The Art Of The 'Net

A mouse, to some artists, is like a paintbrush or a chisel. It is not just a tool to get around the Internet. It is a tool for creating new visions that push the visual envelope.

They aren't just selling art through a Web site. For them, the Internet is the medium.

A Few Places To Visit

The Art Of The 'Net
For a look into fun little doodles and works in progress: Potatoland.

For artsy games and animated arts: Noodlebox.

For a collection of Web installations from diverse artists: Dia Center.

Art students at Oxford University put their online projects up for all the world to see.

Artists, designers and techies exhibit their experimental projects and get feedback from their peers at Thunderbaby, a site designed by Tara Kelley.

Artists, writers, designers, and programmers show their work in a communal setting at Unraveled.

Some of the art on the Web are simple works that mimic the action of a lava lamp, for instance. Other works invite your ideas, and sometimes involve the narrative as well as the visual.

Artists also make visuals that resemble quilts, with different images flashing in squares. Although sometimes they are composed of digital photographs taken in different places, the whole work somehow presents itself as a cohesive vision.

Through animation and photography, an online artist can give you the feeling that you are flying or walking through shadowy woods. And even those images that seem not to work quite right are examples of a new medium finding its legs.

A larger vision of interactive art is on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The artist behind it is Nam June Paik, a legendary multimedia visionary who is viewed by many as the father of interactive art. He and his Guggenheim exhibit were the subject of a report on March 12 on CBS News Sunday Morning.