No Rules: Eryk Salvaggio's Prescription for Net Art
only have 30% of an art site composed of flash, right?). Virus art is one of the most devastingly interesting (and potentially dangerous) art concepts of our current period, and while I do have reservations about it (I'd hate to open an art piece and end up with my hard drive swallowed). I'd hate to see the trend die out, because I do believe it's opened up a whole new conceptual world for art to explore.
4. Images must be unique to the sitemaker.
"Any images used on the site must be scanned or photographed by the artist
embedding it into html. Images found on the internet may not be recycled or
re-appropriated." Eryk prescribes. "This is intended to develop a
unique, localized feel to all new net.art; as well as contribute to a new exploration
of the documentary in net.art."
Of course, this rule goes against the whole postmodern project of reappropriation and re-contextualization of history itself. It also cuts down on the useful and primal technique of collage.
With tools like Photoshop and Freehand, image manipulation has itself become elevated to an artform. To appropriate an image from the net not only references the network itself (important for a work that uses the network as both repository and medium), but also references the image's original context, albeit faintly. When I use a jpeg of a lily in a work, that image is altered from its original use in many ways; it's more than likely been run through Photoshop and had some filters applied to it, and it's color values have more than likely been tweaked as well. But the image remains what it is: an appropriated image, a reference to another site (as well as a reference to what is represented in the jpeg; in this case, a reference to a meat space lily). This pile of layered references is only possible when one appropriates images; images original to the site-maker reference only the work of the site-maker.
There's something almost solipsistic about establishing a rule that will not allow appropriation. The idea could be taken to another extreme; let's say, for example, that I shouldn't use a square shape in net art, because squares have previously existed. Ridiculous, yes: but let's say I
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