http://www.massmoca.org


The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has organized the exhibition entitled Game Show which displays works by artists made during the ’90s and inspired by the world of games. Christoph Draeger turns the die-cut image of a destroyed airplane into a puzzle, for example, while Perry Hoberman has created a dynamic interactive installation called Cathartic User Interface. Besides the pieces made from traditional means, Mark Tribe and Alex Galloway have also curated an area dedicated to the Web which gathers projects together by various net artists who have taken the idea of an online game to a new level. Thanks to this American museum’s site, it is also possible to view the works of Lonnie Flickinger, Joan Heemskerk & Dirk Paesmans (Jodi), Maciej Wisniewski (the author of Netomat), Natalie Bookchin, and Thomson & Craighead.

http://www.teleferique.org


Teleferique is the name of an artists’ collective, which was formed back in March 1999 by Etienne Cliquet and Sonia Marques. This website is the group’s working base and is managed by the founders with the assistance of Robin Fercoq and Makoto Yoshihara. Being audio or videos pieces, the works hosted on the site cannot be viewed on screen. Visitors must download them onto their own computers in html, ftp, or VRML format—the last of these allowing 3D visualization of the piece. Artists and computer programmers can visit the site and leave files and programs in various directories, which are updated daily. By scrolling down the list, visitors can discover the title and the author of a particular piece, how large the file is (useful when downloading), and the system required in order to visualize it. Each file of work is also accompanied by a text written by its creator, giving a description of the piece, permission to use it, and useful indications for getting the most out of the work—which might be in the form of a program, an animation, a sound bite, or compressed files. A sort of remote control helps visitors to navigate the site successfully.

http://artcontext.net


“Artcontext attempts to articulate, through words and codes, the need for, and possibility of, an awakening from the nightmare of lousy, incorrigible commercial media.” Founded by the artist Andy Deck, who lives and works in New York City, artcontext’s aim is to develop a collaborative process in the arena of art and the electronic world, by experimenting with the linguistic and formal potentialities of new media. It’s hard to absolutely categorize, but Deck’s site principally addresses itself to the power of communication, collective contribution, and the active participation of the public. The work is conceptual in that each element, graphic or textual, can be interpreted in a variety of ways. While running artcontext, Deck also operates the site andyland.net, where one finds news and links to past projects, such as the interesting Cultural Map, commissioned by “Turbulence” in 2000, which visibly charts the percentage of the presence on the Internet of certain determined categories. The concept is to find a new way to visualize information: shaping the evolution of Web contents with color composition.

http://www.yadigit.org


Ya Dig it? is the title of a temporary online exhibition which presents various Internet projects and is curated by the New York artist, Susy Spence. The projects combine graphics, computerized animation, and electronic sounds effects, coming close in many cases to the visual experimentation seen in video game interfaces. The choice of works particularly favors those that deal essentially with the seductive power of animation and color. Such is the case, for example, in Sunsets and Sunrises by Claude Closky, which has freed itself of any recognizable forms in its interpretation of dawn and dusk, communicating these events with the use of dissolving colors; or in the unusual cartoon The Recorder Man by mumbleboy—aka Kinya Hanada, who was born in Japan but moved to California at age thirteen—in which the writing in the speech balloons has been replaced with animated objects and brilliant colors. With the project entitled #39-41, the group C404 present natural environments—a sunny expanse or a sky streaked with the outline of clouds—in which is disrupted by the introduction of moving geometric forms, with which the visitor can interact, even to the point of changing them.

http://www.sonar.ya.com


Sonar is the annual international festival of experimental music and multi-media art which is held in Barcelona and celebrates its eighth edition this year. Their website, in both Spanish and English, is a mine of information on the event itself, giving a detailed programme, news on the competition, and a series of interviews with the protagonists. The site has been created in a two versions: in the more dynamic one, the users might at first have the sensation of being somewhat scattered; they are actually offered a set of options amongst which it is possible to choose the entirety of everything that appears on the monitor. For example, some of the folders containing information transform themselves into giant icons. Sonar also hosts "London Calling" on their homepage, which is a selection of internet projects by British artists, curated by Roberta Bosco and Stefano Caldana. Participating artists include: Heath Bunting, founder of the IRATIONAL.org group, Mongrel, Stanza, and the team Thomson & Craighhead.