Day: September 6, 2011

One of dump.fm's prominent chatters, a film student, frequently complains about "net artists," as in "I don't like it when net artists..."
What does he think a net artist is, exactly?
Here are some possibilities for what a net artist might be:

1. Someone with a BFA or MFA in net art (future nonexistent degrees)
2. Someone who self-consciously makes art involving web-based technology or protocols
3. Someone with a degree in studio art who posts self-identified artwork that can be found/indexed by search engines
4. Someone with no art degree who posts self-identified artwork etc
5. Someone with or without an art degree who posts any kind of visual expression, leaving it for others to identify it as art
6. Someone with/without an art degree who uses the internet for performance or agitprop, either self-identified or other-identified as art
7. Someone with/without an art degree who posts any kind of visual expression or does anything performative online, without caring whether it is called art or not
8. A shamanic presence who is doing something disturbing and art-like on the internet
9. Someone who has had online expression covered by a prominent "art and technology" website
10. Someone who works primarily offline, e.g. a painter showing in galleries, who creates a digital presence through exhaustive documentation
11. Someone who spends 20 hours a day in the social media blog-mills and believes this is a new kind of art
12. Someone in the social media blog-mills who finds collective or group validation of an art-like activity that may or may not be institutionally identified as art
13. A film or video student whose own personal greatness has yet to be recognized by any "art and technology" website