Julian Stallabrass (2003), Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce, London: Tate Publishing.

Stallabrass begins his book with a symptomatic example of the clash between the commercial art world and activist cultures, giving the example of RTmark's rejection and auction of their invitations to take part in the prestigious Whitney Biennial and its 'exclusive networking opportunity' (2003: 8). The normalised complicity of artists can be set against resistant strategies of the avant-garde. Stallabrass cites Peter BŸrger's Theory of the Avant Garde (1984) in this respect to highlight that 'the avant-garde cannot simply return from formalist autonomy to a direct engagement with subject matter but instead takes the condition of autonomy itself as its subject matter' (2003: 35). This can be seen in much of the best net.art especially in those works that clearly articulate something about the formal concerns of the Net and in its rejection of the idea of being characterised as avant-garde. 

The work of Jodi is a good example in their deployment of dysfunctional interfaces and software, and the overall lack of user control or understanding of the processes at work. Stallabrass says that 'Jodi turn software inside out' (2003: 38) revealing something of the hidden ideological nature of the system in clearly materialist terms. In another example, and as a response to the inevitable concessions of exhibiting at Documenta X, Jodi simply produced a link that on clicking made the visitor's machine crash (in Stallabrass, 2003: 121). It is important not to simply read these examples as simply an engagement with formalist concerns but more as an engagement with autonomy. The work of Jodi is scrutinised in more detail by Florian Cramer in 'Discordia Concors: www.jodi.org' (2002). He argues that Jodi's work simultaneously affirms and negates its place within a network, like experimental text works did previously with the system of language. Much of this is expressed as noise and apparent randomness. This is no simple analogy though, in jodi's work, randomness occurs not simply structurally within the work (hardware) but in its transmission (2002). There is a tendency here in the negation of software rather than hardware. 


Work:

The desktop metaphors say it all, turning the user necessarily into a worker: 
'Thus, in a compact that Adorno would have immediately recognised, work became playful, and play training for work' (Stallabrass, 2003: 72; paraphrasing Adorno's essay 'Free Time'). 
This is also exemplified in Microsoft's animated help assistant. 

[add Matt Fuller's Microsoft Word deconstruction]