Psychogeography, Détournement, Cyberspace

This essay explores web-based art practices congenial to an avant-garde aesthetics defined by Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem and others affiliated with the Situationist International. Today, some cyberartists are redefining (and extending into new territories) key concepts of the 1960s Situationist avant-garde: psychogeography and détournement. An avant-garde arts counterculture is emerging on the web that takes as its starting point, in the manner of the SI, an attack on spectacular aesthetics in the interest of intellectual emancipation. New postconvergent media arts now extend SI concepts into new, dematerialized territories. I identify SI aims and principles that seem central to this new media art and examine some specific examples of net.art, Flash art, and Situationist- inspired art in Second Life^® to contextualize the cyberarts within a Situationist effort to revitalize human experience, ironically from within its most spectacular creation.