Exploring different territories
Despite Internet-based art is usually perceived through its own online context and remains in its own context, both curators and artists have tried to re-interpret and re-elaborate it, by embracing always new approaches. These approaches are usually marked by attempts to undermine or take a distance from the medium of the Internet, or accepting it by being an integral and active part of the complex structure of the online context. However, artist, curators and art institutions tend to confusedly categorise the variety of online art manifestations as Web Art, Internet Art, Net Art or Post-Internet, manifesting a lack of attention to the different artistic approaches to the matter and a shallow investigation on how artists use online contexts to meet and satisfy their artistic needs.
Although the mutable nature of these forms of art and the difficulty of associating them with a specific theoretical definition still remain, artists and curators have lately defined a common trend focused on freeing artistic contents from the habitat of the Internet, translating them into the physical space of the galleries. This curatorial and artistic process shows an attempt to de-territorialise a specific work from the original context of the web and re-territorialise it according to physical setting and display. Furthermore, this process aims to re-create and re- elaborate artistic messages by taking physical control of their production and reception, which would otherwise be compromised by their exclusive online presence.