Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs

A leading figure in the world of networked culture explores the artists and events that defined the mass medium of our time

Since 1989, the year the World Wide Web was born, the art world has grappled with the rise of networked culture. This unprecedented survey of the artists and innovators in this area from 1989 to today is interwoven with the personal narrative of one of the leading voices on the digital world. In this book, Omar Kholeif, whose prolific career parallels the growth of the internet, tells the story of this mass medium and how it has fostered new possibilities for artists, both analog and digital.

The book showcases work spanning a range of media from legendary artists including Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Nam June Paik, Heather Phillipson, and Wu Tsang. Tracing the key artists and innovators from the emergence of browser-based art to the dawn of NFTs, this is a tale for the present and the future.

Dr. Omar Kholeif is an author, curator, broadcaster, and the avatar of Dr. O – a polymath who lives in the metaverse. A leading commentator on art and digital culture, Kholeif is the author of dozens of books, which have sold more than 100,000 copies in English alone, curator of over sixty exhibitions, and founder of www.artpost21.com, which supports art and social justice in the age of the ‘meta’ metaverse. Kholeif is the Director of Collections and Senior Curator at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE.