Vanishing Acts

In Vanishing Acts, Eileen Isagon Skyers examines the role of network-based art practices as an aesthetic critique of our engagement with interface technologies that are increasingly seamless and largely undetectable. There is a direct correlation between the imperceptible interface and the distracted nature of human cognition. Certain urgencies are now assailing our nervous systems that were simply never present before. Despite our endless customization of web content, we are unable to observe the computational processes that make the information manifest. In this context, net art has the ability to reveal something crucial about the changing nature of subjectivity in relation to technology's gradual 'vanishing act.' Net art often employs retromediation and anachronism to question some of the actions inherent to networked space. These practices subvert the ruling tendencies and assumptions of screen-based operation, namely, transparency and interactivity.