Final Thoughts

President Clinton spoke of the Internet and the upcoming Electronic Age during a speech eight years ago. He said the Internet had "unlimited...potential to expand...opportunities..and broaden horizons". My experience at the Five Years Too Many Iraq Protest and the subsequent blog post confirmed what President Clinton said. I agree that the Internet is a powerful phenomenon that is changing the way humans communicate. The field the most altered by the Internet is that of art. The computer has increased access as well as transformed the methods of creating art.

To analyze the effect of the Internet on the art world, it is important to first ask, "What exactly is art?" A historical definition from Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy says an artwork is " a thing that has been seriously intended for regard in any way". By this definition then, any blogger is an artist. According to our class syllabus, art focuses on the interrelationship of hand, eye, and mind to create something that engages larger critical, formal or cultural digests. Like the Stanford Encyclopedia, our syllabus stresses that art is meant to seen and discussed. In today's world this is accomplished through the Internet. Anyone with a Facebook or anyone who writes a review on Amazon.com is an artist formulating an idea then opening it up to discussion. Thanks to the computer, the world of art has expanded to include anyone with a computer. Artistic critiques can now take place between thousands of people, at thousands of different times.

Despite the fact that the Internet has facilitated artistic discussion, I don't believe the Internet actually enhances the fundamental elements of art. Go to freeonlinegames.com and you can see grotesque trolls battling your elf, or black and gray raccoons squabbling. These images do possess some qualities of art like color and proportion. At the same time, no one critiques that raccoon for proportion or chromatic value, so it is not associated with art. If we try to look at the raccoon as a piece of art, we lose interest quickly because the troll game looks more interesting. The ubiquitous quality of digital images is cheapening the value of art. To be honest, I would not have labeled a Youtube video as "art" until I took an art class. Looking at a digital image is much less powerful than a huge canvas because the images are everywhere and then gone with the click of a mouse.

The internet is expanding the forum for artistic expression by getting anyone with a computer involoved. At the same time, this trend is sucking some of the life from the artistic world because there are too many images or ideas and not enough value placed in their contemplation.