Day: January 19, 2009

Below, my comment to a Rhizome "best of 2008" post about "Internet Aware Art." The post says I.A.W. "attempt[s] to describe the tendency for artists to translate behavioral or situational tendencies occurring online to other contexts, particularly offline" and kinda-sorta attributes it to Guthrie Lonergan. I replied:

Guthrie Lonergan is unusually perceptive and has a caustic wit. That said, credit is generally given for defining a term when it's actually defined. "Internet Aware Art" is a Delphic utterance that flatters each person who uses it with his/her own definition, as seen in the posts here following the Net Aesthetics 2 panel discussion, when it was clear that no one knew what it meant. You attempted to qualify your attribution to Guthrie [by saying he "used the expression to explain a trajectory within his work, and not of others"] but people who don't follow the link can't know how thin his authorship is:

"Beard: You recently told me that you were working on some ideas for 'offline art.' Care to elaborate on what shape they might take?

"Lonergan: Right now I'm scheming how to take the emphasis off of the Internet and technology, but keep my ideas intact. Objects that aren't objects... I got a couple of books and a t-shirt in the works. Right now I'm really into text (not visually/typography... just... text...), and lots and lots of lists… 'Internet Aware Art.' :)"

I'm not reading where it says internet aware art is "an attempt to describe the tendency for artists to translate behavioral or situational tendencies occurring online to other contexts, particularly offline." I think the authors of this post are giving themselves "best of 2008" for a Boswell-like coinage.