The Internet Aesthetic

By Patrick Appel
Artist Ian Cook uses RC cars to make paintings of other cars. Here is what the artist has to say:

"I wanted to be an artist from a young age and decided that to be successful I needed something completely unique," said Ian. "I've always been mad about anything with wheels and I figured that using cars to paint cars would capture peoples' imaginations, so I experimented at home by driving some remote control models through paint."

Cook's artwork strikes me as representative of a lot of the art making it's way around the web. I've been trying to understand how and why art on the Internet varies from art in galleries. Artwork that succeeds on the net is usually strange, clever, humorous, or technically stunning. But cheap visual tricks or processes are often rewarded to the same degree as well reasoned and thoughtful work. Though I'm not convinced this is necessarily a bad thing, pondering the Internet aesthetic (perhaps best encapsulated by a blog like BoingBoing) makes me wonder about how the Internet will impact the greater art world as the web becomes increasingly dominant as a cultural force.