(English abstract of Strehovecs book
Umetnost interneta, Ljubljana: SOU, Koda, 2003)
The beginning of the 21st century is being defined by new politics, new economy, information society, techno sciences, multiculturalism, globalisation and new lifestyles, all of which have some impact on art. Art is beginning to omit the nature of the stable artefact as well as the traditional functions of representation and embellishment and is becoming post-aesthetical and process-like. Because the key feature of the completed and stable artwork is not as important as it used to be, the ontological question about what art is has also become an issue of no great importance. Instead, the relation questions regarding the interaction between art and techno sciences, new technologies, new economy and new politics have arised. Consequently, art is beginning to act as a historical and, therefore, changeable phenomenon meaning that it has not been here from always and no one can say for certain that it is going to be here forever. A great number of the world's population (especially outside Europe and Americas) spend their lives never having any relationship with art whatsoever. Therefore, what is at issue now, regarding the contemporary art, is questioning about the conditions that need to be fulfilled in order that a certain object, process or event is ready to start functioning as artwork. Which are the institutions that decide for a certain product to be regarded as an artwork and some other, with the same material enframing, to be left in a dump full of profane products? Instead what is art one needs to pose a question when is art? This turning point in our questioning about matters and relations concerning art is having far-reaching consequences for the arts theory as well. The modality of social power is becoming more relevant thus it enables a certain artefact, event or process to become art. The reason being that the art economy and politics have pushed aside the traditional ontology of an artwork and, as a consequence, the ontological specificity of the artwork's mode of existence is no longer relevant.
This book's key concern is the highlighting of the cultural turns, respectively, the shifts of paradigms which have, in these days of the Internet, techno sciences, new economy and globalisation influenced the new concepts and placements of the contemporary art and digital textuality. For this book pays a great deal of attention to digital texts especially to those which perform artistic scripts. The contemporary art is perceived as a field where the aspirations for autopoesis and self-reference are put forward (the art's social subsystem produces presumptions of its functioning by itself). However, the interaction between this field and its environment new politics, new economy, new media and lifestyles is becoming relevant. Art 3.5 (technical term used for the contemporary art of processes, installations, computer games, events, artistic communications, performances and art worlds) is placed in life in a reality of 6.1 version (another technical term) that has also mutated and undergone many changes. From the author's point of view the changes in the art field derive from the parallel changes in the art's subsystem of reality 6.1. Therefore, one can find out in the trendy reality at the beginning of the 21century that even techno sciences, new technologies, new means of communication, new politics and new economy have, in a way, become artistic. Even here do we encounter deterritorialization and movement towards some new functions. Their similarity to art 3.5 could be seen in destabilization of their basic traditional institution, that are national state (in terms of politics), nature (in terms of science) and material wealth (in terms of economy).
Art functioning as an artistic-political activism and as a field of research creates its new user, meaning that it constitutes new, extremely active and engaged audience which widely differs from the audience brought up by the traditional art art in, metaphorically speaking, a 1.0 version. It is also essential that this art does not address our sensory apparatus overall but only to some extent and, thereafter, is not dealt with as an art variant of, according to Hegel, das sinnliche scheinen der Idee but it focuses on the ideas and concepts and, thereby, addresses the (critical) mind. Art 3.5 in a new role is, therefore, question of mind rather than that of sensory fascinations and stimuli.
Art with its new (political and communication) functions is breaking off the demands of a modernistic autonomous art. It is not familiar with its own traditional Central-European self-organising on the basis of saying no to common social reality and claiming that it can do everything. Autonomous art sprang up in a special historical world and had been functioning under special conditions, namely in a period when it had to fight against various attempts to get usurped by different totalitarian regimes. Nowadays, the conditions have completely changed. Modern states and international organisations (at least in developed world) do not attempt to appropriate the arts field and nothing great (in a social sense) is demanded from art anymore. Therefore, the contemporary art must deal with its self-definition and self-understanding differently and not by means of antithetic function towards contemporary public institutions.
In the age of the Internet, new politics, techno sciences and new economy we are witnessing that the key features of texts are changing as well digital texts are presented on a computer screen; computer as a smart device can cooperate in creating new texts; the collaborative authorship is present; texts are being formed by means of a netspeak which is a mixture of spoken and written language elaborated by a number of new components (abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons). In organizing new texts the space and time syntax are also important because texts are arranged in a multimedia mode and take place in a film-like manner. The perception of this kind of textuality is also original because it is far more complex than that of the perception of a linear reading. One has to be able to perceive the space and time syntax of a certain text and also its multimedia design, whereas the linear reading does not demand so much from the reader. We come across the reading by means of a computer mouse for words-images-virtual bodies often function as interfaces that open up (by the click on a mouse) the links to some other parts of a text or even activate a certain computer programme.
Chapters about the Internet artwork and the Internet textuality are complemented by some other books sections dealing with the following topics: critical view on the Internet (chapter The Dark Internet); the philosophical questions of computer games; and the phenomenological approach to the interface culture. The key concepts introduced in this book are the following: would-be-work-of-art; artistic service, communication function of art; something else taking the arts social place, artwork as art world, which enabled shared experience, the aesthetics of closeness, expanded concept of textuality, attitudes on the move, text as a loop, interactive mouse reading, the word-image-virtual body, digital kinetic poetry and the hybrid reader-listener-viewer .
