Vouloir Vs. Pouvoir: why do it just because you can?

image© CERN

I recently stopped attempting to make a flash animation of some atomic particles. The reason was not that it was impossible; it was because I realised that I was only doing this because it was possible. The original imagery carried all the information and aesthetic charge necessary, and I was attempting to crush that into an easy-cook web format. My practice was being led by the possibilities of the tool, and I had lost an overview of the reasons for making in that medium.I decided to cut the crap and use the still images.
This seduction into a technically led practice is often positive. Flicking back and forward between immersion in and directing of a flow is the very core of process-based art, yet I realised that I needed to think about my relation to process. Had the accessibility and imperative urge of internet art distorted my practice, and cut me off from other forms of dialogue?
I became increasingly concerned about a voluntary ghettoisation of "electronic artists" which related to my own earlier experiences in the world of photography. What began as a positive self-empowerment became a straightjacket of prescriptive " photographic galleries" with definite feuding agendas- such as Camerawork in East London-, which was created on the assumption that a new breed of " independent photographer" would be the 1980s/90s version of Neu Sachlichtkeit. Unsurprisingly, this sector became entrenched in defending its " gains"- seen as the funded spaces- while those artists who benefited from it moved into a wider field of working and/or went abroad.