/ Towards a Multiplicity of Forms
The study of net art curation demands a methodological framework that reflects the multilayered, non-linear, and inherently experimental nature of digital space. Conventional research frameworks, which often privilege textual analysis or historical documentation, risk flattening the dynamic interplay between interfaces, users, and artworks that defines this field. To address this gap, this thesis adopts a hybrid methodology, bringing together theoretical analysis with practice-based research. This approach mirrors the dual identity of net art itself: as both a subject of critical inquiry and a living, processual practice. The work of Olga Goriunova is most closely aligned with my research, as she pioneered the interrogation of art platforms as infrastructural and aesthetic mechanisms. Her definition states ’art platforms are self-unfolding mechanisms through which cultural life may advance to produce fascinating aesthetic objects and processes; they occupy a special place within organizational aesthetics on the Internet’ (Goriunova, 2012, p. 1), 1 which resonates with my understanding of Curatorial Interface as primary exhibition spaces for net art.
However, whereas Goriunova’s methodology prioritises networks and connectivity by tracing relational dynamics between artists, curators, and institutions, my work shifts the emphasis towards the democratisation of the curatorial field. Specifically, it investigates how a curator with limited resources can build a website and curate projects using the networking capacities of the internet itself. A variety of contemporary projects, including the Green Cube Gallery, Artists Space, SPAAM, and IsThisIt?, present their websites as fully functioning spaces for curatorial experiment. This project seeks to interrogate how the curator with very limited resources can construct a curatorial platform. An example, and one employed as a central case study, is The Wrong Biennale, which functions as a platform enabling curators to use the website as a digital space to showcase work. To some extent, this blurs the line between curator, artist, and the user or programmer, opening new avenues for approaching net art curation. From this perspective, the website Curatorial Interface functions as an experimental place that allows for a new democratic approach to curation via new technologies.
To trace this democratisation, this thesis employs a Practice as Research (PaR) methodology, a well-established approach in which creative practice forms the core of the inquiry process. In fields such as design, medicine, and the arts, this methodology, sometimes termed ‘action research’, privileges knowledge generated through doing, through direct and intimate engagement with the act of creation itself (Reason and Bradbury, 2001). 1 While traditional art analysis often involves analysis of finished works, PaR pushes the examination into the sphere of process, observing and analysing the self in the act of making. For this project, the ‘practice’ is not artistic creation in the conventional sense, but a curatorial practice enacted through the continuous design, development, and modification of the Curatorial Interface website. This practice-based approach involves creating a website that enacts contemporary curatorial practices, gradually collecting, establishing, and portraying different web elements inherent to net curation. Curatorial Interface created for this research incorporates these practices and digitally records them. In essence, this website is constructed to represent the digital version of this thesis in a style that fits the curatorial practice it investigates.
The rationale for working with digital space and website building was to test the extent to which a curator with very limited resources can curate a space for net art exhibition practice. For instance, the platform used—Wix—costs £14 per month to maintain, with an additional £10 per annum for the domain ‘curatorialinterface.xyz’. With this, I possessed a set canvas to begin implementing the research on the topic of the Curatorial Interface and to discover to what extent curatorial work can function with limited resources in a landscape of new technologies. Consequently, the research consists of two interconnected versions: a traditional academic thesis in physical form, and its digital counterpart displayed through the Curatorial Interface website, serving as the practical component where theoretical concepts are materially tested. This digital platform functions as the primary research instrument—a living laboratory where propositions about net art, digital space, and the Curatorial Interface are not merely discussed but are embodied and iterated.
My approach aligns most closely with practice-based research, wherein “the creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge” (Candy, 2006). 1 Here, the website itself is the central creative artefact.
This synthesis is informed by Johanna Drucker’s assertion that “interfaces [are] constitutive boundary spaces… understood ecologically, as border zones between cultural systems” (2013, p. 201). 4
It also engages with Olia Lialina’s critical observation on the shift from corporate, possessive platforms (‘My’) to a web of personal, sovereign spaces (‘Me’), a shift that underpins her call to “create websites as protests against the monopolisation of the internet” (2021). 1 While I align with her statement, the liberation here is not from corporate platforms, as Lialina proposes, but from the normalised structures of highly expensive curatorial practices typically housed within traditional museums. Here, my website functions as a place that allows an independent curator with limited resources to engage in exhibition practice. It is conceived more as a guide for independent net art curators than as a space claiming to replicate standard curatorial practices, which rely on teams of curators and vast resources.
The methodological framework for this practice-based approach incorporates a form of auto-ethnomethodology. The website functions not only as a laboratory for experimenting with different net art curatorial practices but also as a recording space for my observations. This understanding of the website as a living organism, one that must be updated and engaged with to exist, is theoretically underpinned by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s analysis of new media’s inherent condition. She argues that “new media live and die by the update: the end of the update, the end of the object. Things no longer updated are things no longer used, usable, or cared for,” even as frequent updates sustain relevance by “literally destroying—that is, writing over—the things they resurrect” (Chun, 2016, p. 2). 1 Each alteration in the thesis structure or research direction triggers a corresponding evolution and overwriting in the website. For that purpose, the website is in constant flux and can never be truly finished. To manifest this understanding of a website as a living organism, the subchapters dedicated to my auto-ethnographic observations and website building are composed in the present tense, in contrast to the theoretical chapters. The subchapters ‘Navigating Curatorial Interface’, ‘The Wrong Archives’, and ‘Alternative Realities Illustrated’ are written in the present tense as they encapsulate my ongoing reflections.
These technical and creative reflections are, in large part, dictated by the specific affordances and limitations of the website builder platform, Wix. This commercial environment actively influences curatorial decisions, leading to design choices that embody a negotiation between intent and constraint. For instance, the choice to implement an embedded, non-linear diagram for site navigation, rather than a standard hierarchical menu, emerged as a direct workaround to Wix’s structural limitations. This solution is analysed not as a technical compromise but as a significant curatorial act. It materially documents the tension between a curator’s rhizomatic ambitions for the digital space and the commercial logic embedded in common web-building tools. This practical struggle directly tests and gives concrete form to Bob Bicknell-Knight’s assertion that “to rely on Wix, or any other website builder or hosting company, is giving over a lot of control” (2022), 1 highlighting the core negotiation of design choices inherent to independent digital curation.
This documentation and reflection enable a cognitive analysis of the curatorial process itself. Building the website becomes a case study in the cognitive load and decision-making of the independent digital curator, making explicit the often-tacit knowledge required to navigate trade-offs between aesthetic intent, usability, and technical feasibility. Within The Wrong Archives project, the choice to utilise YouTube for video hosting represents a critical curatorial intervention. While addressing practical concerns of storage and access, this decision actively reshapes the conditions of the artwork's aura, its accessibility, and its preservation framework. These documented actions provide invaluable insight into the “operational significance” (Candy, 2006) 2 of curatorial work in the digital age. Furthermore, the website identifies the limitations confronting an independent curator operating with limited resources. Lacking a team of developers, I rely on visual builders that abstract underlying code, imposing inherent constraints on what is achievable. This project functions to understand the path of the independent curator for whom digital space is the primary site of experiment. Consequently, I do not employ an extensive interview methodology with institutional curators but instead focus from the standpoint of an independent practitioner who assumes the roles of artist, developer, and curator. I set out to explore what it means to be an independent curator in contemporary times, where technology facilitates a democratisation of how art is curated and distributed, enabling projects to proceed with minimal resources.
Finally, the website as an artefact is subjected to a form of post-textual, media-specific analysis (Hayles, 2002). 1 Its interface, information architecture, and functional capabilities are analysed as critical components of the research output. The non-hierarchical menu is not merely a design feature but a practical argument for a rhizomatic curatorial model. The decision to link out to net art projects rather than embed them is a methodological statement about preserving the aura of the live encounter. In this PaR model, the Curatorial Interface website and the written thesis form a cohesive, interdependent whole. The website embodies the research claims, and the thesis articulates the significance of its form and function. Together, they demonstrate that for net art, the curation of the interface is inseparable from the curation through the interface.
This approach is fundamentally informed by the theoretical concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly the rhizome (1987). They contrast rhizomatic thinking with ‘arborescent’ thought—linear, hierarchical, and sedentary. The rhizome offers a model for non-linear, anarchic, and nomadic thought. It is a-centred and non-hierarchical, a “finite network of automata in which communication runs from any neighbour to any other” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 17). 2
Its principles, connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, and cartography, describe a system that can be shattered at any point only to restart along new lines. This framework is not merely analogous to the digital network; as Hamman (1996) 1 argues, the internet is a rhizome. The Curatorial Interface project employs this rhizomatic model as its primary theoretical structure, allowing the practical research to experiment with how a rhizomatic system can function as a curatorial and academic space.
This methodology unfolds through three interconnected strands: layout, structure, and context. This tripartite structure is inspired by the organisational logic of A Thousand Plateaus, where each plateau can be read independently while contributing to the whole. My work consists of three main parts. The first, ‘From Link to Landscape’ (layout), examines the rhizomatic structure and design of the website, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari and analysing network connections like hyperlinks. The second, ‘The Interfacial Stack’ (structure), investigates preservation tactics and proposes the ‘interface stack’—the concept that every component of a computer constitutes interfacing layers in constant communication. This section centres on archiving The Wrong Biennale (2018-2021). The final chapter, ‘Curating Net Art’ (context), examines net art exhibition practices through the hybrid exhibition Alternative Realities Illustrated, created for this research. Using students at the University of Greenwich, this experiment demonstrated how an independent curator can organise an exhibition within a month using intuitive platforms like ArtSteps, creating a 3D environment without prior expertise or significant resources. All three chapters form a cohesive inquiry into digital curation.
The entire process of the Curatorial Interface project is designed to analyse and enact the six principles of the rhizome. The first two principles are those of connection and heterogeneity, which state that “any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 7). 3 This describes an ideal network of maximal connection between points, a principle demonstrated by the internet itself, where any computer can connect to another device. This is also a foundational condition for net art, which requires a network to function.
Within my Curatorial Interface project, I explore this idea of connectedness primarily through the idea of index. The bibliography section that is translated and titled Index in the website version section takes the academic references fundamental to all scholarly writing and adds a digital dimension, creating a repository of live links. This allows the user to move from one reference to another, from one link to the next, across the website's pages. Furthermore, in the digital version of this thesis presented through Curatorial Interface, I have deliberately avoided using images or screenshots of net art projects. Instead, each project is linked directly to its original website. This methodological choice is made to preserve the original environment of the net art project and to encourage the user to explore and connect to various websites outside the bounds of my own curatorial framework. The principle of heterogeneity is present throughout all three strands of the project, where diverse formats wich includes academic text, online exhibitions, and video recordings are brought together for the user.
The third principle is that of multiplicity, wherein a rhizomatic system is comprised of a multiplicity of lines and connections: “There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 8). 4
To unpack this, it is helpful to turn to Jon Roffe’s definition, which clarifies that a multiplicity is “a complex structure that does not reference a prior unity” and is not a fragmentation of a greater whole (The Deleuze Dictionary). 1 For Deleuze, the term refers to the character of an idea, accounting for objects of experience as systems of differential elements in mutually determining relationships, capable of changing states at the level of the system itself. This concept of a changing state, rather than a fixed unity, aligns perfectly with the nature of a website. The website, the user, and the network within which they communicate do not exist in a state of unity but in a constant state of becoming, arriving at a multiplicity of potential forms.
For the Curatorial Interface to even function as a unified entity, each part of its interfacial stack, including the hardware, software, and the user, must converge at the exact same moment to move from the abstract and virtual into the actual. This leads to a crucial distinction in Deleuze’s work between the two types of multiplicities: the discrete and the continuous. A discrete multiplicity is one of “exteriority ... of difference in degree; it is a numerical multiplicity, discontinuous and actual.” A continuous multiplicity is one of “internal multiplicity ... of difference in kind; it is a virtual and continuous multiplicity that cannot be reduced to numbers” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 38). 1 This provides a useful division: we can see the underlying code and electronic signals as discrete multiplicities, while the engaging process of the web renders them constantly continuous, changing with every new user interaction and every new click within Curatorial Interface.
The fourth principle presented by Deleuze and Guattari is that of asignifying rupture, which states that “a rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines” (1987, p. 9). 5 In a rhizomatic network, flows can be re-routed around disruptions. This is inherent to the architecture of the web, where pages can be blocked, redirected, deleted, or where new ideas can spawn, and bugs can be fixed. This circles back to the first principle of connectedness, where each strand can be seen as its own multiplicity, creating its own experience and reality alongside other parts. Deleuze and Guattari further note that a severed section will regenerate, forming new lines and pathways. This was evident during the construction of the website, where changes to the overall thesis structure would alter the website only in part. Some elements would be edited or deleted to reflect the new academic direction, while others would give rise to new concepts, causing new nodes, pages, and connections to appear on the website.
This underscores that the Curatorial Interface is not in a finished form, nor can it ever be. Anything on the internet is unfinished business; it will grow with time. Some nodal lines will disappear and die off, while new ones will grow in their place. As Peter Lunenfeld claims in his essay Unfinished Business, “The business of the computer is always unfinished. In fact, ‘unfinish’ defines the aesthetic of digital media” (p. 7). 1 This means that with constant updates, edits, and the endless manipulation of form and information, the Curatorial Interface project will exist in a perpetual state of flux, updated according to the very logic of the internet it seeks to examine.
The fifth and sixth principles are those of cartography and decalcomania. They assert that “a rhizome is not amenable to any structural or generative model” and is “a map and not a tracing” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 12). 6 A tracing, which is arborescent, replicates existing structures and evolves genetically from earlier forms. A map, however, is an open system, “open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification.” As Hamman observes, this has a clear correlation with the internet, where users create maps by linking pages and moving as nomads, browsing purposefully instead of tracing over old lines, with multiple entryways onto and within the network. Within my project, I continue this notion by designing a space where the user navigates and builds their own maps and connections; the website’s use will differ with every new user. This mapping begins with the website’s structure, which consists of three distinct parts that can be explored independently. Additionally, I present the user with an interactive map in the form of a diagrammatic menu representing the project's overall structure. This menu can be navigated along the x and y axes, with every component linking to a different page. This interface does not present a linear hierarchy with a clear start and finish, but a plastic plane that can be entered from any point. The final entry point for the website is the reference system; a user particularly interested in academic sources and their application could use the ‘Index’ as their primary entry point.
My inspiration here, alongside the theoretical framework of rhizomatic structures, was drawn from Laurel Schwulst’s design for Artists Space, which uses subdomains to make content accessible in a “flat and ambient way, allowing generous traversal” (Schwulst, 2019) 1 through the archive. I aimed to achieve a similar effect, though my entry points are not subdomains but are signified by three different favicons, each representative of the three main strands of the website.
Through the Curatorial Interface project, I accomplish two primary goals: testing the theoretical structure of the rhizome and testing diverse practices of net art curation in a digital environment. The subchapters—Layout, Structure, and Context—correspond to the three main chapters, elucidating what each explores and how it is transmuted into the website, thereby demonstrating the constitutive connection between theoretical inquiry and practice-as-research.