The study of net art curation demands a methodology that reflects the multilayered, non-linear, and inherently experimental nature of digital space. Traditional 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, weaving 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. Olga Goriunova’s work is most closely aligned with my research, as she pioneered the interrogation of art platforms as infrastructural and aesthetic mechanisms. Her definition “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) resonates with my understanding of curatorial interfaces as exhibition spaces for net art. However, while Goriunova’s methodology prioritises networks and connectivity, tracing relational dynamics between artists, curators, and institutions, my work shifts the emphasis towards form—specifically, how interfaces function as spaces of creation and curation rather than mere tools for connection. This distinction necessitates a methodological divergence. To interrogate interface materiality, I propose building a website as both a research instrument and a curatorial experiment, enacting McLuhan’s proposition that “the medium is the message” (1967) through its very design.

 

To achieve this practice-as-research approach, I decided to create a website that enacts contemporary curatorial practices, gradually collecting, establishing, and portraying different web elements inherent to net curation. Titled Curatorial Interfaces, the website 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. Consequently, the research consists of two versions: one is a traditional academic thesis in physical form, while its digital counterpart is nested within the Curatorial Interfaces website, serving as the practical component where different concepts are tested digitally. 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). It also mirrors Olia Lialina’s call to “create websites as protests against the monopolisation of the internet” (2021), where she critiques social media’s rigid forms for dictating exhibition norms. Lialina writes: “Don’t see making your own web page as nostalgia, don’t participate in creating the netstalgia trend. What you make is a statement, an act of emancipation. You make it to continue a 25-year-old tradition of liberation” (2021). While I align with her emancipatory ethos, my liberation is sought not from corporate platforms but from the strictures of traditional academic form. Here, the website functions as a laboratory: a space to test theoretical hypotheses about user agency, decentralised narratives, and digital preservation, structurally embodying the rhizomatic logic central to this research.

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This approach is fundamentally informed by the theoretical concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly the rhizome, as outlined in the first chapter of A Thousand Plateaus (1987). They contrast rhizomatic thinking with ‘arborescent’ thought, which they position as the epistemology underpinning Western philosophy. Arborescent thought is linear, hierarchical, and sedentary, represented by the tree-like structure of genealogy with its rigid, vertical categories. In opposition, 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). Its principles—of connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, and cartography—describe a system that can be shattered at any point only to re-start along new or old lines. This conceptual framework is not merely analogous to the digital network; as scholar Hamman (1996) argues, the internet is a rhizome. Its structure—decentralised, dynamic, and open-ended—exemplifies the very principles Deleuze and Guattari set out. The Curatorial Interfaces project uses this rhizomatic model as its main theoretical structure. The practical part of the research is informed by net art curatorial practice, allowing for experimentation with the very form and structure of the website, testing how a rhizomatic system can function as a curatorial and academic space.

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Consequently, this methodology unfolds through three interconnected strands: layout, structure, and context. This tripartite structure is itself inspired by the organisational logic of A Thousand Plateaus, where each plateau, or chapter, can be read independently while contributing to the whole. Similarly, each strand of this research can be engaged with on its own terms, yet together they form a cohesive inquiry into digital curation. The first strand, layout, interrogates the website as a space and how it can be used curatorially. It pays particular attention to the spatial properties of the digital and the underlying logic of digital parameters. This part centres on the navigation and academic component of the Curatorial Interfaces website, closely examining the use of space through hypertext, hyperlinks, and navigation that houses the thesis text. The second strand, structure, is interested in archiving in the digital age and proposes the idea of the ‘interface stack’. This concept proposes that interfaces are not merely the screen with which a user interacts, but that every part of the computer consists of interfaces, where each component (hardware, software, and user) is in constant communication through interfacial layers. This section is centred on archiving the Wrong Biennale (2018-2021) and uses the interface stack to understand how layered communication functions on the net. The final strand, context, looks closely at net art exhibition practices. It is based on the hybrid exhibition Alternative Realities Illustrated, which was created specifically for this research to test ideas of hybridity in net art curation and explore practices for exhibiting net art online. All three strands together form the overall structure of this research into net art and digital curation.

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In addition to the three core strands, the entire process of the Curatorial Interfaces project is designed to analyse and enact the six principles of the rhizome as set out by Deleuze and Guattari. 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). 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 Interfaces project, I explore this idea of connectedness primarily through the ‘Index’. This 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 Interfaces, 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 that 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). 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). 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 Interfaces 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, Bergsonism, p. 38). 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.

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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). 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). This means that with constant updates, edits, and the endless manipulation of form and information, the Curatorial Interfaces project will exist in a perpetual state of flux, updated according to the very logic of the internet it seeks to examine.

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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). 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” 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. 

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Through the Curatorial Interfaces project, I accomplish two primary goals: I test the theoretical structure of the rhizome as dictated by Deleuze and Guattari, and I simultaneously test different practices of net art curation in a digital environment.