To begin my dissertation research I went to the wonderful Victoria and Albert Museums exhibit "Decode". Here is where things started to come together for me. The exhibit had three categories Code, Interactivity and Network. The exhibit really put into perspective the global scale of digital artists and the diversity of backgrounds in programming to more traditional artists.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/decode//

To say the least this exhibit gave me a starting point for my dissertation and some artists to investigate.