E. Navas:
1) Because you have a background in philosophy, can you tell us how your education has influenced your art work; specifically the formal and ideological choices for your projects?

P.Luining:
In the beginning not too much. I discovered that bringing in my philosophical knowledge meant that my work became way too complex, in other words it didn't communicate that well. So I tried to forget it in the first place and started to work on intuition and what I knew from the art I had seen. And of course I also started to develop a critical attitude (reflecting critically) towards my work. The last 2 years though my philosophical training has slowly come back into my work, which [initially] developed from the esthetical to the more formal and conceptual.

EN:
2) Can you tell us how your practice crosses over curating, art making and writing? This seems to be fairly common in the net community, why do you think such a crossover is recurrent?

PL:
To start with the first question. I did curate a net art show called Net Affects in 2000, but I see this as a one time occassion. I learned a lot from it, but really would think twice if I was being asked to curate something again. It looks easy to curate a net art show, but especially organizing a large show is more complex than you would think beforehand. Net Affects was even more complex because it had a real space part and also a printed catalog. The whole thing did cost me much more time than I had thought. Art making and writing are practices that more or less coincide when you are working on the net. When you ask why a crossover is recurrent, I want to point to the special situation net art is in. Online shows can be easily organized, and if we talk about writing the situation is even more unique. Where the discourse of the "institutional" artworld still heavily relies on printed and objective writings, with the net we see a new, more personal and direct kind of writing by artists and critics, this is because there are things like mailinglists and blogs. These lead to writings that are much more involved; which is a good thing because
especially interactive work needs this involvement. On the other hand it also suffers from personal things like envy, gossip, etc.

EN:
3) Tell us about your live performances; how do you develop them?

PL:
As my forms of presentation of work develop, also my performances develop; most of my recent performances were a sort of "propaganda" for my online material. So performances as a sort of showcases of the things I develop. Performances and lectures are for me at the moment the best formats of presentation because you show people how things work and tell them essential background information that in a lot of cases are missed when you just have a computer standing somewhere in an art space with your work on it.

EN:
Can you give us an example of this background information you deliver on a presentation?

PL:
Maybe it's important to note that lately I became interested in questions about virtual and real space, this is because I stumbled on problems while working on a 3d sound engine. In the end I aborted the whole 3d project because the sound that I wanted to link to the objects moving in virtual 3d space did not deliver the result I expected beforehand.

This whole matter made me return to questions as: what is the influence of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) that is used or what is the influence of the computer on which the work is shown? For example I remember that people at an exhibition at "De Appel" (a Dutch Art space) were talking more about the design of the new imac model than the work that was shown on it. My work "Window" for p2p is also a direct outcome of this interest. "Window" shows a window that is transparent and through which a user even can click what is within the frame. Because the content of the window is transparent the stress is put on the frame, something that most of us forget that it's there because we are so used to it. But it is something that can influence the user's perception of the work; a reference to paintings and types of frames makes this clear. On computers window frames are different on Mac and PC, and also because more and more people start personalizing the desktop windows frames can have a lot of different looks nowadays.

EN:
4) How do you see the term Net Art functioning today as opposed to the early days of 1995/1996?

PL:
I think you should be aware of the terms net.art and net art. As opposed to some critics I see the notion net.art standing not only for a certain period in net art but also for a specific group of net artists that operated in this certain period. I think you can find all information on this group in the exhibition called "Written in Stone, a net.art archeology" that was held at the beginning of this year in Oslo's museum of modern art. Besides this group there were a lot of people doing autonomous things that you can call net art but which you cannot link to the net.art group. So in fact I would call net.art a sort of branch in the whole history of net art. To go a step further I think it's even better to abandon the term net art and talk about net arts if we talk about an umbrella for any kind of artistic labour on the net as Florian Cramer suggested on nettime a few years ago -- especially because net arts stresses the multitude of things happening on the net. To go a step further I think it's even better to use the term net arts, instead of net art, if we talk about an umbrella for any kind of artistic labour on the net as Florian Cramer suggested on nettime a few years ago.

EN:
5) Because you state that you are interested in the difference between real space and virtual space, where do you see Net Art going in terms of real space exhibitions? In your own experience, are you seeing a crossover to physical space?

PL:
I think we have in fact to make a difference if we talk in terms of real space exhibitions of net art works. I think of 2 kinds of circuits when we talk about real space presentations: 1. the tech based circuit which operates in new media spaces like ZKM or V2 and 2, presentations within the so called "institutional" artworld. I think you will see a development of more complex experiments happening in the first. While another kind of projects will take place within what you could call the "institutional" artworld, so places like museums, galeries, art spaces. This development can already be seen; net art projects are shown in both circuits though they differ in most cases per circuit. While you see in the tech based circuit more complex controls (interfaces) and social theoretical based work, you find works that hook on to art traditions (history) and with a more esthetical emphasis in the other circuit.

EN:
How would a more common crossover affect some of the principles upon which the net art community functions?

PL:
I think it's hard to speak of the net art community these days. In my opinion there once was such a thing, but somewhere in the late 90's early zero's it more or less seized to exist. Though there are of course still some global net art mailing lists around, my idea is that the net art community shattered into lots of smaller (and more local) net art communities, so a development from global to more local. If you talk about artists active on the net, you saw in the first place a few that traveled enormous distances to meet each other; with more people connected you seem to look in the first place for people that share your interest and start to meet them if they are near to you. So instead of a larger international community you got locally based communities that are connected by emails or small closed lists; the members then meet regularly in local pubs, etc., and influence each other through more direct real space discussions. This has lead to what you could call certain types of schools. In Vienna, a group of artists gather around a provider called silverserver who work with computers and the internet; they have a certain recognizable style
that is best described as working on pixel- level (Michael Samyn from the duo entropy@zuper did once called them the pixelmovers). In Amsterdam there's a school of people that use quite an opposite style; instead of pixels, artists use large geometrical shapes. Especially when you start to think about this in terms of art history it's quite interesting to know that in Vienna there always has been a strong tradition of mannerism, while in Amsterdam a tradition of Mondrian, etc. never seems to have gone away. In terms of crossover I think this local "styles" will also affect the kind of net art installations you'll see.

EN:
6) Some of your work is considered software art; how do you relate to this term?

PL:
If you mean do I see myself as software artist, I say no. I see myself as an artist that is using different media, as I think more and more artists nowadays are starting to do.

However, I think the link from browser to software art is a logical step in development of my and a lot of other artists' work that started with doing pages for the net. Two main reasons for starting to make software are that you have more control over the thing you want to show, so you can control for example the look; another reason is that downloading software was very problematic in the early net years because of download speed and download fear; both changed in the last years rapidly because of high speed connections and an audience that grew more or less up with computers and the internet.