Art made by machinery has been part of the world’s visual lexicon for decades. Traditional art forms shifted towards engaging with technology as early as the Industrial Revolution with the advent of photography; in the mid-20th Century with artworks like that of Andy Warhol, who mechanized art and repurposed manufacturing techniques into a ‘high art’ format; and again in the 21st Century as the Internet democratized art and simultaneously removed it from tangible media all together. The Internet and Web 2.0 emphasize the sharing of information as well as interactions between the Internet’s users, which has led to an unprecedented dissemination of art. In the post-Internet age we currently live in, art has become an amalgamation of algorithmically created images, pop culture interpolations, and digital illustration. Machine-assisted art, though it has existed in some form for decades, has accelerated beyond notions of what ‘art’ can or should be. This research will trace the origins of post-Internet art and posit how these inventions will influence art going forward. Current research into post-Internet art includes discussion of whether art made digitally, especially art made by algorithms or NFT art, can be considered ‘art’ at all, or if it is something beyond that. As AI-generated art is a recent phenomenon, research on the implications of art made almost solely by computers is continually emerging. The question of where post-Internet art sits in the Western Art Historical canon is one that will be explored in this research.
