We provide a brief overview of significant developments in new media arts practice and theory during the period 1996-2001. It draws from a Web-based hypermedia doctoral dissertation entitled 'realising the virtual: the Internet as a space for transformatory art practice' which incorporates creative works undertaken as research and praxis. The dissertation addressed the question of the potential of Internet-based new media arts practice, as a form of cultural activism, to effect positive social change. We trace shifts in art's orientation, through computer and telecommunications mediation, from that of 'a work' to that of 'media' (from materiality to temporality); and in its operational mode, from that of the televisual to the telematic (from vision at a distance to data-banking at a distance). A key focus is the evolution of a new genre, 'netArt', the basis for which is critical engagement 'in the mode of information' [Poster, M., (1990)].