SITO

SITO is a pre-web Internet art community initially known as OTIS (an acronym for "Operative Term is Stimulate"), proposed by Ed "[Starstew]" Stasny on UseNet in January of 1993, initially making use of anonymous FTP sites to host works by digital artists (or "The Artchive") for free. (Cthulu will testify that The Artchive is a handy way to maintain a free digital artist's portfolio, like [DeviantArt] but featuring a much smaller and far weirder community.)

In 1995 Los Angeles' longstanding Otis College of Art and Design, est. 1918, served OTIS with a cease-and-desist for squatting their name in the art sphere online. Rather than fighting back, the digital artists embraced the opportunity for a refresh and inverted their name to SITO, not formally an acronym for anything, and have remained that way ever since.

After pivoting to the emerging web, circa 1996-1997 (and still active today!) SITO introduced HyGrid and Gridcosm, flavours of collaborative collages that are in some ways similar to the "Tiles" formerly presented at ice.org

SITO is currently maintained by Mumonkan.

https://www.sito.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SITO_(artist_collective)