The WebArt Manifesto The exponential growth of the Internet has been the global communications phenomenon of the last decade of the 20th century, and as we enter the new millennium this growth shows no indication of abating. The World Wide Web has been the driving force behind this phenomenon, and its ubiquitous success has been attributable to the open, extensible nature of HTML code. We believe that HTML code and its derivatives, as a medium, are now the basis for a new, independent artform. We advocate the adoption of the term 'WebArt' as the proper nomenclature for that artform. We define WebArt as: "That artform which depends upon HTML code, including HTML's derivatives and successors, as the medium for its creation, presentation, communication and expression." We have adopted this particular nomenclature in order to distinguish between WebArt (with its particular dependencies as set out in its definition), and a host of other terms such as 'art on the web'; 'web art'; 'internet art' etc.. These other terms are inadequate for our purpose, principally because their imprecision admits the use of the WWW/Internet communications vehicle itself for the mere transmission of a wide variety of other (largely, at this time, pre-existing) artforms in their digitised versions or formats. Such activity is not characteristic of that which we seek to isolate and identify: 'a new, independent artform'. From the position we have adopted it will be immediately apparent that WebArt is capable of encapsulating an increasingly wide range of other media, digital and otherwise. We acknowledge this freely and regard it as an important aspect of the artform - one that arises as an inevitable and welcome consequence of HTML's flexibilty as an 'envelope' for the communication of digitised data. It follows from this that much WebArt activity will be characterised by the juxtaposition and integration of 'particles' of work in other media -text, sound, painting, drawing, film, sound, music, photography etc.. In this regard, 'multimedia' and 'digital art' are merely further 'particles' for inclusion alongside these others. WebArt is distinct and important because HML, its medium, carries within it an additional and uniquely powerful (largely by virtue of the liberating impetus of interactivity) dimension of global communicability via the Internet. By analogy, it as though somebody had invented a form of painting in which works could be searched for and seen by anybody, anywhere, and at a time of their own choosing.... Finally, we are aware that the background to this manifesto is a period of dramatic change and advance in digital technology. The conditions for WebArt are therefore equally dynamic, and we acknowledge that there will be much more debate and revision on these matters as the technical and communications parameters for WebArt shift.

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