Legend of the net.art coinage

There is a legend that has persisted—for decades—that net.art was first coined by Vuk Ćosić from a garbled email. I spoke to to Ćosić about the claim, who debunked the legend but not for the first time: “First coinage: there is this legend that I received an e.mail with garbled text. False. That story itself is one of the better pieces of net.art, done by Alexei Shoulgin. It was widely repeated and for me it works as our take at the words such as Impressionism and Cubism that came from outside or Dada that came from inside but is foggy. The expression net.art was invented by Pit Schultz during our debates about online specific art, and we all liked it because .art was just like a file extension. Like .pdf or .doc.”