The Internet as Ruin: Nostalgia for the Early World Wide Web in Contemporary Art

Abstract

The Internet appears as a romantic ruin in the new media installations of several international contemporary artists.  Engaged in a quasi-archaeological excavation of the early history of the medium, these artists today manifest the desire to recover the transformative possibilities offered by the network in its heydays. This paper looks at the romantic discourse surrounding artistic and social practices. What to make of artists and activists’ desire to retrieve obsolescent software (e.g. early gif animation) and hardware (e.g. early personal computers) and to elevate them as ruins? Does the nostalgia at work in the practices of contemporary artists today problematically gloss over the past — in other words: is it another instance of the persistence of the myth of ‘technological determinism’, so heavily criticized by Raymond Williams? Or can we found a critical and positively utopian element in the nostalgic impulse at work in contemporary artistic and activist practices?