Internet art can be described in a most general way as some form of art that makes use of the internet.  This involvement can be both conceptual or material.  It can also be an art that speaks to the ideas and issues involved with the internet and its workings.  Or perhaps internet art can be defined as art that merely uses the internet as its gallery. There are also "post" internet artworks that make use of ideas surrounding the internet but are not necessarily located on the net.

There are artists who create themselves via social media and insert their fashion or ideas into a narrative that plays out via instagram or twitter.  These artists make use of the day by day flow of posting online, formulating (representing) either a true persona or an imaginary one.  See Pari Dust for one such example.

Art that becomes part of the stream of consciousness that the internet embodies is one aspect of the field.  This kind of art might ally itself with some particular aspect of the internet that emerges through (constant) contact.  Such art might evolve slowly through connections between the artist and the flow of information, and also through a dialog that springs up between it (the art) and the wider digital community. 

How do we define the internet itself in this equation?  The internet is a place that involves "ideology" on multiple levels.  It is a place in which information is utilized for a myriad of returns and objectives.  A stream of information is produced which purports to "describe" or to "analyze" a topic or process, all for the benefit of the user.  The user however becomes the producer, one producer amongst many, and the competition to control the information-scape is hot.  Information becomes more focused upon its "success" in relation to web traffic than in providing useful or sophisticated content.  The concepts of "useful" and / or "sophisticated" would require more analysis here. 

One might produce a type of internet art that comes to terms with the ideas represented above.  That type of art might be one that critically allies itself with a "refined" perspective.  An artwork for example that works towards "freedom of mind" is an artwork that is not inherently seductive (and is therefore refined from some perspectives).  Yet "freedom of mind" might be something that a racist or xenophobic post is ultimately grounded in.  Thus such phrases are too lightweight in relation to the issues.  

From an artist's perspective the material for work slowly accumulates.  A dialectical art in which the forces appear in an extreme position juxtaposed, or such forces are re-tooled and left as one aspect of an aesthetic are a path to (a possible) internet art and a developing internet aesthetic.  Trying to define or "fix" any aspect of the digital landscape is fraught with problems:  there are moral and aesthetic structures that are without form.  That is to say, the digital landscape of ideas is not fully "fixed", or perhaps, such a landscape does not have a stable shape.  If there were such discrete conceptual objects they might be merely hidden.  In any case, that which we might designate "hidden" is also (most certainly) shapeless and evolving.  The significant aspects of such a landscape are in flux and they require artworks that engage with that flux.  Furthermore, the landscape is heterogenous - it has many planes that intersect at different angles.  It is a structure built from such intersections.

If the purpose of some (many) institutions is to create obedient servants of human subjects, then an art that represents flux and multiplicity is in opposition to such a purpose.  There is however no "freedom of mind" that does not also accommodate intention to subject and control.  

To think without constraint and write without constraint is sometimes to produce violence.  The question that one might pose at this point:  Is there a disjunction between a mind's formulae for self-governance and the social contract?  

Exploring such spaces is one aspect of internet art.