A leading figure in the world of networked culture explores the artists and events that defined the mass medium of our time
Since 1989, the year the World Wide Web was born, the art world has grappled with the rise of networked culture. This unprecedented survey of the artists and innovators in this area from 1989 to today is interwoven with the personal narrative of one of the leading voices on the digital world. In this book, Omar Kholeif, whose prolific career parallels the growth of the internet, tells the story of this mass medium and how it has fostered new possibilities for artists, both analog and digital.
The book showcases work spanning a range of media from legendary artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Nam June Paik, Heather Phillipson, and Wu Tsang. Tracing the key artists and innovators from the emergence of browser-based art to the dawn of NFTs, this is a tale for the present and the future.
‘A deep dive into the moments that have defined art within the digital age.’ – HYPEBEAST
‘Omar Kholeif’s INTERNET_ART explores how our cyberreality has shaped creative consumption since the 1960s. Alienation from the self, in Kholeif’s telling, is art’s new crisis. I await [their] sequel 20 years hence.’ – New York Times
‘Informative and fast-moving … Kholeif’s takes on how art can change (and be changed by) technology are shrewd. Art historians and those interested in contemporary art will find much to gain.’ – Publishers Weekly
‘Part memoir, part social history, this book is akin to a piece of travel writing through the internet, meeting a host of artists who challenge and make visible what the internet is, or could be. The World Wide Web is a territory we all surf, but have not experienced with the specificity or breadth of Omar Kholeif’s very personal account. There are caleidoscopic jewels all over this.’ – Khalid Abdalla, actor, activist and filmmaker
‘More than a history of internet art, Kholeif has woven a vivid autobiographical tapestry. In the patterns and cultural shifts of the past three decades, they find the beauty and bravery that marked this era of experimentation.’ – Prof. Kate Crawford, author of Atlas of AI
‘Outstandingly charming and insightful.’ – Prof. Roy Ascot, Artist; Founding President of the Planetary Collegium, Emeritus Professor of Technoetic Arts Plymouth University, and the De Tao Master of Technoetic Arts at the DeTao Masters Academy, Shanghai
‘Kholeif has authored a memoir that seeks to challenge perceptions of representation as much as a field guide to the world of all things digital.’ – Osman Yousefzada, Artist and author of The Go-Between
‘There's no way A.I. could have written this book. It took Kholeif's genuine intelligence and their broad knowledge of recent history to make sense of something that most often feels unstructured and random.’ – Douglas Coupland, Author of Generation X, JPod, and Bit Rot