Net art is art made on and for the network, and a lot of it later becomes unreadable. If the work lives in a format that disappears, the record has to be designed to outlast the original window. This page is a museum-and-archive account of that problem. It is not a claim that Glitxz has restaged, acquired, or conserved anything.
Tate, Art Term "Internet Art": "Internet art is art that is made on and for the internet, also known as net art. It encompasses various sub-genres of computer-based art including browser art and software art." "Net art emerged in the 1990s when artists found that the internet was a useful tool to promote their art…" Browser art, on the same page, "uses the computer as raw material, transforming the codes, the structure of the websites and the links between servers into visual material."
Rhizome, Net Art Anthology: Rhizome defines "net art" as "art that acts on the network, or is acted on by it," and prefers "net art" to "internet art" or the narrower 1990s term "net.art." The anthology presents "100 exemplary works," "launched in 2016 and completed in June 2019," and "aims to address the shortage of historical perspectives on a field in which even the most prominent artworks are often inaccessible."
The gallery counterpart: the project "was accompanied by a gallery exhibition, 'The Art Happens Here,' which was premiered at the New Museum in NYC in winter 2019."
Two public frames
Tate's definition is the plain one: made on and for the internet, emerging in the 1990s, with browser art and software art as named sub-genres. This page uses that definition, the date, and the software-art note. It does not import the glossary's political register about institutions.
Rhizome's wording is slightly different, and usefully so. "Art that acts on the network, or is acted on by it" includes work that is changed by the network, not only work that is posted there. The anthology exists because even prominent works were often inaccessible. That is the field's own reason for restaging, not a count of "lost" works beyond those two statements: inaccessibility of even prominent works, and 100 exemplary ones in the anthology. Rhizome editorials dated 12 October 2016 and 27 October 2016 record the launch of the two-year online exhibition and the microsite; the anthology itself is the primary source for the 100 works and the 2016–June 2019 span.
The Art Happens Here at the New Museum, winter 2019, is a fact about how the field was shown. It is not a touring claim, and it is not a Glitxz exhibition.
What to write down
A work that depends on a network still needs a contemporaneous record of what was shown, on which date, in which environment. That is a field habit, older than a shop page. Photographing unfinished work and a journal kept as provenance are the documentation companions already in this section. What is glitch art is the sibling for work that treats a file-format failure as material.
This page does not invent a tally of disappeared works, and it does not claim a conservation desk here.
A situation like this
This is a worked example, not a lot and not a customer. A work is described as "best viewed in the original browser," the original browser is gone, and the only surviving file is a screenshot with no date and no environment note. The useful questions are the ones a restaging project has to answer: what was shown, when, and in which environment.
Sources
- Tate, Art Term "Internet Art." https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/internet-art
- Rhizome, Net Art Anthology. https://anthology.rhizome.org/
- Rhizome, "Announcing Rhizome's Net Art Anthology," 12 October 2016. https://old.rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/12/announcing-rhizomes-net-art-anthology/
- Rhizome, "Net Art Anthology Launches Today," 27 October 2016. https://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/27/net-art-anthology-microsite-launches/
Also in this section
- What plotter art is and how it's made — a machine reads a file and draws with a pen.
- What is glitch art — a break kept on purpose, in a named format.
- AI art and U.S. copyright — what the Copyright Office says still has to be written down.
- What is pixel art — an image built on a grid. SAAM 2012 is video games as an artistic medium.
- Variable media: when a work outlasts its first format — what the work is allowed to become once the first format expires.
- When the software is the work — sometimes the program is what was acquired.
Applications to show unfinished work are open at Apply. First lots have not opened.
The useful next step is to date the environment the work was shown in, or to read the mediums index. If something on this page is wrong, write to us.
Author: Escherbridge. Last reviewed: 2026-11-10, America/Denver.