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I have tried to identify and examine the nature and utilisation of the Internet as a site for displaying works of art. That
it is heavily imbued with spatial characteristics and metaphors is obvious. Although on a basic level it functions in a similar
way to books and even CD ROMS, it is regarded and discussed in a totally different way. It is true that people say 'one can
get lost in book', but one's immersion into cyberspace is a much more literal incursion into a separate, alien and yet accessible
terrain. That it should be described as cyberspace at all, along with all the other spatial analogies is testament to the
powerful grip it has exerted over our collective consciousness. Like Fox Mulder in the X-Files, we want to believe.
The Internet has become something that is more than just the sum of its parts. More than a system of interconnected computers
and the web sites they support, it has become a world within a world, in which new experiences are made possible, and old
ideals can be reassessed. The art that is made using this medium, and the manner in which it is displayed, along with the
art that has gone before, can be seen as symptomatic of our attitudes towards this new environment.
Installations in Cyberspace
It is worth mentioning that many of the projects that do exist are preoccupied with addressing notions of space and place,
and seem to find the Internet as a valid tool for exploring these questions. Several artists have used the net's heterotopic
qualities to create virtual versions of real towns or cities inside cyberspace. London, for example, can be found in all its
Dickensian glory at a site called The Central City and New York is represented by at least two sites, New York City Map and
Turbulence. On these sites one can either view digitally manipulated images of the cities, or watch Quick Time movies recording
actions and conversations. There are also more general meditations on architectural space and cyberspace itself, two interesting
examples of which are included in the Dia Centre's Artists' 'Projects for the Web'. Wake by Gary Simmons consists of a series
of photographs of dance halls, split into fragments which only appear as the mouse is moved over the screen and then quickly
fade, providing a glimpse of a ghostly space devoid of occupants. Whereas these spaces have been created and since abandoned,
they are now manifested in a space we have created but remains tantalisingly beyond our reach, behind the monitor screen.
The Thief by Francis Alÿs, which takes the form of a series of screensavers, is primarily text-based and includes the articulate
and accurate statement:
Cyberspace is commonly conceived as an infinite dimension made of an intersection of individuals, cultures, and discourses.
But no matter how massive and chaotic the world wide web will become, it will always be a finite, but continuously expanding,
universe of information.
These are just a few examples of artists engaging with the Internet as something more than just a medium. Whereas an arts
project such as the famous Jodi site can be interpreted as an exercise in digital formalism, concerned as it is with the language
of programming, many other artists are responding to the Internet as a space as well as a form, and creating or presenting
spatial constructs or environments that can be read as installations in cyberspace, site-specific works that engage with the
spatial properties of both physical and digital space.
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The Fictional Frontier
It can be argued that there is also a link between the nature of the Internet and the exhibitionary order of cyberspace. I
have commented on the architectural script of many physical galleries, and how this is transferred into the web sites of these
and similar galleries, with the route to be taken around the site mapped out and heavily suggested through the navigational
methods made available. Francis Alÿs, in the above quote, comments on the spurious nature of the supposed infinity of cyberspace,
and such notions can be applied to the viewing experience as a whole. Although the volume of work available is impressive,
one is never really discovering anything new, merely coming across it for the first time. The boundaries of cyberspace may
be constantly expanding, but beyond them lies nothing, until someone puts something there. Wherever we go, someone has been
there before, and most of the time invited us, by means of adverts or hyperlinks, to follow them. Add to this the knowledge
that most of what we see is a fiction, reproduction or simulacrum, a pale copy of an original or something without any referent
beyond its self, and it becomes easy to be disillusioned with the claims of adventure and learning made about the Internet.
Even the immanence of information implied within cyberspace is a fiction, or at least a half-truth, as the more we become
absorbed into the data of cyberspace, the more we are transcended beyond the realm of the physical into an exclusive world
of the mind.
All this though should not be viewed with too much surprise or pessimism. Many of these traits are only the same as those
to be found within the pre-existing models of art exhibiting upon which so many Internet art sites are based. Art galleries
are artificial places, designed to make us feel and think certain things. The mental transcendence experienced on line is
merely a new, technologically inspired form of liminality, removing from our consciousness the thoughts of the everyday and
replacing them with wonder at how much of the world and its treasures is now so easily available to us. Although not thoroughly
convinced of the possibility of a liminal experience on the Internet, Carol Duncan is prepared to entertain the possibility
that 'it may be that the screen can mesmerise viewers in its own way, and that electronic (or is it cyber-) space can have
some liminal qualities.'
The Architectural Challenge of Cyberspace
The Internet is at the cutting edge of technological innovation, and in time may indeed open up a new world of mental and
physical experiences (once the problem of a convincing interface can truly remove what is still at its core an Enlightenment
based split between the two). However, despite its undeniable advantages in providing access to large amounts of previously
unavailable or obscure art and information, and display opportunities for those to whom they have been largely denied, in
terms of exhibitionary practices and their sub-texts, much of what is happening in cyberspace can be seen to have a direct
correlation with museums and galleries as they have functioned for the last two hundred years. Large Victorian or Modernist
galleries are following exhibitionary strategies that, intentionally or not, are serving to retain their status or maintain
their position as social and cultural authorities, even at the expense of rendering potentially groundbreaking digital projects
impotent (in the case of the Virtual Guggenheim), and smaller or personal sites often seem to be intent on copying these larger
galleries, to a greater or lesser degree, in an attempt to duplicate such received authority for themselves.
The Internet's major strength, it could be argued, is its democratising effect on the works of art displayed, their availability
and the removal of privileging display tactics, resulting in the opportunities for auto-curating mentioned earlier. The creation
of fluid, non-permanent museums and art galleries to suite individual tastes and interests could result in a twenty-first
century version of the 'Kunstkammer', able to include arts, crafts and natural objects, giving rise to new contexts in which
to view and study works of art. However, it is in the area of how galleries should choose to present on the Internet that
there is the most scope for truly revolutionary practices to appear. I would argue that these lie in the embracing of the
fiction of cyberspace, in taking the opportunity to build for ourselves new and architecturally unique galleries within the
'zero g of cyberspace', so when we do finally make that leap behind the screen there are structures equal to the task of displaying
the wealth and variety of works now available.
The Internet is a site where the hyperreal is often the only reality, and to engage with such a fictional site in a way that
will allow us to fully experience all that it has to offer may involve an acceptance of its artificiality as a condition of
entry.
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