http://www.beyeler.com/


In a period of twenty years, in parallel with their activity as gallery owners, Hildy and Ernst Beyeler gathered a large collection of about 175 works. Their collection became a foundation in 1982, and the marvelous building that houses it was designed by the Italian architect, Renzo Piano. The foundation website, in German, English, and French presents information in a clear and linear manner, with schematic graphics in light color tones. The special section, Web Cam, shows a wing of the Swiss building, still under construction, and allows us to follow the expansion works from different angles, since the image on the screen comes directly from a web cam placed on site.

http://utenti.tripod.it/clonerrato


“Enter the world of genetic engineering, make your Clonerrato; click on the icons, select the components as you wish, and create your animal”. This is the concept at the root of the project created by Franco Menicagli, a young video artist, in collaboration with Mino Cavallo. It is possible to assemble one’s own artificial animal thanks to various amusing combinations, half futuristic cartoon and half laboratory of monstrosities. One can also contribute to the enrichment of the icon archive by sending new animal, human, mechanical, organic, and inorganic images. The site’s interface is characterized by repeated images creating a rather vivid background; the single parts that make up the figures are often not very sophisticated, so that they create quite kitsch visual combinations. The degree of interaction is, for the moment, still superficial.

http://www.fournos-culture.gr


Fournos is an old bakery that houses one of the most well-known places in Greece, founded by Manthos Santorinaios for the development, research, and production of works of art made with the help of technological instruments. Since 1999 the center organizes, with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Visual Arts School in Athens, Media@terra, an international festival and symposium devoted to the development of South-Eastern Europe and Mediterranean digital culture and contemporary art. The site provides information on the center, on its past and future activities, and it presents the next festival, entitled NEO [ TECHNO ] LOGISMs.

http://www.searchforart.org


Search is an illustrated arts and culture quarterly, created in occasion of the “Search for Art Challenge”, the international competition devoted to emerging artists, promoted and supported by Mandarina Duck. The competition is addressed to all not yet known and established artists, without age limits, in the following fields: painting, sculpture, photography, video art, installations, and design. The site collects many images by artists that were shown in previous issues of the magazine, such as Giorgio Frassi, Luca Pancrazzi, Droog Design, and Armin Linke, provides the registration form for participating in the competition (this year deadline is set for June 1, 2000), and offers the possibility to fill a form for receiving the paper version at home, free of charge. In the area “Search for art links” the site offers a series of interesting links to projects, magazines, events, and museums. The interface is rather linear, and the graphics is spare but pleasant.

http://www.mouchette.org


Mouchette (little fly) is French, is thirteen, and lives in Amsterdam. This is what one can gather from her website. However, in reality, what is Mouchette’s true identity? Starting from the homepage, one finds all the elements characterizing many common personal web pages, even though in this case there aren’t any precise references, except the origin of the name, from a 1967 Robert Bresson’s movie. The website, divided into many sections and not linearly readable, collects a series of diverse situations and multiple references. For instance, one finds Mouchette’s seashell collection only by playing a sort of treasure hunt, because the images are hidden in a black page. This is an Internet art project that plays on the concept of identity. “Do not try to discover more than I want to tell you ... do not try to see more than I want to show you” Mouchette warns. The only possible contact is by e-mail or by participating in “Flesh&Blood”, an area in the site in which Mouchette invites visitors to bring their face close to the computer screen because the webpage displays the image of a mysterious face with an ambiguous expression.