First and foremost, when examining the digital space and its role in showcasing net art, I propose to acknolage its inherent fluidity. Net art projects function as living organisms of the internet, perpetually evolving and adapting alongside it. To extract them from their native digital environment and reduce them to static images or textual descriptions within a printed thesis is to fracture their very essence, rendering any subsequent analysis descriptive rather than critically engaged. This methodological tension finds a powerful echo in Walter Benjamin’s concept of the aura, as outlined in The Work of the Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1969). For Benjamin, the aura which is that unique presence of an artwork in time and space, its authenticity dissipates through mechanical reproduction. He argues that “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Benjamin, 1969, p. 3). This loss, however, leads Benjamin to a crucial conclusion: while we may be losing authenticity, mechanical reproduction facilitates a democratisation of art, enabling it to enter every home and spread widely. Without its aura, the artwork's primary function shifts; its ‘cult value’ as a unique, ritual object is supplanted by its ‘exhibition value’ for mass audiences. Art thus becomes a tool for communication, education, and politics, which is a potentially revolutionary development that could liberate art from elitist confines, though one equally susceptible to appropriation for fascist propaganda that aestheticises power.

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This idea was further extended by Douglas Davis in The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995). For Davis, the transition from analogue to digital, where copies lose no quality regardless of replication, forces a fundamental rethinking of the aura’s very definition and location. He contends that “the work of art is not only changing its form and means of delivery. By far its most provocative extension is into the intimate bowels of our body, mind, and spirit” (Davis, 1995, p. 381). The technology is not merely delivering a perfect copy but is fundamentally changing how we interpret reality and interact with it, bringing global connectedness to the fore. The significance, therefore, resides not in the fidelity of the copy but in the connection facilitated by the web and the exchange of ideas. Davis ultimately relocates the aura, concluding that it resides “not in the thing itself but in the originality of the moment when we see, hear, read, repeat, revise” (Davis, 1995, p. 386). This ‘originality of the moment’ can be traced perfectly within net art, which demands user engagement to function. This is exemplified by The Simple Net Art Diagram (1997), created by the artist duo MTAA, a work that has remained a touchstone throughout this dissertation. Through a schematic of two terminals connected by a lightning bolt labelled “The art happens here,” the diagram conveys that net art is an action or performance defined by its in-betweenness. Its subsequent life as a meme, remade by others under a Creative Commons license, underscores that it is this very ethos of connectivity and reuse that enables net art to function, and it is within this networked engagement that a new aura begins to take place. 

Here, I propose a new aura for net art: one tied not to an original object or endless reproduction, but to artworks born and sustained online, whose authenticity is derived from the user’s performative engagement within their native environment. Presenting net art through printed text alone fails to honour its multiplicity of forms and undermines the analytical rigour of the thesis. Consequently, on the Curatorial Interfaces website, which is the digital representation of this thesis, the artworks discussed are not inserted as static screenshots but are presented as hyperlinks. This allows the user to follow the reference, see the artwork in its own environment, connect with it, and engage with it directly; in doing so, they participate in the co-creation of this new aura. This methodological choice is a direct engagement with the ideas of Benjamin and Davis, consciously pointing to the work in its native, digital state, where it exists as a living, potentially changing process, rather than fixing it as a static reproduction within the academic frame.

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The second significant part of the project’s content is dedicated to the hybrid exhibition Alternative Realities Illustrated, held in July 2025, which set out to explore the notion of hybridity in net art exhibition practice. This concept of hybridity has been a constant, if evolving, presence throughout my research. At the outset of this journey, I strongly rejected hybridity, wanting solely to explore net art within the online environment, claiming it as the ultimate form for its exhibition. Yet, throughout my research, I continually encountered compelling examples that incorporated physical elements. This began with the ideas of post-internet art explored in the ‘Conceptual Transformations of Net Art’ subchapter and extended to observing how net art is exhibited in physical space. From The Wrong Biennale, which defines itself as digital yet maintains physical extensions, to the Net Art Anthology exhibition, "The Art Happens Here," at the New Museum, which accompanied Rhizome’s vast online preservation project with a physical gallery show and a printed catalogue, the boundaries proved persistently porous. This led me not only to reposition my thesis but to actively test the ideas of hybridity in net art exhibition practice, thus the Alternative Realities Illustrated exhibition was conceived. It consists of three interrelated parts: a physical representation of the exhibition, a layer of Augmented Reality (AR) that connects the online and the physical, and finally an online exhibition hosted by NetArt.city. Through these three parts, the project tests how an online exhibition can be linked to physical space without losing its contextual integrity, exploring methods for coherent representation across digital and material realms.