"Up to now the Net's been a free space to do what you want, that's why it's amazing. It's a big public space to show work; whereas in the art world most gallery openings are private and just a handful of people can see it," Baldwin points out. "It's a Catch 22 -- you don't want to send the original people away or turn them off by charging [money to view the art], but at the same time you want to make money."

But Baldwin, a lanky blond with a whimsical sense of humor, also has a lucrative second career as a Web designer. Baldwin, a Texas native, grew up "wanting to be the second Andy Warhol," but after studying film and video at the Art Institute of Chicago, settled for a job as a temp answering phone calls at Apple Computer. Heading to San Francisco in 1993, he landed a job as a Web designer in a then tiny high-tech start-up called CNet (employee No. 11). After a year there, he turned to freelance projects, producing CD-ROMs for local design companies and TV broadcast design and animation. Today, he lives in Los Angeles and makes most of his money off clients like Oxygen Media; expensive projects like these allow him to spend almost half his time working on his art projects.

Redsmoke, which will be shown at the Biennial, is Baldwin's primary Web site and art space. It began as a side-project during his years in San Francisco and since evolved into a permanent "work in progress" -- a constantly mutating collage of overlayed images, sounds, and Flash animations, often jarring and occasionally cute. Buried within the maze of pages is an episodic and abstract cartoon called the Platters, which he describes as "soft, furry fuzzy things mixed with harsh reality."

The Biennial will be Baldwin's first exposure to the world of discriminating art critics and collectors, and although he says he's looking forward to talking to dealers about his work, he's not so sure that he wants to get immersed in that world. "[The Net] is changing everything -- I don't even know if you can compare it to the structure of the traditional art world," he says. "I don't want to get caught up with the money aspect of this at all, and that's the first thing on a dealers mind."

In fact, one common refrain among the Biennial's Net artists is a complete lack of attention to the traditional art world of museums and critics. Most Net artists say that they've long sensed that their work wasn't highly regarded by many art critics, but didn't really give a damn. In fact, some -- like Ben Benjamin, creator of Superbad -- never really thought of their work as art in the first place. As Benjamin puts it, "I didn't really start thinking of Superbad as art until the art people started finding it."

Benjamin, 29, also arrived at digital art via a career in Web design. Although he'd studied psychology at Earlham University in Indiana, some design classes helped him land a job at CNet in the early 1990s (where, coincidentally, he briefly worked with Baldwin). As he puts it, "I always wanted to be an artist but didn't think it was practical, so I took some extra classes in graphic design and got a job. I've been doing graphic design ever since."

Despite his inclusion in the Biennial, being a newfound Net artist still isn't "practical"; which is why Benjamin still works as a Web designer. Currently, he's living outside Kyoto, Japan, working on Web projects for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone; over the years, he's toiled as a freelance Web designer, making enough money from clients like E! Online, Third Age, @Home to ensure four-day workweeks and enough time to work on Superbad.

Superbad, which began as an experimental staging ground where Benjamin tested out technical and graphical problems for his commercial Web work, has evolved into a maze of pop imagery. The site, which changes almost daily, is full of images culled from Japanese pop culture, interactive games and mathematically driven designs that change when you click on them. Animated pictures of Japanese businessman lead to an anime-style cartoon which lead to Benjamin's latest grocery bill, and on to an abstract pattern of dots.

The site already boasts 2,500-3,000 visitors a day, but after four years, it has yet to earn a cent. "I would love it if someone wanted to pay me to do something like Superbad, but I've never thought of it as an option. I can't commodify Superbad -- it'll never be bought or sold," he says.

But even if digital artists are still sorting out the business model for their work, the outlook for their notoriety is increasingly optimistic. The Biennial will, most likely, give many of these artists a higher profile in the art world; and other museums, like the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, are displaying and commissioning shows from a number of upcoming Net artists. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is not only purchasing digital art works for its collection and exhibiting them online, but has hired a new media curator and is offering a prize for online art and a series of panels discussing the impact of the digital media. Matthew Mirapaul is regularly covering digital art for the New York Times; and, one by one, prominent galleries in New York and San Francisco are including digital art in their exhibits.

"I really think it's the most interesting art scene going right now, there's a lot happening," says Amerika, who says he's looking forward to forcing the art world to finally sit down and listen to him explain what Net art really is. "This Whitney exhibit gives it legitimatization in an institutional context. It's time to educate museum goers about the form."

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