The web of (non)narrative encounters

Abstract

This paper evolves around online narrative structures and the way ephemerality affects how we experience and engage with Internet-based artworks in which variability is a factor that both the artist, the users, and the art institutions relate to. Internet narratives are discussed through the example of hypertext, its origin, development, expanded and forked into web-storytelling. Furthermore, deconstructive code-works are explored through their facilitation of (non)narrative encounters, which via networked dynamics present a rhizomatic engagement that takes place outside of the walls of the art institution. This way of working has historical reference-points to Conceptual Art and the discussion about the dematerialized art object as well as the authenticity of reproducible artworks; what is expanded here is the potentiality of decentralized web communication and interaction.