Looking for an identity in digital art practices

Can we be creative without an in-depth understanding of the tools we use? It is unlikely, I argue. In relation to digital art practices, the tacit assumption that technology enables a creative practice without a problematisation of its inner mechanics, e.g. code, leaves the door open to forms of epistemological positivism in which technology is left leading art discourses in an auto-referential manner - subjugating the self to the objectifying forces of technology. In this article, I propose that a way forward to the re-appropriation of the self in relation to technology and our own creative practice is offered by interpreting digital art practices as a Foucaultian problematisation of the self through an ethos inspired by the Greek precept of the care of the self. Net.Art, as will be shown, has already engaged with such ethos (likely without knowing it). An outline of such an approach and a critique of some of the consequences it bares is offered. A controversial one (to some) is probably that digital art practitioners must also be, or become in the process, confident technologists (e.g. coders).