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Introduction

I have discovered the existence of time travelling bandits who steal your original thoughts. They download your files and images, sift through your newest ideas and return with them to the past. They spend years developing and articulating these ideas, using them to give lectures and to write books and essays. Decades, sometimes centuries, later you will discover your ideas in these books and realize what has transpired. At least that is how I like to imagine it happens.

When discovering your writings and artworks have already been done, often in better and more developed versions than your own, it is easy to become discouraged. Instead of feeling like a bad photocopy, I have decided to treat this experience as validating, as being on the right track.

Impulse 101 is a story about art, the internet and everything.

This story is a bus ride from cave painting to post-internet art; along the way it stops to pick up important passengers such as perfectionism, science fiction, minimalism, technology, interactivity, and generational theory. It is a relatively chronological narrative beginning with the evolution of art institutions, the development of the contemporary gallery, and conflicts regarding audience. The story ends with the unification of the preceding topics and the transition from artistic contemplation to erudition which ultimately manifests in a specific approach to art making.

This essay was written with a degree of user-friendliness in consideration of a broad readership.