WWW! Theme 2/4 → ⭑ Abstraction ⭑ WEBSITES WEBSITES WEBSITES! (WWW!) is on view in New York through September 27, and online the exhibition is organized into four themes, each a distinct path through thirty years of art on the web. ⭑ Anarchy ⭑ Abstraction ⭑ Poetic Computing ⭑ Ghosts We're introducing them one by one. Today: ⭑ ABSTRACTION After the dot-com boom, social media changed how we use the web. Surfing became scrolling, and the rabbit holes one could wander into were flattened into feeds. Abstraction carries a double meaning. Creatively, the 2010s saw a wave of artists using websites as vitrines for live, web-native generative work — visually abstract, and viewable by anyone, anywhere, with a connection. But abstraction also names the black-boxing of technology: complex processes hidden away to present seamless user experiences, often to the detriment of the individual. These artists use the browser for both visual exploration and scrutiny, setting the beauty of computational processes against a less comfortable question: how much of the technology we use every day can we actually see or understand? See the works in this theme below ↓