Milica Jovicevic 447848 28 February 2017 Sociology of Culture and Modernity ESHCC - CC2014 Dr. P.P.I Berkers Internet Art : The Democratization and Preservation of Walter Benjamin’s Aura In 1993 with the emergence of the web browser ‘Mosaic,’ Internet Art, also known as online art or net art, gained popularity (Ippolito, 2002). Internet art is art made specifically for the web, and most often takes shape of a website link (Ippolito, 2002). A renowned example is http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ (1998) by Joan Keemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, a weblink that takes the user into a conceptual and abstract labyrinth of coded imagery (Colman, 2004). This revolutionary art genre has evolved, and is further popularized by contemporary artists like Rafaël Rozendaal who uses web spaces as a canvas covered in infinite abstractions of color and geometry (e.g www.vaiavanti.com made in 2006 or http://www.floatingthe.com/ from 2016). What is evident is the Internet art movement depicts a shift; from traditional mediums, to artwork digitized into cyberspace; a shift from the White Cube to the mass media (Greene, 2000). This paradigmatic art form can be seen as the continuation and development of Walter Benjamin’s essay on “Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936). We are in an age no longer of mechanical, but of digital capitalist reproduction. Ippolito (2002) explains how artists that “made the leap to cyberspace claimed to do so in reaction to the exclusivity and greed of the art market,” aiming to attract “people who would not set foot in a gallery” (p. 486-487). The digitization of art process’ resulted to the democratization of the art; making art available to the masses by a quick copy of a link. Benjamin (1936) attested for the need to change the social structure derived from the convention of the ritual and cult, to a social structure that ables a democratic 1