Heather Iqbal

Entering the August Art Online Exhibition, I am confronted with a map of different trees, the large, central tree with its roots pointing upwards.  The object is to roll your mouse over the trees, causing the appearance of a piece of text or another image.  When you click, you are linked to another page, set of web links, or set of images. For example: "With the fast increasing advancement and development of a scientific and technological culture, it is only natural that many contemporary artists have crossed the plateau from 'fine art disciplines' into 'multidisciplinary mew media'" links to Kinetica, a Museum of Electronic and Experimental Art.

My first impression is that August are riding on the back of a wave which they didn't create, and over milking their general mission statement, with few results. Don't get me wrong: I'm committed to the Internet as a medium, but I feel that utilising it beyond the form of a service is a difficult and delicately balanced process. Is providing many (admittedly relevant) links the means to create what is truly an "online gallery"?  The bringing together and sharing of art is a gift of the Internet Age, which tools such as Twitter advance. However, it is a substantial base which creates a successful portal.   ?  Another roll over and I quickly begin to change my mind, the next tree reveals a question and answer panel: "Q: What is Software Art? A: The term is still under construction." This links to a forum discussion with the question as the header.

This is the kind of accidental gem one could stumble across - or not - after an hour or half a decade of relentless, without-a-particular-purpose internet browsing. This forum provides not only a valid and exploratory conversation about art, but causes the discussion to be melded beautifully, as if by chance, with the August exhibition.  I roll again. "ACCIDENTAL HISTORY RESET" appears, leading to a wiki story of net art from 1994 to 2009, a list of software art history.  This page not only stands as a visual exhibition piece, it itself has become a piece of that undefinable software art.

Some of the trees reveal images rather than words, that lead to more images, and eventually more links. A picture of two tree branches reveal that "Neen stands fro Neenstars: a still undefined generation of visual artists...Computing is to Neen as fantasy was to Surrealism and freedom to Communism."  This, along with in built surface quotations: "Several decades if international media art is in danger of being lost", illustrates the multi-dimensional nature of the web, portrayed through text, image and link. August manages to create an attractive, structured and profound spiral of these multiple dimensions, ordering the chaos I initially feared.

The mixing of these three forms also marks another significant progression for the definition of software art. As the combination of text and visual art led to the ekphrastic, the combination of text, image and link have led to software art. The fact that some of the trees do not transform into anything at all, but rather remain as fixed illustrations leaves a clear space for progression and opportunity within the world of software art, and a distinct non-erasure of past forms.