I found it really interesting that art and artistic expression had such influence on early internet history. Artists making a collective effort to keep the creative expression of the early web alive was inspiring. I found it intriguing that many of these artists predicted the gradual commercialization of the internet, and thus attempted to push back against it. Often, with the increasing presence of corporation online, the idea of web design and internet as art falls to the wayside. Many of the interesting works of the artists mentioned in this article (particularly works involving deconstructing/fracturing HTML) completely challenge the idea of practicality and function in website building.
There's been some cook web themed projects that I've found over the years, but this article makes me want to explore more of them! One of my favorites is this website which is dedicated to Serial Experiments Lain (an anime). It takes a lot of inspiration from jodi.org, which was mentioned in the article. I've hung onto it for years, and I like going back to it and clicking through the art frequently. To me, these websites are part of what make the internet a truly interesting place.
A lot of the references to internet art history also remind me of adobe flash and a lot of the now lost artwork and games that were created with it. There are sites like cool math games that were entirely run on flash, and many of their offerings were entirely lost to history due to flash's shutdown. I think that preserving internet history and art is equally as important as creating it, and hearing that many of these historical web art projects are still preserved is super awesome!
Wired:
