Web Spaces for Public Art

Abstract

When we speak about the relation between public art and Internet, we find a difficult field. The web is, indeed, a place of electronic storage of information, but also a secondary space where public art could be developed. Both institutional and private projects move towards the creation of a “second life” with its own rules, shaped on the rules of reality, that generate however a series of new questions.
The aspect of communication becomes much more important than ever: nowadays the public is encouraged to interaction, to modify the reality, to discuss the traditional authority. The power is horizontal: public art has become the art that everyone own, in some case taking part in its creation.
In Italy, because of the delay of the institutions, public art through the web realized itself as a counterculture field since the ’80. The artists find there a space of freedom and protest, where they could criticise the authorities but also create a new possible reality, based on principles of togetherness and data transparence.
New, different ways which Italy could look as a model for the purpose to connect itself to reality and support an art which really lives in the contemporary society.