Home // Introduction

the hauntological effect on the aesthetics of net.art

Abstract:This thesis examines the concept of hauntology and its impact on the aesthetic of net.art, specifically browser-based art, focusing on how digital artists utilize the notion of the “ghost” or the “specter” in their works. Hauntology, as examined in philosophy and cultural theory, explores the persistence of the past in the present, and this thesis investigates how net.art practices — particularly those engaged with retro aesthetics, digital decay, and archival imagery — reflect and materialize these spectral remnants. Through a multi-disciplinary approach, this paper explores the intersection of technology, memory, and visual representation in digital spaces.Keywords: hauntology, aesthetics, net.art, visual decay, digital temporality, obsolescence. cultural memory(Researched and written by mitraavrs) 

“The future is always experienced as a haunting: as a virtuality that already impinges on the present, conditioning expectations and motivating cultural production.” – Mark Fisher, Film Quarterly (2012).

Introduction:The emergence of the Internet transformed not only communication and information exchange but also art and how it could be made using new materials. An Internet accessible computer is a rather recent innovation, and it has seen radical change in its form and its capacity as an artistic medium, which is why despite the fairly small gap between the pioneering of net.art and the 2020s, a sense of nostalgia seems to persist in contemporary art at this moment for the visual aesthetics and limitations of the early Internet.The term “net.art” first came into use due to the result of a software glitch that occurred in December 1995, when Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic opened an anonymous email only to find it had been mangled in transmission. Amid the alphanumeric gibberish, only one term remained legible – “net.art” – which he began using to refer to artwork and communication experienced within the digital realm.^[10] Artists who first developed net.art used the limited technology of their time to create works that had a very specific aesthetic, but despite the many iterations of the internet experience, and the availability of latest technological innovations, many net artists employ the use of pixelated graphics and emulate the look and feel of this recent past, which I believe is due to the effect of hauntology.^[12]

In this paper, I will be looking at two net.art projects: one made close to the advent of the Internet, Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back From The War (1996); and another made two decades later, Nathalie Lawhead’s Mackerelmedia Fish, to investigate how the hauntological effect manifests in contemporary Internet art. Both artworks are browser-based projects, and I chose to focus on these sites because second to e-mail, websites were how artists published manifestos, shared stories, and communicated on equal ground, across international boundaries, instantaneously, every day. I will be analyzing the particular aesthetic and visual modes of the earlier work created in the 90s, and compare it to the newer work which was published in 2020 and read these works through a hauntological lens. In doing so, I will consider why contemporary artists use this particular aesthetic and what the future of net.art will be based on current developments in technology.I would also like to reflect on net.art as a political practice by expanding on the interpretation of hauntology as the “lost futures” of the 20th century. The phenomenon of hauntology can be tied to the socio-political context of neoliberalism, and net.art is often a reflection and critique of the socio-political issues of the time. Over the years, rapid digitalization of culture has brought issues such as corporate control and surveillance over digital space, and the desire to hold onto past internet aesthetics – such as pixelated graphics, dial-up sounds, or the visual quirks of early HTML pages – can be interpreted as a critique of the current, corporatized and commodified internet. This technological and aesthetic nostalgia for a 'lost' or 'purer' Internet could be read as a political statement about the loss of autonomy, creativity and community that characterized the early web, before corporate interests dominated.

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Home // Chapter 1: The Theory of Hauntology

Defining HauntologyThe term hauntology has philosophical origins and broadly refers to the notion of the present being ‘haunted’ by lost futures or to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost.Hauntology is a portmanteau of the words haunting and ontology, and the origin of the word can be traced back to 1993, when it was first introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Specters of Marx. The concept of hauntology invites people to consider how ‘specters’ of alternate futures impact current culture and acknowledge that this ‘haunting’ has real affects.^[15]The original expression from which 'hauntology' is inspired is the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto: "A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism." Interestingly enough, the word itself only appears three times in Specters of Marx, but it is the central concept to Derrida’s argument that Marxism would haunt Western society from the grave that many said it was confined to. He challenged the widely accepted notion that communism was “dead” and believed that ‘the specters of communism’ would continue to haunt Europe, just like Marx had written in his and Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto.^[2]The concept of hauntology can also be linked to the philosophical concept of deconstruction, in which any attempt to locate the origin of identity or history must inevitably find itself dependent on an always-already existing set of linguistic conditions.^[14]
 From Philosophy to AestheticsWhile Derrida considered the idea of hauntology to be a political one, the concept has since been applied to music, visual arts, literary criticism and digital culture.According to writer and academic Andrew Gallix, “at its most basic level, it [hauntology] ties in with the popularity of faux-vintage photography, abandoned spaces and TV series like Life on Mars… When you come to think of it, all forms of representation are ghostly. Works of art are haunted, not only by the ideal forms of which they are imperfect instantiations, but also by what escapes representation.”^[6]In the 2000s, ‘hauntology’ was applied first to music by cultural theorists Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds, who explored contemporary culture’s persistent use of retro aesthetics and incapacity to escape old social forms, and they used the term to describe a genre of music that was obsessed with temporal disjunction and a nostalgia for 'lost futures'. Hauntological music was described to be exploring ideas related to temporal disjunction, retrofuturism, cultural memory, and the persistence of the past. For example, vaporwave, a genre deeply influenced by hauntology, thrives on the nostalgic repurposing of 1980s and 1990s media artifacts, creating a sense of longing for futures imagined in those eras but never realized.^[4]It is easy to see hauntology as a manifestation of specific 'cultural moments' of the past. If I were to scroll through social media right now, I would find teenagers yearning for lost futures and lamenting about cultural moments that they might have missed on, moments that I myself have lived through not so long ago, and it’s interesting to think about how I was once that teen lamenting about something from the past that I wish I could have experienced, like the advent of the Internet. A particular cultural moment that comes to mind is the Y2K era and the indie sleaze moment that today’s teens have a fascination with, for the seeming authenticity of the time. Everything in the early 2000s seemed purer and more original. What most people fail to realize however is that even in the past, these cultural moments were “manufactured” to feel more authentic and candid, which is interesting to think about in the context of net.art as well.^[7]
 Technological ContextAs mentioned previously, computers and the Internet are relatively young, but the rapid development of new technologies have significantly shaped contemporary hauntological aesthetics by altering how we experience time, memory, and cultural artifacts.Mark Fisher's concept of 'lost futures'^[5] resonates strongly in technological and digital contexts, where the rapid obsolescence of technologies leaves behind fragments of what once felt like the cutting edge. Digital media exacerbates this effect by making these fragments perpetually available, from the pixelated interfaces of 1990s web browsers to the lo-fi graphics of early video games. These artifacts evoke a sense of nostalgia not only for the past but also for the optimism and potential futures that those technologies once symbolized.Technologies such as analog synthesizers, vinyl records, and VHS tapes, previously considered outdated, have gained popularity in digital art and music. I believe this revival reflects a yearning for the tactile and imperfect qualities of these older mediums, which contrast with the precision of digital production today. Everything wasn’t as perfectly synthesized and was much more creatively produced, which I was sure was the case, until I spoke with an older classmate who was around during the time when website building had just started gaining popularity after the Internet came to be. According to her, it was a grueling task, not at all creative, and seemed boring. She explained how most graphic design work was confined to the same or similar grid-like templates, and I suppose in the technical aspect, it was probably not as interesting, but it’s hard to ignore that older websites were more aesthetically creative when comparing them to the minimalistic, limited color palettes of websites today.

OLD VS NEW! Internet Web Design, Web 1.0 Design VS Flat Minimalist Design,
Retrieved from the r/decadeology subreddit

Home // Chapter 2: Hauntology & Digital Temporality

Temporal Layers in Digital MediaThe Internet and digital technologies have created a paradoxical relationship with time. On the one hand, the Internet is a space of immediacy, where real-time updates and instant communication dominate. On the other, it serves as a vast archive, housing relics of past digital cultures in the form of outdated websites, defunct platforms, and early digital aesthetics. This duality fosters a temporal disjunction: the past is never fully gone but remains accessible, replayable, and remixable.Take for example, the existence of flash animations and games on the web. Flash animations were created using Macromedia Flash, and there was a time when many net artists believed that Flash was here to stay, but we all know what happened. Flash had effectively been dead, but it kept crawling out of its grave until 2020, when its official EOL (end of life) was announced. Some Flash games have since been remade in HTML5, and even for those that weren’t, there exist Flash emulators like Ruffle, Newgrounds Flash Player (NFP), or my personal favorite, Flashpoint Archive.

Screenshot of the ‘Games’ section of Flashpoint Archive, taken from my personal computer, featuring almost 200,000 games that would have otherwise been inaccessible due to the death of Flash.

 
The Internet functions as an immense digital archive, where past cultural artifacts—music, film, literature, and personal memories—are constantly accessible. This omnipresence of the past creates a sense of temporal flattening, where distinctions between past, present, and future blur. This constant recycling of cultural motifs, memes, and aesthetics from the past creates a feedback loop that mixes nostalgia with contemporary culture, and creates a non-linear or fragmented narrative of the evolution of digital culture. This mirrors the hauntological preoccupation with cyclical time and the persistence of unresolved histories, and can be observed in how the aesthetics of the past continually intrude on the present, like the use of pixelated images and flashing GIFS, custom cursors and such on personal websites.
 Digital Ephemerality & The Ghosts of Old Internet AestheticsNet artists engage deeply with the ephemerality of digital media, exploring the aesthetic and conceptual implications of obsolescence, decay, and archival remnants. By reworking early internet aesthetics and outdated formats like HTML art, GIFs, and early web design, they highlight the fragility of digital culture and the tension between permanence and transience in digital spaces. This engagement serves as both a critique of rapid technological change and a meditation on the internet’s ability to preserve or erode memory.The deliberate uses of glitches and broken links in contemporary net.art highlights the fragility of digital media. Glitch aesthetics mimic the failure of technology to function as intended, creating "digital ruins" that mirror physical decay. Works that employ these specific aesthetic elements remind viewers that digital media, often perceived as durable and immaterial, is subject to entropy.The concept of ephemerality itself is an interesting one. It is the notion of things being transitory, and existing only briefly, but the ephemeral nature of an object is caused by the ebb and flow of attention that we give it.^[16] I find it fascinating that, by reviving old aesthetics, contemporary net artists are essentially saving digital media from ephemerality. True, the Internet will never be like it used to be, but that hauntological drive to try and recreate aesthetics of the past brings us closer to it. 

Home // Chapter 3: Net.Art as a Hauntological Practice

Case Study of Olia Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back From The War and Nathalie Lawhead's Mackerelmedia FishAs mentioned earlier, the two net.art projects I will be analyzing for this paper are Olia Lialina’s 1996 hypertext fiction, My Boyfriend Came Back From The War, and Nathalie Lawhead’s Mackerelmedia Fish, a parody of Macromedia Flash that they created in 2020.> Olia Lialina – My Boyfriend Came Back From The War (MBCBFTW) (1996)This iconic work of net.art tells the story of a couple reunited after a military conflict through a series of static web pages containing hyperlinked images and text that reveal fragments of a narrative as the user clicks through. Lialina used early web technologies, such as HTML coding and image mapping, to create a non-linear, interactive experience.The work is deeply concerned with memory, loss and fragmentation, and when viewed at present, it evokes the past through its visual style because of it use of grids and containers, which is reminiscent of 1990s web design. The narrative itself is fragmented and incomplete, playing with the idea of how memory often resurfaces in disjointed, incoherent ways.

My Boyfriend Came Back From The War (1996) — Olia Lialina

 
The piece can also be interpreted as a reflection on the socio-political climate of post-Soviet Russia, where personal and national histories were fragmented and repressed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Lialina’s engagement with early internet aesthetics also critiques the commercialization of the web and the loss of the early internet's potential for individual expression.In today’s context, many people, myself included, can’t help but read this as an allegory for the way the Internet has developed since this work was made, with the intensifying temporal disjunction of networked infrastructures, the dispersion of cultural memory and the lines blurring between private and public worlds in today’s cyberspace.> Nathalie Lawhead – Mackerelmedia Fish (2020)All of Lawhead’s works align with the concepts of digital decay and the haunting of past Internet forms with socio-political commentary on the commodification of art and media in the digital age, but I chose Mackerelmedia Fish, because of how it breaks the fourth wall to directly address those concepts.Mackerelmedia Fish greets you with a deliberately fractured, glitchy and surreal aesthetic, reflecting a past Internet sensibility while commenting on the over-saturation and commercialization of digital spaces today. The visual language of decaying pixels, broken links, and non-linear, fragmented gameplay echoes the hauntological concept of ‘ghosts’ of the past lingering in the present, similar to MBCBFTW.The work evokes a sense of melancholy and nostalgia for older, low quality digital aesthetics, which is a key element of hauntology in digital media. The usage of glitch art, pixelated GIFs and clunky interfaces is a nod to the early Internet era when digital art was more chaotic and experimental, and ‘wild west’ in nature.

Mackerelmedia Fish (2020) — Nathalie Lawhead

 
Digital Nostalgia and Cultural Memory; a Political CritqueThis specific retro aesthetic of the old Internet also evokes a sense of loss, not just of a visual style but also of the openness and non-commercial nature of the early web, which has since been supplanted by corporate control, social media algorithms, and digital surveillance. Lawhead’s reimagining of old forms is a deliberate act of haunting, raising questions about what we’ve lost in the pursuit of progress and corporate efficiency.As previously mentioned, Lawhead's work is laced with critical commentary on the digital economy, capitalism, and the commodification of media, and Mackerelmedia Fish is no exception. The work critiques the way digital art and culture have been increasingly turned into products for consumption, playing with the concept of ‘media games’ as both a critique of capitalist media culture and a reflection on the commodification of identity and creativity in the digital age. Through humor, absurdity, and an intentionally broken interface, Lawhead critiques the dominant capitalist structures that underpin modern digital culture, highlighting how creative expressions are often co-opted, commodified, and reduced to 'content' for consumption. In this way, the work uses the ‘ghosts’ of earlier, more experimental internet forms to challenge the present realities of digital culture.
 Revisiting 'Failed' FuturesWhen comparing MBCBFTW and Mackerelmedia Fish, it is easy to see how the latter can be viewed as a kind of reclamation of ‘failed futures’, both in terms of digital technology and the dreams that once accompanied the early Internet. By resurrecting outdated and imperfect forms of digital interaction, Lawhead reimagines a space where technology is not necessarily a tool for progress but a platform for critical engagement, critique, and re-interpretation.This aligns with Mark Fisher’s idea of hauntology, which is tied to the idea of lost futures and the political impact of neoliberalism that limits future possibilities. Lawhead’s work pushes against the commodification of the web, asking whether it’s still possible to reclaim or create alternatives to the digital systems currently in place. 

Home // Chapter 4: Aesthetics of Decay and Obsolescence in Net.Art

The Visual Aesthetics of Digital DecayIn the previous chapter, I drew comparisons between MBCBFTW and Mackerelmedia Fish in terms of aesthetics. This chapter will explore even further how glitch aesthetics, corrupted files and outdated technology represent a kind of visual decay that aligns with hauntological themes by treating technological flaws and digital obsolescence not as failures but as evocative tools for exploring memory, loss, and the ghostly presence of a bygone digital culture.Digital glitches and corrupted files often resemble the fragility of human memory, where details fade or become distorted over time. These flaws act as visual markers of the passage of time, transforming technology’s promise of permanence into a meditation on ephemerality. By using outdated technology and degraded media, Lawhead specifically highlights the transient nature of cultural artifacts in digital spaces, evoking a sense of longing for the experimental and imperfect character of early digital culture. This aligns with hauntological themes of being unable to escape the pull of the past.
 Haunted InterfaceIn both net.art projects, the work’s interface itself becomes a haunted space, where the user’s interaction with the narrative resembles sifting through fragmented memories or digital ruins. The simple but deliberate design foregrounds the limitations and ephemerality of the medium, underscoring its role as both a historical artifact and a creative tool. The use of HTML frames and simplistic imagery reflects the limitations of early web technology while highlighting its expressive potential. These elements, now outdated, serve as 'ghosts' of the early internet, resonating with a longing for its experimental, DIY spirit.
 Technological Trauma and LossNet.art offers a unique platform for exploring the emotional and cultural loss associated with rapidly changing technology. By engaging with the remnants of early internet culture, artists address the disappearance of once-thriving digital communities, the obsolescence of early platforms, and the rapid commodification of online spaces. This response is expressed through aesthetic nostalgia, fragmented narratives, and critiques of how technology erases its own history, reflecting a broader cultural sense of dislocation and longing.Early Internet communities like Early like Geocities and MySpace enabled personal expression and grassroots connection. These spaces also encourage active participation and creativity, while modern platforms prioritize passive consumption. Their collapse has left behind a sense of longing for a time when the web felt less corporatized and more participatory.While the fragmented aesthetics in Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back From the War reflect the disjointed nature of memory and loss, symbolizing how online connections and content dissolve with time, Nathalie Lawhead’s Mackerelmedia Fish captures the feeling of navigating an internet that is both familiar and alien. Through its broken interfaces and surreal design, it mirrors the collapse of early internet communities and the difficulty of recovering their meaning in a contemporary context.Both projects are commenting on digital memory and the loss of old technology, and evoke the emotional disorientation caused by the rapid obsolescence of tools and platforms once central to people’s lives. 

Home // Chapter 5: The Spectral Future of Net.Art

Post-Humanism and Spectral FuturesPost-humanism often critiques the notion that technological progress is inherently beneficial, questioning what is lost in the process. Hauntological net.art underscores this critique by highlighting the human stories and creativity left behind in the rush toward new technologies and platforms.Both Lialina and Lawhead explore this by blending human-like characters with the digital environments, creating a space where human warmth and technological decay coexist.While digital culture outlives its human creators, it carries traces of humanity within autonomous systems. By engaging with digital artifacts like broken code, corrupted files, and outdated formats, these artists explore the fragility and persistence of human influence in a world increasingly governed by machines. These works remind us that, even in an era of post-human digital autonomy, the specters of human creativity and culture continue to haunt the systems we leave behind, just like Derrida argued that Marxism would haunt Western society.
 The Aesthetic Future of Hauntology in Net.ArtIn the contexts of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and digital preservation, hauntological net.art could evolve to explore the growing complexities of memory, loss, and the human relationship with increasingly autonomous systems.AI has the incredible ability to mimic, generate, and reinterpret past digital artifacts, but never perfectly. We can already observe how people use AI to reconstruct or generate surreal, dreamlike interpretations of digital media.A prominent example I thought of as I was writing this paper, is the rise of the “___ as an 80s dark fantasy film” trend. My introduction to this trend was via TikTok, where various accounts used AI to generate scenes from pop culture but in an 80s dark fantasy aesthetic. The most popular one seems to be this video by user @s1mplyzzzz captioned ‘Tangled if it was dark fantasy #liveaction #darkfantasy #nostalgia #retro #weirdcore #dreamcore #ai #80s #darkfantasyaesthetic #tangled #rapunzel’ Upon further investigation, I discovered that there is a community of AI artists who generate content just like this, not limited to the 80s dark fantasy aesthetic. The uncanny quality of AI-generated outputs – artifacts that are familiar yet unsettling – aligns with hauntology’s focus on the specter and on Mark Fisher’s idea of how all forms of representation are ghostly and will always be imperfect instantiations.

Screenshot from TikTok, where the same account has posted various '___ if it was 80s dark fantasy' videos

 
Final Reflections
As AI becomes more capable of creating art independently, it raises questions about authorship and agency. Hauntological net.art of the future might explore these shifts by juxtaposing AI-generated works with human-created digital remnants, reflecting on the tension between human creativity and technological autonomy.I think it would be really interesting to see how AI might interpret deliberately broken interfaces. Would the goal in the future be to fix these interfaces, or turn them into entirely new forms that bear only a faint resemblance to their origins? In my personal opinion, AI is not as ethical as many AI artists would like us to believe. It not only decenters the human artist in the creative process but also has questionable data-gathering practices and environmental affects, so as interesting as it would be to explore AI further, I would not, in good conscience, be able to, without compromising my own values on the matter. 

Home // Conclusion

In conclusion, hauntology provides a great framework for understanding the aesthetics of net.art, illuminating how digital culture continuously revisits and reshapes the past. By engaging with outdated technologies, digital artifacts, and forgotten internet spaces, net.artists explore the ghostly persistence of earlier cultural forms within the ever-accelerating cyberspace. This interplay between the past and the present reflects broader cultural anxieties about memory, loss, and obsolescence in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.Contemporary net.art projects turn remnants of past digital cultures into sites of creative reimagining, turning corrupted files, pixelated graphics, and defunct platforms into aesthetic and conceptual tools. Works like MBCBFTW and Mackerelmedia Fish highlight the fragility of digital memory while critiquing the current trajectory of the Internet. Through glitch aesthetics, archival interventions, and simulated nostalgia, both Lialina and Lawhead create spaces where the past lingers as both a source of inspiration and a specter of loss.As AI and VR reshape the creative possibilities of net.art, hauntology will remain an important lens through which we examine these works. It allows for critical reflection on how these tools shape our relationship with memory and time, ensuring that the aesthetics of the digital past are not merely preserved but continually reinterpreted. By emphasizing the spectral presence of past technologies and cultures, hauntology affirms the enduring interplay between what has been and what is yet to come, making it an essential framework for understanding the evolving landscape of digital art. 

Home // Bibliography

1. Blume, J. (2017). Digital Environments: Ethnographic Perspectives Across Global Online and Offline Spaces. transcript Verlag. (pg. 97-116). Obtained via https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1xxrxw.102. Derrida, J. (1993). Specters of Marx. Routledge Classics. Obtained via https://files.libcom.org43. Fisher, M. (2012). "What is Hauntology?". Film Quarterly 66, Issue 1. (pg. 16-24).4. Fisher, M. (2013). “The Metaphysics of Crackle: Afrofuturism and Hauntology”. Dance Cult. (pg. 42-55).5. Fisher, M. (2014). Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books. Obtained via https://ia802901.us.archive.org/9/items/MarkFisherGhostsOfMyLifeWritingsOnDepreBookZZ.org/%5BMark_Fisher%5DGhostsofMyLifeWritingsonDepre%28BookZZ.org%29.pdf6. Gallix, A. (2011). Hauntology: A not-so-new critical manifestation. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jun/17/hauntology-critical7. Jay, M. (1998). "The Uncanny Nineties". Cultural Semantics: Keywords of Our Time. London, Athlone.8. Magagnoli, P. (2015). Documents of Utopia: The Politics of Experimental Documentary. Columbia University Press. (pg. 123-160). Obtained via https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/maga17271.8?seq=59. Rhizome. (n.d.). Retelling the History of Net Art from the 1980s to the 2010s. Net Art Anthology. https://anthology.rhizome.org/10. Shulgin, A. (1997) net.art, the origin. Nettime. in http://www.nettime.org/11. Steyerl, H. (2019). "In Defense of The Poor Image". eflux. https://www.eflux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/12. Tate. (n.d.). Internet art. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/internet-art13. Usselmann, R. (2003). "The Dilemma of Media Art: Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA London". Leonardo 36, Issue 5. (pg. 389-396).14. Wikipedia Foundation. (2024). Deconstruction. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction15. Wikipedia Foundation. (2024). Hauntology. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology16. Wikipedia Foundation. (2024). Ephemerality. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemerality 

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