Introduction

The Introduction defines Postmodernism as those cultural practices correlated with post-industrial patterns of production and consumption (beginning in the late 1950s and 1960s). It is argued that the pervasity of technology in this gives digital art some entitlement to be regarded as the distinctively Postmodern art medium. Indeed, digital space (understood as virtuality or, metaphorically, as the zone of possible interactivities) is a key extension of the Postmodern techno-habitat. Even when computer-generated virtual spaces are pictorial or abstract these still have a digital imprimatur – a techno-look (and related associations) – that distinguish them aesthetically from what painting and sculpture can achieve.