INTRODUCTION:

Oh, I love you more today than yesterday
But not as much as tomorrow.

                                    Spiral Starecase (Pat Upton), 1969

Artists use the tools around them to create art. Or, they make new tools. New tools are especially alluring; witness Van Eyck, one of the first masters of the “new” medium of oil paint during the early Renaissance, or Jackson Pollock and his “drips” of enamel paint, or Nam June Paik , a pioneer of video art.

But what if an artist’s tools change and improve so rapidly that an artwork made today may not be viewable in two months, two years, or certainly not two decades? Nothing is more annoying than clicking onto a website and being unable to see the artwork because your computer lacks the correct program (i.e. Flash, Shockwave, RealOne Player, etc).     

In addition to changing technology, the hypertemporality of Internet art also refers to the advancing tastes and sophistication of the audience. Although not unique to Internet art (this refinement of taste affects all of the arts) the incredible speed of this refinement presents increased pressure upon Internet artists to produce something that won’t look “dated” in less than a generation’s time. Not to mention that the innovative Internet art creations of today may become standard fare in tomorrow’s commercial web advertisements.

Immediate technical and stylistic obsolescence is a persistent threat for Internet art, and Internet artists. Acknowledging and transcending this issue of hypertemporality is the common theme of the work in this exhibition but not the sole theme.

After all, artwork about artwork can be like Narcissus enthralled by his own beauty reflected in that treacherous pool — such work may be interesting to the maker and fellow artists but not relevant to those outside of the Internet art community.

Interweaving aesthetics, narrative, and other more traditional artistic subjects and qualities with the Internet’s exceptional visual character and content creates more layers of interest to viewers within and outside of the normal purview. With this in mind, the artwork of hypertemporality was chosen to address the exhibition’s immediate premise and to look beyond it, for an ironically holistic approach to a limiting aspect specific to the medium.

N. Elizabeth Schlatter
Co-curator