About the Net-Art Course:

Updated on 5/6/25

Net Art 2.0: Expanding Creativity Through AI and Open Access

If you’ve found your way here, welcome!
You’re stepping into a platform that’s always been about more than just “art.”

When I first created Net-Art as an Open Education Resource for the CUNY Academic Commons, it was with one goal in mind: to offer an accessible, flexible, and creative space for anyone, anywhere, to experiment, express, and connect through digital tools.
We explored early web making, animated GIFs, vaporwave aesthetics, glitch art, augmented reality experiments — all fueled by the same spirit: freedom to create!

For the last year or so, I took a natural pause..
(Artists know — evolution happens in cycles.)
During that time, my creative life expanded in ways I could never have fully predicted: major commissions, deeper explorations into virtual and augmented reality, and a whole new relationship with artificial intelligence as a creative partner.

Today, it’s time to officially evolve Net-Art into its next form:
Net Art 2.0.

What stays the same:
The mission remains, open access, creativity, experimentation, and joyful exploration.

What grows:
We are welcoming AI as a new ally in the creative process!

AI is not here to replace artists, designers, educators or art and design educators..
It’s here to expand our reach, help us prototype faster, spark unexpected ideas, and bridge the gaps between imagination and reality. Just like when we first explored glitching GIFs or remixing early memes, AI is simply another tool to push creative frontiers.

In the coming months, you’ll find:

• New assignment prompts that integrate traditional net art practices plus AI co-creation
• Resources on using AI ethically and creatively
• Explorations of how machine learning intersects with human storytelling
• Open dialogues about where technology and art-making meet (and clash)
• Lots of new experiments (because that’s the heart of this place)

This isn’t about abandoning the past.
It’s about taking everything we’ve learned from graphic design, digital art, blogging, storytelling, HTML experiments to animated GIF narratives and adding powerful new dimensions.

Net-Art was always a living, breathing, evolving organism!

Now it’s ready to breathe a little bigger, dream a little wilder, and reach a little further.

Thank you for being here.
Thank you for continuing to explore, question, and create.
The next chapter is going to be even more amazing — and you’re already part of it.

Let’s keep building it, together!

 

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(The original About page from 12/2/2017 – now archived)

This is a Collaborative Community. This is a Collaborative Course. You will Collaborate here!

Ok, most importantly, this website serves as an example and a template for what the potentials can be here on the commons and beyond! Thats right, we are here to share, participate and help!

You may have arrived here thinking that this course / community may not be for you and your subject of study. You see a lot of graphics, flashing imagery and fragmented snippets of over-stimulation.. however, it may all be resonating with an unconscious aspect of how we already filter and expect to consume Internet content. We dismiss quite a bit these days with out even questioning the meaning or the potential value..

Let’s work on that together.

Be it know, this course website has big contributions coming from CUNY York College CT101 Digital Storytelling students, as well as BMCC Foundations of Graphic Design Students. We use this site for teaching, experimenting, sharing, presenting, discussing and archiving our progress.

The NET-ART course will change your mind, perceptions and outlook on how we can use creativity, digital tools and the Internet as a powerful force for Teaching, Learning, Pedagogy, Storytelling, Digital Art & Design, Journalism, Promotion, and most of all Self-Expression!

It is our intention to foster interdisciplinary course participation and interaction between CUNY campuses, faculty members, students of all levels, alumni, community members and affiliates. The Net Art course, website and community will expand upon the many ways that we are exposed to new content, experiences and subjects on digital platforms. It is a space to host, exhibit and discuss our reactions and dialogs.

The course / website will promote, present and archive a wide range of multidisciplinary discourse and output including group and solo exhibitions, critiques and reviews, collaborative zines and much more.

Please browse the website and explore!

 

Are you interested in submitting to NET-ART? Get in touch! Submissions are always welcome and open!

 

Questions? Reach out – Contact – rseslow (at) york.cuny.edu