Humanity is evolving towards a “post-human” society that may include enhanced human beings, hybrid humans, and artificial intelligences. As an artist working in digital media and network culture, I believe that the crucial issue of the time is to clear the path for networked art and to create the foundations for a new aesthetic discourse emerging from networked culture. In order to do this, one has to be willing to create art that may not be readily recognized as artwork.

If the development of mass media utterly revolutionized the situation of art in the 20th century, current research into the technological reconfiguration and replacement of the human organism promises an even more radical disruption of art's cultural status. As engineers contemplate the creation of artificial life, artistic creation again finds its traditional values and procedures called into question. How will artists respond to the challenges posed by cyborg culture?

In the technological sector, the first development stage of a product is known as ‘Alpha’ phase. The essay posits that techno-industrial culture and the production of technological art have been superimposed to the point where artists are often indistinguishable from commercial entities trying to sell the next hype-laden device. This is also true in the case of intangible on-line art, as market and institutional forces rematerialize net and other forms of screen-based art.

The recent use of streaming video on the World Wide Web for the distribution of live images has enabled an interface that supports a new phenomenon of virtual, defered, remote presence, extending perception and expanding the possibilities of remote interaction. The purpose of this essay is to provide a brief survey of the use of these live images in artistic spaces specifically conceived for this medium. These environments will be presented in three different categories, which propose transformations in possibilities of participation, interference, and the participants' self-expression.