[NetBehaviour] darknetart

[Rob Myers]

The Internet is collaps(ing|ed) into the shareholder-value-maximising
embrace of social networks and of smartphone and tablet Apps, and under
the cosh of broadcast media necrophiliac international legal treaties
econ signed in return for a few lunches and directorships.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boo-Hoo-Dot-Com-Story/dp/0099418371/

Net art (and, if we must, net.art) was a transformation (in the
mathematical sense) of the matrix (in the mathematical, philosophical,
anatomical and cyberpunk senses) of the 1990s Internet.

The contemporary net is being supplanted, or at least supplemented,
morally and technologically by "darknets"

http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

such as Freenet and GnuNet or cjdns. These are not yet as socially and
economically central as Facebook and Google are, and they may never be.
But then nor was the net itself in the 1990s in the moments before
Theory realised that it had to shut net art the fuck up. The HTML 2.0
web indicated a potential open future of great technical and moral and
aesthetic possibility but not with any kind of certainty. As the
darknets do now.

So the Geocities or IRC or Mailing List art of 2012 should be on the
inept fumblings towards truth of the P2P and crypto networks. An SNIU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.#The_majority_opinion

and/or a gentrification:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification

of the kind that artists are always the pilot fish for.

A risk, an uncertain future, but congruent with the aims that led
artists to embrace (or at least productively dabble in) the
pre-dot-com-IPO web.

If we take Josephine Bosma's definition of net art as the art of
internet cultures, where is the Darknet art (darknet.art or darknetart,
for those of us who want a trademark)?

Where is the darknetart?

- Rob.