, centralization and commercialization today,
what would be the antithesis of this? Blas answers the question by drawing a framework for
his conceptualization of contra-internet:
1. An implicit critique of the Internet as a neoliberal agent and conduit for labour ex-
ploitation, financial violence, and precarity.
2. An intersectional analysis that highlights the Internet’s intimate connection to propa-

gation of ableism, classism, homophobia, sexism, and transphobia.
3. A refusal of the brute quantification and standardization that digital technologies

enforce as an interpretative lens for evaluating and understanding life.
4. A radicalization of technics , which is at once the acknowledgement of the impossibility

of a totalized objectivity and also the generation of different logic and possibilities for
technological functionality.
5. A transformation of network-centric subjectivity beyond and against the Internet as a

rapidly developing zone of work-leisure indistinction, social media monoculture, and
addiction to staying connected.
6. Constituting alternatives to the Internet, which is nothing short of utopian. (Blas,

2014a)
Blas’s manifestation gives a brief summary of the current situation of the Internet which
has already been discussed in previous chapters, and therefore it would be more useful to
investigate the possibilities and implications of contra-internet through case studies.
24
F IGURE 2.5.
Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite, (2011-14).
Hito Steyerl, the prominent artist, theoretician and writer in the field of cyberculture,
uses themes of withdrawal and invisibility in her didactic/ instructional works. When asked
in an interview about her preoccupation with disappearance and invisibility, she stated that
"it is a highly ambivalent concept: it is something to be desired that gives relief from the
constant imaging that we are all subject to. But it is also something to be feared, evoking
the spectre of mass political abduction" (Steyerl, 2013). This dichotomy is also at the centre
of How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV (2013) and Is the Museum a
Battlefield (2013).
In the first video, Steyerl suggests to be out of control area and as occasionally repeated
in the video ’to off screen’ in an age where visibility and existence are tied to being on the
screen as long as possible. The artist’s amusing approach to invisibility makes the video
more relevant to life in and out of the network when the narrator is listing thirteen ways of
becoming invisible by disappearing, which includes "being female and over 50 years old,
living in a gated community, owning an anti-paparazzi handbag, surfing the dark web and
being a dead pixel." Steyerl’s work in this sense is not only a didactic but also a provocative
one with its reference to social issues.
On the other hand, in the second video, which takes the form of a lecture and was
commissioned for the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Steyerl discusses how museums and cultural
institutions are funded by arms trade companies and how their funding becomes ’invisible’
25
[a]
[b]
F IGURE 2.6.
a) How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV (2013) Source: Rhizome
b) Is the Museum a Battlefield (2013) Source: Vimeo Still
once they enter the museum by following an empty bullet shell she found in south-east
region of Turkey. She further investigates the relations between these arm trade companies
and Koc Holding, the main sponsor of the Biennial and provider of armoured vehicles to the
Turkish military through its subsidiary OTOKAR (CNNTurk, 2013).
When the two videos are studied together, one might suggest that tactics of invisibility
26
F IGURE 2.7.
A simple facial recognition diagram showing how bodies reduced to scanable, geometric
entities Source: BBC.
can be used both by existing power structures to hide their effects (see Chapter 1.3) and
by users on the Internet to get away from the same structures. It is as paradoxical as it is
useful. Why not use invisibility against invisible infrastructures, alternative autonomous
networks against centralized networks, facial weaponization against facial recognition?
Today’s standard passports include biometric photos of individuals, which are created by
following strict guidelines that enable capturing the geometry of faces (see fig 2.7 ), therefore
reducing a part of the body into a scannable and scalable entity. In response to that, in Zach
Blas’s Fag Face Mask in Facial Weaponization Suites (2011-14), he creates almost abstract
masks "generated from the biometric facial data of many queer men’s faces (as) a response
to scientific studies that link determining sexual orientation through rapid facial recognition
techniques" (Blas, 2014b). The final mask, naturally, makes it impossible for scanning devices
to catch a combination to identify the individual. This series of works could be interpreted
in conjunction with Steyerl’s work(s) as the refusal of visibility and body politics in which
subjects are materialized and categorized. Yet, running away from the control is not the only
way in networked culture.
The Internet in the most simplistic terms is a set of protocols that makes machine to
machine communication possible. Technically, its centralized structures enable organiza-
tions like the NSA to control dataflow through public routers and cloud computing services
27
F IGURE 2.8.
A simple workflow of email communication demonstrating cooperational intervention over

personal communication.
(Oram, 2014).
If computer A needs to communicate (say send an e-mail) with computer B to transfer
data, first it needs to connect to the Internet, as it is the most popular protocol there is, and
use the centralized infrastructure to complete the transaction because there is no direct
link between the two. In this scenario, the two machines depend entirely on services (mail
servers, ISPs, DNS servers, etc.) provided to them as seen in (fig. 2.5).
On the other hand, "mesh networks wirelessly connect computers and devices directly
to each other without passing through any central authority or centralized organization
(like a phone company or an ISP)" (Filippi, 2014). Therefore, by eliminating the need for
a centralized infrastructure, mesh networks become more "local, horizontal, self-healing,
non-hierarchical, and scalable" (Rothstein, 2014). But what does it all mean in the context of
post-Internet?
As defined by Adam Rothstein, mesh networks promise zones out of the control as they
are set up and maintained by people. The problem of social network usage in times of crisis
has already been discussed (see Chapter 2.1), hence taking a deconstructive approach of
contra-Internet and the possibilities of mesh networking could provide more discussion
here.
Occupy.here is an open source project, developed by Dan Phiffer, consisting of a wireless
28
F IGURE 2.9.
A screenshot of occupy.here.
router and accompanying software that creates an Internet like "Temporary Autonomous
Zone" (Bey, 2003) without the need for connecting to the Internet. Once it is activated, users
within the coverage zone can visit http://ocuppy.here where they can share messages via
the integrated forum.
The project itself emerged during occupy New York movement in 2011, and "(thanks
to) its distributed and autonomous design, Occupy.here is inherently resistant to Internet
surveillance. Building up a collective network infrastructure that is owned and controlled by
its users can lay the groundwork for other uses and applications. "We don’t have to choose
between abstaining from social media and entrusting our data to corporate interests. We
just need to take a greater responsibility for our own online services" (Phiffer, 2013).
The project’s overall scope and technical infrastructure is an attempt to create an alterna-
tive network free from commercialization, control and surveillance. In this respect it carries
traces of both the New Aesthetic by pointing out the invisible structures and contra-Internet
by refusing and proposing an alternative at the same time. This is also a very solid example
of post-Internet with its relation to the physical world.
All the works mentioned in this chapter engage with the contemporaneity of the Internet
in one way or another and share "an investment in informatic opacity, a tactics of withdraw-
ing from control by evading detection or interception from the commercial internet: dark
nets and mesh networks are informatically opaque in that they share information through
29
anonymity and function with autonomous technical infrastructure. Tactics of camouflage,

like masking, make persons opaque to digital, networked surveillance. Informatic opacity,
then, is best understood as a prized method of contra-internet aesthetics" (Blas, 2014a).
In addition to these relatively new theories of post-Internet, movements like hacktivism
and cyberpunk present themselves as a legitimate action where the Internet and "social me-
dia is the only impulsive channel in comparison to the muted mainstream media"(Senova,
2014). Though activities of people and organisations such as WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and
Edward Snowden are not (or cannot) be classified as art per se, they are occupying a very
strategic point between what is happening on the Internet and in the physical world.
It is obvious that what these organisations/ people are doing is not just virtual activism;
there is always a broader cultural and political aspect to their activities. Otherwise, why do
WikiLeaks’ servers have to be hosted in a bunker in Sweden or why does Snowden have to
live in an undisclosed place in Russia while Assange is trapped in the Embassy of Ecuador in
London?
30
CHAPTER
3
E XHIBITING POST-I NTERNET
he perception of what artwork is has changed drastically, and traditional exhibition
T strategies fall behind the demands of these new production methods, especially
the presenting and marketing of born-digital works which becomes much more
problematic.
However, all these obstacles also provoke creative thinking for exhibition strategies;
sometimes inspired from theories and sometimes from necessity, new presentation and
marketing strategies have already been proposed and applied both by commercial galleries
and public institutions.
3.1 Some Basic Concepts Shaping Exhibition Practice
3.1.1 Authenticity
The most problematic aspect of digital-works is their ability to be reproduced infinitely

and, especially on the Internet, the disappearance of authorship, is also added to the equa-
tion. But then again, one should also question the validity of these problems in times where
image anarchism is a thing which "reflects generational indifference toward intellectual
property, regarding it as a bureaucratically regulated construct. The indifference stems from
file sharing and extends de-authored de-contextualized Tumblr posts" (Troemel, 2014), and
memes which are reposted and liked countless times without any reference to the ’original
creators’. What is the ’real object’ in these reposts? Is it the idea or the .jpeg file?
31
CHAPTER 3. EXHIBITING POST-INTERNET
Roland Barthes announced The Death of the Author in 1967 and maybe it is now this
generation’s turn to announce The Death of the Object as a material entity. The line between
the production and consumption; high and low; physical and virtual; theory and practice;
material and immaterial is no longer here, why not get rid of ’the real thing’ as well? As
Jennifer Trant states, "(n)etworked information space is the natural place of discourse for
the next generation ... (and) (p)erhaps, it is not about having ’The Real Thing’ at all, but
about having ’The Right Stuff’" (Jennifer, 2013).
Having the right stuff is in the core of the exhibition strategies today, and this is what
curating means in the world after authenticity. There is no information or content shortage
in terms of production but an overflow of it; it is even too much for a human being to process
and make something useful out of this "Niagara of entropy" (McHugh, 2011).
3.1.2 Ephemerality
There is no is no topic of the week on the Internet, only a topic of the day or even topic
of the moment; therefore production strategies are shaped in accordance. Today’s overly
educated and underpaid artists/ producers on the Internet have no luxury to wait to be
discovered. One "exist(s) as long as s/he produces" (McHugh, 2011). It is always now, now
and now on the Internet.
This ephemerality particularly creates a difficulty when curating, collecting or marketing

Internet based works when tangled with the instability of the medium. We again turn back
to question of authenticity and objecthood of digital works. Furthermore, the temporal
nature of the Internet is also important in an art historical context as it declares the end
of masterpieces. In art history, a masterpiece is a work that challenges the centuries and
affects the thoughts/ emotions of the world it exists in; at least this is what everyone is
taught in art school. However, on the Internet today, thousands of pieces of artwork or their
representations are shared, say on Twitter. It is a part of daily life to see an image of Pablo
Picasso’s Guernica (1937), followed by a cute cat video, which is also followed by an image of
immigrants who died in the Mediterranean Sea, and finally yet another artwork by Michael
Connor. The world has lost its shocking effect and art has lost its avant-garde nature. Images
on the Internet are democratized in the sense that none of them is more important than the
other. It is the perfect indifference.
32
3.1. SOME BASIC CONCEPTS SHAPING EXHIBITION PRACTICE
F IGURE 3.1.
A Work by Painting FX Source: paintfx.biz
33
3.1.3 Performativity
Gene McHugh dedicates his first web-blog, and later book, 122909.org almost entirely
to this phenomenon. When describing what he means by performance on the Internet he
explains "(w)hen everyone can easily broadcast themselves on the Web or create a modern
art masterpiece with a few clicks of a mouse, these actions become meaningless. In the face
of this quandary, some artists have conceived of art production less in terms of the creation
of a single work and more in terms of the performance involved in creating multiple works
over time which audience may follow live" (McHugh, 2011). This approach, in fact, is a direct
response to previous concepts.
If ephemerality is the reality of the Internet and everything is produced to become

obsolete the very next second, the only valid strategy of artistic practice is performativity.
It champions the series of production rather than a masterpiece that lost its meaning and
importance after the Internet. McHugh himself, in this context, declares his work as a post-
Internet work which uses the element of performance. His periodical contribution and
acknowledgement that all his writing is produced to be forgotten next day, if not next second,
further adds performativity to his work.
On the other hand, performativity responds to authenticity through mass and continuous
production. Painting FX Collective use a Tumblr blog to share their digitally produced
images/ paintings without any reference to the original creator within the group or any
date, just the image. After a while though, as McHugh points out, one starts to guess which
works might be produced by the same creator. Hence, even after the death of the author
performativity enables artistic production by creating a process rather than a masterpiece.
Finally, the performance element is also a metaphor for the produce constantly or die
instantly mentality of the Internet. Everyone using the web is participating in this practice,
no one posts a single photo and leaves his/her Facebook or composes a tweet and deserts
his/her twitter but continues to share/ produce; users everywhere, bullied by the never
ending questions of "What’s on your mind?" and "What’s happening?", and if one does
not answer these questions often enough, it is a sure thing that s/he will disappear and be
forgotten.
34
3.2. PHYSICAL APPLICATIONS OF POST-INTERNET ART: THEORY & PRACTICE
3.2 Physical Applications of Post-Internet Art: Theory &

Practice
Lauren Cornell: Does Internet art need to take place online?
Marisa Olson: No. What I make is less art "on" the Internet than it is art "af-
ter" the Internet. It’s the yield of my compulsive surfing and downloading. I
create performances, songs, photos, texts, or installations directly derived from
materials on the Internet or my activity there
(Cornell, 2006).
Surely, Internet art does not have to take place online, but especially in the contemporary
art context, physical representations/ versions of digital works become problematic.
Theoretical approaches to the physical applications of post-Internet art vary from in-
stitutional and personal practices to crowd curation. Founding its basis on theories of new
media art, curating art after the Internet has its own difficulties, glitches and advantages. In
fact, as repeated many times until this point, it is rather hard to distinguish the theory from
the practice.
Theory, in this research, refers to thoughts on physical applications of post-Internet
art rather than its online presentation to narrow down the discussion. Hence, it is this
dissertation’s aim to provide an understanding on how exhibition practices are reshaped in
the ’white cube’. Methodologically, this chapter presents three case studies to investigate
different approaches in real life applications of post-Internet.
3.2.1 Transformation: Gene McHugh - Post-Internet (2010)

Gene McHugh started his blog 122909a.com after receiving a grant from the Creative
Capital - Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. For one thing it is notable
that a prestigious grant is given to an artist who uses a blog as his medium rather than more
conventional methods of publication.
The blog was active from December 2009 to September 2010, and McHugh discontinued
the blog after his grant was over. In an introduction to the book version of the blog, editor
Domenico Quaranta admits his confusion on McHugh’s decision:
"I thought com’on, you don’t need money to make blog! Blogging is something
you do because you enjoy it, usually in you spare time, between one paid job
35
and the other. Only a spoiled yankee (sorry, Gene) can stop blogging when the
money run out." (sic)
(McHugh, 2011)
In this witty statement, Quaranta refers to conditions of "(o)vereducated and underpaid

digital creatives work on laptops in coffee shops, public libraries, electronic art festivals, and
airport lounges" (Chan, 2014). Producers on the Internet are supposed do what they do best
but for free; they already have their ’other’ job to make money. In fact, it is no more logical
than asking, "why stop writing a column in a newspaper when the money runs out?" What
is the difference between writing for a newspaper or a blog in intellectual terms, apart from
the fact that blogs are read by more people? Why are libraries still not collecting a blog but
book version of it?
Quaranta’s introduction is titled "Criticism as Performance," again yet another reference
to McHugh’s writing (see 3.1.3). Therefore if the blog is a performance, a work of art on the
Internet, one might suggest that the book form is an exhibition strategy to bring a digital
work to the physical world. But what has changed in the nature of the medium? Does this
transformation change the context?
McHugh reminds his readers constantly that they are going to forget what they have
just read in a few days, and in the context of the Internet this is true, where an average user
spends ten two twenty seconds on a website (Nielsen, 2011). Besides, at the time of writing
even his dedicated visitors needed to wait one or two days (in the best case scenario) to read
the next post.
However, after an editorial process where the book is ’immigrated’ to fit a book from a
WordPress blog, the experience that blog reader and book reader has changes drastically.
Being 263 pages long, the physical copy is divided into chapters, where each contains a day’s
writing. Even with an average reading speed, it is possible for a reader to read a few weeks in
one session and the whole book in a week or so.
What the book reader realizes is that the writer, in more than one instance, talk about
the same concepts and/ or gives the same examples, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
McHugh writes on page 57 (Monday, February 15th, 2010) of his book:
"Whew! Age, a performance by Marisa Olson at PS122 in New York, is about

the twin concerns of chilling out and heating up chilling out and heating up
In a set of composed of cardboard crystal shards outlined in dayglo duct tape
and cheap-o Persian rugs sparkling with glitter and tinsel, Olson interacts with
36
3.3. RE-INTERPRETATION: JAMES BRIDLE - FIVE EYES (2015)
the video projection of a customer-service rep-slash-self-help guru (played by

Olson, herself)." (sic.)
(McHugh, 2011)
On page 216 (Friday, July 16th,2010);
"For example, Whew! Age (2010), a performance at PS112 in New York, drama-
tizes a hallucinatory therapy session in which the patient oscillates between a
search for meaning and cynicism regarding the very idea of search for meaning.
In a set of composed of cardboard crystal shards outlined in dayglo duct tape
and cheap-o Persian rugs sparkling with glitter and tinsel, Olson interacts with
the video projection of a customer-service rep-slash-self-help guru (played by
Olson, herself)." (sic.)
(McHugh, 2011)
It is nearly impossible to remember a post from five months earlier, as this is the
ephemeral structure of the Internet; everything is produced, consumed and has gone into
obsolescence instantly.
Transformation is a good strategy in many cases for the "real life application of post-
internet" (Packard, 2015) from creating videos to printing blogs and digital paintings, but it
also has its disadvantages.
As articulated earlier, if Painting FX Collective’s work is defined by the process rather than
by a single work, what would printing individual paintings suggest? Is there any way to keep
the existential essence (i.e. performativity and ephemerality) of post-Internet works once
they are transferred to physical space? The answers to these questions (and their validity)
are yet to be provided by practitioners in the field, but it is for sure that they will occupy art
historical discourse in the coming years.
3.3 Re-interpretation: James Bridle - Five Eyes (2015)

"Intelligence is the business of paranoia. It focuses on unlikely and unusual relation-
ships, the stories it reveals are often sensitive and controversial ones. Data incriminates by
association." - James Bridle
Commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum for the All of This Belongs to You (2015)
exhibition, the title of the work is a direct reference to Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance
37
consisting of five English speaking nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United
Kingdom and the United States).
James Bridle uses a sophisticated system for this work that "doesn’t understand what
the collection (of V&A) 1 is, or the objects are (or what news stories are really about), but it
understands that they comprise a set of relationships. These relationships are embodied by
tags: objects which share a number of tags have some kind of relationship: and by mapping
these relationships we can draw connections between objects, and the collection as a whole."
(Bridle, 2015).
In relation to his writing on the New Aesthetic, Bridle’s work deals with the paranoia of
intelligence gathering and its unusual application to museum settings. Especially in today’s
world where bodies are reduced to statistics, intelligence agencies use specific systems to
determine the risk factors of individuals by tagging, categorizing and establishing arbitrary
relation between criminals and ’risk groups’. Often times, systems work in such artificial
ways to create statistics 2 that it is possible to see a "child aged three in terror alert over
radicalization" (Churchill, 2015). However, how these relations are established and what
they really tell us in sociological terms remains invisible; most of the time, media and law
enforcement agencies take the results for granted without questing the process.
As a response to this framework, the project consists of a website (www.hyper-stacks.com)

where users browse objects from the collection and follow the relations, and a display of
objects in glass cases in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s tapestry room. In the museum, each
case has three objects selected by the system. Visitors, often confused by the display, could
not establish the link between objects in the cases. Objects seem to come together in an
utterly arbitrary way and are irrelevant to each other at first. Later, when object histories are
read, sometimes a thin relation is realized or the confusion continues. Actually, creating this
confusion is the whole point, and apparently relations that are so obvious to the machine do
not always find the same echo in the human mind.
Five Eyes is not only a wonderful example of post-Internet art but also a very good case
study for the physical application of it. Bridle shows the confusion, anxiety and arbitrariness
produced by surveillance systems by creating the same effect/ feeling in a museum as an
experience. Besides, the project does not end when the display is removed, but continues
to evolve on the Internet through its website and enables visitor to discover unlimited
possibilities.
1
First parenthesis by the author.
2
It might be appropriate in here to remember Steven Spielberg‚Äôs Minority Report (2002).
38
3.4. CROWD CURATING: JOGGING - READY OR NOT IT’S 2010
[a]
[b]
F IGURE 3.2.
a) Hyper-Stack at Victoria & Albert Museum

b) Online Version of Hyper-Stack
3.4 Crowd Curating: Jogging - Ready or Not It’s 2010

Ready or Not It’s 2010, a pop-up/ happening like event organized by the artist group
Jogging, invited artists to post their artwork to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s
Facebook wall. The group announced the event just a day before it took place and Jogging
39
F IGURE 3.3.
Jogging, Ready or Not It’s 2010 Source: Jogging Archive
conceptualized the project as:
Because the majority of America’s art museums continue to ignore their poten-
tial to publicize and contextualize art online, digital artists should take the task
of historicization into their own hands. Even though art‚Äôs public institutions
don’t want to include us in their conversation, we can still include them in ours-
with or without their consent. The manipulability of art museums’ Facebook
walls allows artists the chance to wrest curatorial control back from institutions
empowered by years of exclusionary practices. We encourage artists to include
participation in this exhibit on their resume under the ’group show’ heading as:
Ready or Not It’s 2010.
(Jogging, 2010)
Thanks to a viral campaign, hundreds of artists responded to the project and they filled
LACMA’s Facebook wall with their works. There was no selection process or any limit to
40
3.4. CROWD CURATING: JOGGING - READY OR NOT IT’S 2010
the amount or quality for submitted works. On the surface, the project seems like it was
non-hierarchical, horizontal and has a critical stance against institutional structures. How-
ever, on a deeper level, it reinforces the authoritative power of the museum by demanding
recognition from it. If artists are going to take the "historization into their own hands,"
why they are trying to do that through an institution? Maybe this question was more about
the existential position of the project than its curatorial strategy, which is heavily criticized
by McHugh: "... (W)hat one views when one views the exhibition is not non-hierarchical
resistance, but rather a hierarchical structure in which Jogging is the sun around which the
other artworks orbit like planets" (McHugh, 2011).
This analysis, although has some valid points, underestimates the overall project. It
might be argued that if the project is conceptualized, provoked and even titled by Jogging, it
is their work more than anyone’s and participating artists are part of a stream where their
individuals work does not have any importance. However, the project does not belong to
Jogging, even when they are the initiators and the most visible part of it. In crowdsourcing,
it is the overall effect and the gesture that counts, or in computing terms, it is the nodes
that create the network. Crowd curating is about an anonymous gesture, which relies on
the wisdom of crowds. Moreover, this is the way the Internet operates, as proved on many
occasions earlier. It is the discrepancy of being anonymous to gain individual identity, hiding
to become visible and getting lost in a stream to be realized.
Curating after the Internet will not be the same, as today everyone is a curator, dealer,
collector and tastemaker with his/her power to like and ignore. It is better that "(w)riters
and curators in the increasingly expanding field of curatorial studies ... park aside their
entrenched hierarchical snobberyand address this most urgent of matters, or else risk
seeming anachronistic" (Kholeif, 2014)
41
CHAPTER
4
T HE F UTURE & C ONCLUSION
ene McHugh writes about Michael Bell-Smiths’s Battleship Potemkin Dance Edit
G (120 BPM) which "is a twelve-and-a-half minute video in which the artist condenses
the shots of Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisentein, into
one half of one second each (one hundred twenty cuts per minute)" (McHugh, 2011). In
other words, work imply watching a seventy-five minute movie just in twelve-and-a-half
minutes. It is a quite unusual experience but after a few minutes, the eyes and the brain
both adjust the tempo of the video thanks to 120 BPM dance music. The contemporary
mind is trained to absorb this "rapid fire editing techniques, at the hand of MTV, Web surfing
and whatnot" (McHugh, 2011), and post-Internet is a response to a life under this rapid
firing just like Bell-Smith‚Äôs work. It calls out underpaid digital creatives, sleepless surfers,
(hack)activists, cat lovers, government haters, museum goers, and blog readers to realize
how the world they are living in is shaped by the digital culture and provokes them to engage
with the politics of networked culture. It is not just about art or the Internet, it is not just a
theory or harmless practice, and it is not the answer or an end, but rather an awareness of
the contemporary life and mind. However, if it is not the end, what comes after ’after the
Internet’? What do all these tell about the future of art and curating on the Internet, in the
context of this dissertation?
Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme argue that today artists and everyone else are
"searching/downloading/sampling/cutting/pasting/mutating/inscribing ‚Ä¶ creating spon-
taneous archive of the moment" and ask if this is the case "what do artists as artists matter
now?" (Abbas & Abou-Rahme, 2014). What do curators/ institutions as curators/ institutions
43
CHAPTER 4. THE FUTURE & CONCLUSION
matter now? What do authentic objects as authentic objects matter now? In his amusing
illustration, Pablo Marfa writes about a speculative future:
2022
The trend for crowd-curating shows continues, with Tate dedicating a wing of its
new building to it.
2038
The word ’original’ is removed from the Oxford English Dictionary and all traces
of the term and references to the concept deleted by Google.
2045
The British Museum of London is the last museum to become ’online only’.
The final visitor allowed into the physical premises is one Mrs Janet Fitch who
declares herself surprised by the number of steep steps and long distances. ’I
don’t know how people could spend time like that, sometimes whole hours at
a time, looking at things and walking such distances,’ she tells an interviewer
afterwards.
2050
Suspected alien work of art unearthed by space probe. ’Post-Earth Art’ is the
new buzz phrase in art circles.
(Marfa, 2015)
Although it seems utterly absurd today, this is how art and culture will probably look in
the distant future. One day, the necessity of physical spaces of museums will be the hottest
topic of museological discourse. Someone somewhere will write a dissertation about how
the people of 2015 were delusional about their primitive technology of the Internet. A digital
archaeologist will find the last surviving digital image of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in
a storage device along with many other irrelevant images and label all of them as ’objects
from 2015’ without realizing the ’masterpiece’.
The days of "Post-Internet" are numbered, but the transformative role of the digital in
managing and mediating our lives will doubtless charge headlong into unknown territories
(Zhang, 2015). Hence, maybe the only sensible foresight looking from 2015 is that post-
Internet is just a pre-something.
44
4.1. PERSONAL OUTCOMES
4.1 Personal Outcomes

Overall, the research and writing process of this dissertation is aimed at providing pro-
fessional practice and understanding for art on/ about/ around the Internet rather than
suggesting a groundbreaking, novel approach to post-Internet. Therefore in addition to this
writing;
• A review of the book You Are Here: Art After the Internet (ed. Omar Kholeif), which
is also the main source for this dissertation, is published by Intellect Books in The
Journal of Curatorial Studies 4(2).
• A video program titled "Feeling Anxious?" that deals with anxieties of the cultural
workers trapped between constant production and the risk of extinction in the age
of post-Internet is planned to be exhibited as a part of Amber Platform’s 15th Annual
Amber Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul in November, 2015. Especially, the
production process of this particular project is mainly influenced by the research done
for this paper. From conceptualization to exhibition strategies themes and methods
are actively used.
• A website called r-g-b.org is created that explores contemporary digital culture with
a focus on experimental video and net based art with plans to organise bi-monthly
online exhibitions. Its first screening will be in November in parallel to "Feeling Anx-
ious?".
• The preservation, storage and collection care aspects of post-Internet works, though
utterly important for this dissertation, are not part of it; but a paper titled Preservation
and Access in Museum Collections: A Study on net.art was previously presented for
another module in this MA course.
45
CHAPTER 4. THE FUTURE & CONCLUSION
F IGURE 4.1.
Guido Segni, After Post Internet there will be only, and always, Past Internet, 2015
46
APPENDIX
A
A PPENDIX A
PACKET *: Basic component of communication over a network. A group of bits of fixed

maximum size and well-defined format that is switched and transmitted as a complete whole
through a network. It contains source and destination address, data and control information.
A RPANET **: One of the early examples of Internet like structures, linking computers in
military sites in USA first and then extending into universities. Technologies used in ARPA
eventually created the backbone of the Internet.
I NTERNET MEME**: Predominantly produced anonymously to signify a (cultural) idea. Like

visual proverbs of the Internet culture, their meanings are common to its users. Describes a
basic unit of cultural idea or symbol that can be transmitted from one mind to another and,
inherently, everyone knows what memes are.
HTML *: Hypertext Markup Language. A convention of codes used to access documents

over the World-Wide Web. Without HTML codes, a document would be unreadable by a
Web browser.
CSS **: Cascading Style Sheets, is a style sheet language providing style and formatting
information for markup languages (such as HTML).
ASCII *: American Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced ask-ee). The
47
APPENDIX A. APPENDIX A
form in which text characters are handled in most computer systems and networks. ASCII
text has no special characters for formatting such as underlined or bold characters, font
changes, etc., thus can be viewed on any personal computer or terminal.
W EB VS . I NTERNET **: Internet is a set of protocols (e.g. SMTP, FTP, TCP, HTTP etc.) that
enables machine to machine communication possible. Web, on the other hand, is one of the
many protocols on the Internet that can render text, image, sound, video and etc. over the
Internet.
N ODE *: A member of a network or a point where one or more functional units interconnect
transmission lines.
*: http://www.math.utah.edu/ wisnia/glossary.html
**: By the author
48
APPENDIX
B
A PPENDIX B
There are two preferred styling when writing certain words through this dissertation.
They are not accidental choices and are used either to clarify a confusing point or make a
specific statement on the subject.
Internet vs. internet

Although, popular magazines such as frieze, e-flux, and Artforum prefer the lowercase ’I’
in their publications by stating that the Internet is a common medium today like radio or
television; here the capitalized Internet is preferred over lowercase internet to point to a
certain abstract ’thing’. When someone likes to connect to the Internet, s/he is not referring
to any given network but a very specific network, therefore unlike radio or television the
Internet refers to more than a medium.
post-Internet
In addition to capitalization of the word "Internet", this dissertation adds a dash between
post and Internet. As discussed on many occasions (see Chapters 1.3 & 2.1), post-Internet
is still an evolving way of understanding the Internet/ culture and does not have a fixed
definition or theory but "it will eventually become obsolete, just as Post-Modern became
postmodern)" (Bailey, 2014a). For the time being, though, this usage provides a more clear
understanding of the distinction between art/ culture and art/ culture after the Internet.
Despite that, in quotations, writers’ choices are respected and are left as they are.
49
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Art, Internet, Post-Internet:

Between Theory and Practice

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Keywords: post-Internet, net art, new media, the New Aesthetics

Dedicated to invisible infrastructures that make this work possible.

This document compiled in LATEX

4 The Future & Conclusion 43

1.1 Eadweard Muybridge, Woman jumping over barrier, 1887. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.1 Jason Huff, Diagrams v1.0, 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.1 Work by Painting FX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

C HAPTER - 1: L OCATING THE POST-I NTERNET

C HAPTER - 2: T HE POST-I NTERNET C ONDITION

C HAPTER - 3: E XHIBITING POST-I NTERNET

1.1 "Old" and "New" Media

1.2 Art, New Media Art, net.art

1.2.1 From Stamp to Spam

1.2.2 Conceptual Basis for net.art

after the Internet is as culturally significant as it is politically and technologically. However,

1.3 Art After the Internet

1.3.1 Internet as Tool, Internet as Awareness

a) Olia Lialina, Agatha Appears, (1997), Source: YouTube Still

nderstanding the contemporaneity of the Internet as a condition in which every

Jason Huff, Diagrams v1.0, (2011).

2.0.2 Making of post-Internet

Post-Internet, as a condition, is a complicated cultural environment and needs to be

a) Chevrolet’s First Emoji Press Release Source: Chevrolet Website

2.1 Theories, Practices, Provocations

2.1.1 James Bridle and ’The New Aesthetic’

James Bridle, Drone Shadow, (2012). Source: MoMA

2.1.2 Contra-Internet: Zach Blas, Hito Steyerl and Others

2. An intersectional analysis that highlights the Internet’s intimate connection to propa-

3. A refusal of the brute quantification and standardization that digital technologies

4. A radicalization of technics , which is at once the acknowledgement of the impossibility

5. A transformation of network-centric subjectivity beyond and against the Internet as a

6. Constituting alternatives to the Internet, which is nothing short of utopian. (Blas,

Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite, (2011-14).

A simple workflow of email communication demonstrating cooperational intervention over

anonymity and function with autonomous technical infrastructure. Tactics of camouflage,

he perception of what artwork is has changed drastically, and traditional exhibition

3.1 Some Basic Concepts Shaping Exhibition Practice

The most problematic aspect of digital-works is their ability to be reproduced infinitely

This ephemerality particularly creates a difficulty when curating, collecting or marketing

A Work by Painting FX Source: paintfx.biz

If ephemerality is the reality of the Internet and everything is produced to become

3.2 Physical Applications of Post-Internet Art: Theory &

3.2.1 Transformation: Gene McHugh - Post-Internet (2010)

In this witty statement, Quaranta refers to conditions of "(o)vereducated and underpaid

"Whew! Age, a performance by Marisa Olson at PS122 in New York, is about

the video projection of a customer-service rep-slash-self-help guru (played by

On page 216 (Friday, July 16th,2010);

3.3 Re-interpretation: James Bridle - Five Eyes (2015)

As a response to this framework, the project consists of a website (www.hyper-stacks.com)

a) Hyper-Stack at Victoria & Albert Museum

3.4 Crowd Curating: Jogging - Ready or Not It’s 2010

Jogging, Ready or Not It’s 2010 Source: Jogging Archive

conceptualized the project as:

4.1 Personal Outcomes

PACKET *: Basic component of communication over a network. A group of bits of fixed

I NTERNET MEME**: Predominantly produced anonymously to signify a (cultural) idea. Like

HTML *: Hypertext Markup Language. A convention of codes used to access documents

Internet vs. internet

Packard, C. (2015). The Real-Life Applications of "Post-Internet" Art. Retrieved 2015-