The purpose of this essay is to outline a number of "trends", which have been developing since artists first started using the network as a natural extension of activities "off-line", as well as exploring its potential as a new medium, and a new realm. Indeed, what happens online is rather unique, as it is probably the first time when the means to produce an artwork and the way it is to be distributed and experienced have come to be the same: the medium and the locus have become one. Artists working on installations had already explored a system within which the boundaries between workspace and distribution space were erased. Here, however, the added factor of a virtual location forces a re-assessment of the notion of "in situ". Similarly, the process and the result are collapsed into one entity, which is also something art has been exploring before: the form of an artwork may consist of a set of documents that recount an action; the thought process that informed its making is meant to be visible.

Therefore, it is not a surprise to find a vast array of achieved online projects by artists. These often can be understood in the context of art making, and the various experiments that took place since the beginning of the 20th century, when artists in the Western world started challenging the notion and function of art, bringing in a number of new approaches to this form of creativity. Art, today, is far more in touch with it's surrounding socio-cultural context than it ever was, or at least consciously: from an idealized portraiture of its time, it has become an instrument of social criticism, and a reflection on issues that condition our lives. The meaning of the word "representation" has shifted, and one sees in many cases artists playing with the landscape, selecting fragments, isolating them, thus offering a different understanding of those components. What we can see online is pretty much comparable, in many instances, to what was happening in galleries and various institutions in the 60's and 70's. It is a fluid praxis, that does not necessarily rely on formal conventions, and that offers a different perspective on our common landscape we tend to take for granted.

This is maybe why one of the most dynamic and interesting aspect of the online art investigation is based on the structure, and this is certainly one area of work which I believe bares the most interesting dynamics.