Nalder, Glenda Lyle (2002) Realising the virtual : the Internet as a space for transformatory art practice. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology.
Internet art (also known as net art or web art) is a form of new media art distributed via the Internet.
ABSTRACT:
The use of computer-networked storage and telecommunication dissemination modes has intensifed the tele-visual effects of electronic media to those of globally-networked tele-matics (communicating and
‘databanking’ at a distance), associated with the trans-national information economy. In parallel with this transition, artists seeking positive social change have shifted orientation from ‘work’ to ‘media’, evolving a
new genre of Internet-based New Media Arts practice known as ‘netArt’ – a form of critical engagement in
the mode of information. However, any argument for the transformatory potential of this new artfonn is
contingent upon a new conceptualisation of cultural agency: one that is able to overcome the limitations of postmodern theory, and to deal with the social complexity arising from the shift in concentration of relations of power from the level of the nation-state to the ‘global’ order.