Final Project

The Internet is the great masterpiece of human civilization. As an artifact it challenges the pyramid, the aqueduct, the highway, the novel, the newspaper, the nation-state, the Magna Carta, Easter Island, Stonehenge, agriculture, the feature film, the automobile, the telephone, the telegraph, the television, the Chanel suit, the airplane, the pencil, the book, the printing press, the radio, the realist painting, the abstract painting, the Pill, the washing machine, the skyscraper, the elevator, and cooked meat. As an idea it rivals monotheism

Virginia Heffernan

Throughout this quarter we've explored and experimented with Internet art through the lenses of different online cultural niches; each community having different goals and perspectives, each celebrating their own masterpieces, like net.artist Olia Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, digital folklore enthusiast Cameron Askin's homage to GeoCities, the CSS Art of cascading stylesheets virtuoso Diana Smith, the covers and highlights of web-designer Melanie Richard's digital garden, the brutalism of Cards Against Humanity's 99percentoffsale.com and the minimalism of Google's Material Design.

In her book Magic and Loss, Virginia Heffernan zooms out and views the Internet itself as a massive work of art. She explores the logic, aesthetics and values of the Internet as a collective cultural whole. The entire book is worth a read, but if you haven't read the preface yet (assiged the frist week of calss), you might consider revisiting that now for some inspiration.

The final project can be based on one of the experiments produced earlier in the quarter, which you expand on or polish for the final, or it can be an entirely new piece. To receive full credit for the final project, your piece must: