The author explores the transformation and derivations in the field of artistic experimentation on the Net. The article examines the accomplishments artists have made with the “new poetics” of the dynamic universe of telematic art, expressed in contemporary artistic production. The text introduces five distinctive projects in multi-user virtual environments that were recently produced in Brazil and then places the projects within the more general context of art on the Net.

Most Internet art projects use the Net solely as a telematic and telecommunicative transmission medium that connects computers and servers and through which artists, performers and users exchange data, communicate and collaboratively create files and events. At the same time, however, some artists are exploring the electronic networks as specific socio-technical structures with their respective forms of social and machinic agency, in which people and machines interact in ways unique to this environment. The author discusses recent projects that use the Net as a performative space of social and aesthetic resonance in which notions of subjectivity, action and production are being articulated and reassessed. This text discusses the notion of “resonance” in order to think through these approaches to network-based art practices.

The authors attempt to re-imagine classification systems as emergent systems—where names, categories and associated data structures arise from the bottom up through collective usage. Each has employed cartographic methodology as an interaction metaphor in the design of dynamic, evolving systems that allow participants to create and archive their own itineraries and maps on-line. These systems explore the aesthetic dimensions of the database. The authors have presented and tested prototypes of two developing systems, Subtract the Sky and A Map Larger Than the Territory , in a workshop/exhibition. This article provides a brief description of the premise and implementation of both projects. It concludes with some preliminary findings from the workshop/exhibition and the authors' shared research.