http://www.artbrain.org


Artbrain.org is a new site, recently started in New York, which lends space to artists, writers, architects, poets, directors, and to any other projects inspired by research into cognitive neuroscience. It is a virtual location where work can be presented inside a “gallery” or in the online “Journal of Neuro-aesthetic Theory” which publishes interesting pieces in their complete versions. While there are numerous sites and publications devoted to neuroscience they are of a decidedly scientific nature, and there are few that have this approach towards the arts. The texts published on Artbrain are written by theoreticians, philosophers, artists, and neurobiologists.

http://www.singlecell.org


This site deals with an odd monthly online-publication that gathers together “a collection of online life-forms discovered and reared by a diverse group of artists and designers”. Every month a new artist is required to offer up his creatures. In January, for example, was the turn of the animated Obzok, a strange shape which glowed with energy and light, created by the New Yorker Golan Levin. The month of April was under the aegis of British James Tindall with an amusing interactive project: the user was invited to animate a few cells, choosing the colors and the different speeds with which the cell could reproduce itself. So as not to miss the previews of the new project of the month, it’s worth subscribing to the mailing list.

http://www.teo-spiller.org/trash_can


Anybody who has ever wanted to throw away a given homepage into the trash, can now do so thanks to Trash_can, an ironic project wittily created by Teo Spiller, a Slovenian artist who has been working in the arena of net art over the past few years. The artist claims to hate flash animation so much that typing in the address of his homepage (www.teo-spiller.org) one finds a list of words which then need to be added manually to the end of the address to reach the various individual projects. Spiller seems to be continuously lampooning the myriad of personal homepages that have been invading the net for some time now. More recently he has even been inserting photographs of his newborn son, Ian, who the artist considers to be a sort of “living sculpture” and the best thing he has created in his whole life. Amongst his earlier works are Capriccess for Netscape, Esmeralda and Cyberbride.

http://www.stelarc.va.com.au


The slogan “the body is obsolete” dominates the home page of the Stelarc official site. Given that it deals with a performance artist who explores and even expands the concept of the body within the context of its relationship to technology, the phrase is particularly fitting. The site is more than a repository of information on the numerous projects that this Australian artist has developed and performed in the past: in 1996 Stelarc also made it the instrument with which he would execute one of his performances, called Ping Pong, at the Artspace in Sydney. Thanks to the Internet and a particular software, it was possible for the entire world to interact with Stelarc whose body was under the control of the changing information coming in over the net. On the site, there are also some of the images that the artist broadcast during the performance. It is also possible to preview a demo of his CD-Rom Metabody: From Cyborg to Symborg which includes a video archive of his activities, images, writings, and interviews. Hopefully, such great material will soon be integrated into the site itself and we’ll no longer have to settle for a demo.

http://www.balticmill.com


Baltic is one of the top international centers for contemporary art. Directed by Sune Nordgren, it is located on the banks of the river Tyne in the north of England, and is scheduled to open in March 2002. Thanks to its constantly updated site, however, it’s possible to glean information regarding Baltic’s past and present activities in the meantime. These include pre-opening events in the “B4B” series, the artists-in-residence program that Francis Gomila took part in last year, exhibits, seminars, and various other happenings. The site will also host links to net art projects, such as “Thisistherealmatrix” by Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic, who has been invited to take part in the forty-ninth Venice Biennale in the Slovenian Pavilion.