Net art (or Internet art) describes design work made in the 1990s through the early 2000s that uses the Internet and code as a primary medium.

As online surfing gained popularity in the 1990s, artists started to create interactive, networked viewing experiences as a way to get around conventional display methods in institutional art spaces. "New media art" is frequently used interchangeably.

Without being constrained by social, political, or cultural norms, artists discovered that the internet was a helpful tool for promoting their work.

The digital instrument that artists used to make art on computers in the 1960s was software. Since then, these programs have advanced to the point where they are no longer only facilitators but rather may be regarded as works of art.

Software art frequently re-configures or parodies pre-existing computer applications. Adrian Shaw's Signwave mocked the computer software Adobe Photoshop in 1990, while the art collective I/O/D's Web Stalker was a radical reimagining of an internet browser.

In the early 1990s, British artist and theorist Roy Ascott came up with the phrase "telematic art" to refer to interactive art that makes use of the internet and other digital communication tools, such as email and cell phones.

The human element of telematic art, the need to interact with someone even in the virtual world, and how this is essential to its development are the main topics of most of the literature on the subject.