Beyond 'Beyond Interface': Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Networking

In the now-historicized first epoch of net.art, the Internet was a para-site for the protocols and viruses of a new form of art. net.art proposed radical shifts in the production and reception of art, and to a significant degree these parallel tracks purported to converge on the horizon of the Interface in a participatory consumation of artist and audience. A funny thing happened on the way to this future, however. It kept receding. Into new devices. New metaverses. Into ubiquity, arguably. Not exactly Borges' Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire but not unrelated. In 1998, I organized Beyond Interface, a selection of first-epoch net art. In this seminar, a decade on, we will explore the notion of art in an age of ubiquitous networking and whether this constitutes a second epoch of net art or network practice or something else. Art after networks?