expression within electronic media has created at least three rather specific new art practices. They are based or even dependent on collaboration, media access and hands on technology. In short, all three evolve around connectedness, around being connected: connected to people, to media channels, to tools and/or knowledge. The three practices I am referring to here are environments and performances involving some form of Internet access, artist initiated representation platforms or meeting places on the Internet, and last but not least software art.

(Re)defining the public domain

(Re)defining the public domain is a never-ending enterprise, or, in the words of Erik Kluitenberg, author of the «FAQs about the Public Domain»: [1] «The public domain is something that is in constant transformation, never fixed, and as a result needs to be reinvented continuously. Truly public spaces, more often than not, just simply emerge spontaneously, and are not consciously designed.» One can even wonder whether there is anything we can call the public domain at all (at present). In his text «Designing the Digital

Commons» media theorist Geert Lovink writes: «… we may find out that the digital commons is a negative utopia. As an event or experience rather than a fixed space, the digital common existed in the future (or is about to happen in the past).» [2] When asked to explain this negative utopia, Lovink writes: «One could also call it a temporary autonomous zone that can only be recognized as such when the zone, as a real existing utopia, already has vanished.»

Nevertheless we can distinguish the main issues of the new public domain, the Public Domain 2.0 as described by Kluitenberg. The most important ones seem to be media access and knowledge of media technologies (social and technical), both of which are of vital importance for spontaneous activities in a mediated environment. In her book «Netzkulturen,» [3] the curator and critic Inke Arns writes: «In an expanding networked world the stimulation of a critical media competence is unavoidable. Only through this can people use the Net and new communication technologies for their own interests and goals.» Public spaces in electronic media cannot «emerge spontaneously» when the specific technologies are