I'm continually astounded by the rapid ongoing expansion of sites, services, ideas, and people on the Internet. More than a year ago, when I first started to track down art-related sites, a small handful of sporadic periodicals, databases, and discussion groups existed. In fact, owing to this sparse field, I even made my own crude and short-lived attempt at setting up a front end that acted as a gateway to other on- line art postings and services (see Internet World, July/August 1994). As of this writing, there is more art and art-related information on the Net than I can fit into this article.
I never know quite where to draw the line between the visual arts and creativity in general. There are, for example, vast libraries of sound samples, guitar chords, and even real-time musical jam sessions on the Internet. There are areas dealing with the performing arts and theatrical staging. Conceptual art is even harder for me to separate from art in general. The Internet already has all of the attributes of a vast interactive environmental piece. The various front ends that have evolved and are evolving, are themselves explorations of the relationship between the visual, tactile, and conceptual aspects of experience. I am reminded that a decade ago, the renowned video artist Nam Jun Paik foreshadowed the Internet in a real-time simultaneous broadcast from several points circling the globe. I'll be focusing primarily on the visual arts here, but I will make some reference to all of the creative and artistic realms.
Lets begin our walking tour of the Internet arts. You may want to bring along your GIF, JPEG, or MPEG viewer.
Our first stop will be some of the services that help organize people, places, and information on the Net. Probably one of the most readily available resources, even for users who do not have full access accounts, is the alt.art.com newsgroup on the Usenet. As with all of the Usenet groups, there is the usual free- wheeling, open forum for exchanges between users worldwide. The focus in this group is the community of artists. Requests for proposals, exhibition announcements, critical discussion, gossip, and the like appear regularly in this group.
In Usenet you can also find alt.ascii.arts, where text-based graphics are exchanged, rec.fine.arts for discussion of "serious" art, and more. I have found that many newsreaders (I use tin) will allow a wildcard search for a newsgroup, and that with a little bit of experimentation you can filter and search out more than is readily apparent. Try searching, for example, on *art * (include the trailing space), *art.*, *arts.*, and similarly on words like "graph," "craft," "pict," and so on. You may get some unexpected results, such as what you might find in alt.sports.darts, but you will also uncover newsgroups that discuss areas of art, graphics, crafts, and pictures that you otherwise would not have known were there.
As easily accessed either by e-mail or more directly by ftp (I like to use NcFTP) is the Fine Arts Forum. A well-put-together periodical, or e-zine, FAF releases news, announcements, and interesting miscellaneous information from the Science, Arts, and Technology Network. FAF is located at ra.msstate.edu in the directory pub/archives/fineart_online. To receive FAF for free via e-mail, send to fast@garnet.berkeley.edu with the message "SUBSCRIBE Fine Art < your name and e-mail address> ."
For people whose lives and careers are intimately involved with the arts, policy-making in the arts, art organizations in general, and the issues of being an artist, I strongly recommend that you look into Arts Wire.
This comprehensive on-line site is an ongoing project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, and it covers an exceptionally wide range of media and topics. It is, in effect, a national consortium of art organizations that enables two or more users to form private or public conferences. The "hotwire," which is FTPable, is an up-to-date source of art policy and event information. Arts Wire has self-elected sliding- scale fees beginning at a suggested $3 per month. You will, however, have to pay a $15 host fee to The Meta Network, plus connect charges if you are not telnetting in. You might consider Arts Wire for your main on-line account, as it provides e-mail and Internet access. Information can be obtained by FTP or Gopher to tmn.com or e-mail to artswire@tmn.com.
The Internet has also become an environment for interactive experimental art. The OTIS project has been the largest and longest-running experimental electronic art event/project on the Internet. Its collaborative and interactive graphic manipulation events point the way to what I feel will be a vital new medium in the arts. Recent projects included SYNERGY:CORPSE, which is the online version of the salon game Exquisite Corpse, a favorite of the Picasso, Stein, and DuChamp crowd. OTIS is found at sunsite.unc.edu in pub/multimedia/pictures/OTIS, as well as a number of other locations.
On the way to these sites, be sure to stop at some of the directories you are passing through. Generally, a site that houses one area relating to the arts has other directories that reveal the larger hosts soft spot for the arts. There are a multitude of sites with downloadable files for Amiga, Mac, PC, and Unix systems that are art-related program tools, images in many varied file formats, animations, and technical drawings. I sometimes feel like I live in the software repository at oak.oakland.edu. Other visual sites worth investigating are wuarchive.wustl.edu, sunset.cse.nau.edu, and convex.cc.uky.edu. If your site has access to Clarinet, try clari.news.arts. There is even the comic strip "Dilbert" in GIF format in clari.features.dilbert. Some Clarinet files are accessible via Gopher (use Veronica, and search "clari").
Gopher is another means by which to access a wide variety of art-related groups, sites, and files. Delphi, the first major on-line service to offer full Internet access, has done an excellent job of organizing Gophers by topics; thus, if your interest is in the arts, you can be connected rather painlessly to a number of sites. Their favorite-sites area lets you customize and save Gopher spaces you will frequently visit. In your own explorations, don't bypass using all of the standard tools such as WWW, Hytelnet, and libs. It's a great way to get lost and really begin to see what's out there.
Your own backyard is also a good place to look for other artists and art-related files. The Well, the on-line community created by the founders of the Whole Earth Catalog (remember that one, old timers?), has numerous special-interest groups, and the arts are certainly among them. Delphi has graphics subcategories in its computer-specific groups as well as a formidable graphics and photography group. I was surprised to find that there are a number of artists and photographers with accounts on my home base, Panix. I discovered quite by accident that New York's longest-running performance-art space, The Kitchen, has an account here. Dont be afraid to post to your local discussion group even a simple query that you can hide behind, such as "Do any users at (our site) know where to find art-related resources?"
Here is a further listing of art and creative sites:
Musicians might want to try ftp.nevada.edu or ftp.uwp.edu for guitar chords from hundreds of artists. Sound samples are found at wuarchive.wustl.edu.
For the theatrical arts, there is the rec.arts.theatre newsgroup. You can e-mail to stagecraft- request@jaguar.cs.utah.edu with the message "Information request." Send e-mail to listserv@mit.edu with the message "subscribe THEATRE-THEORY < your name> " information on various aspects of theatrical theory.
Photographers will find a photographic material database at Gopher panix.com, discussions about photography in rec.photo on the Usenet, a collection of images at photo1.si.edu, and NASA space images at explorer.arc.nasa.gov.
Teachers may be interested in erick.syr.edu by Gopher or ftp, where lesson plans for art education may be found.
For conceptual games players, I recommend all forms of MUDs and MOOs. Though technically not intended as specifically "real" conceptual art (what is?), these interactive games and displays have great potential for the art events of the future. A MUD is a multi-user dungeon in which you are a character or incarnation in a computer-generated world. MUDs, MOOs, MUCKs, and MUSHes can be found through Gophers. Telnet to rtf.utexas.edu or read rec.games.mud on the Usenet. Read the information files and FAQs before jumping in. Many of the threaded discussions on the Usenet are fascinating places for on- line creative interaction, as are the channels on Internet Relay Chat.
Check out Kevin's Prairie Dog Town at Gopher skynet.usask.ca. KPDT could almost be placed in a category of its own. Gopher to internet.com and enter Dern's News and Views, where you will find his unique take on the Internet and pointers to some of the interesting and unusual sites, as well as the soon- to-be-open Camp Internet. A new site named Kaleidospace will become a showcase for visual artists, filmmakers, software and multimedia artists, performance art, and more. Contact info@kspace.com for more details.
The above list is by no means all-inclusive. My own New York Art line is now available via Gopher at Panix.com.
Kenny Greenberg (kgreenb@panix.com) is a Neon artist and owner of Krypton Neon in Long Island City.
Copyright (c) 1994 by Mecklermedia Corporation. All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without permission.