Virtual Galleries


"Äda in flux, an evolving journey"
http://adaweb.com/
Äda's web is a collectively curated website with a pleasingly enigmatic-looking homepage. The artists whose works are on display include Jenny Holzer, Julia Scher, Toland Grinnell and Ben Kinmont. Kinmont's work stands out for its low-tech/high-tech juxtaposition of domestic labor and the prestige attached to the figure of an artist. (Vol. 1 No. 1, April '96)

"Arc Gallery"
http://www.construct.net/gallery95
see article Vol. 1 No. 1, April '96

"Art Crimes: The Writing on the Wall"
http://artcrimes.gatech.edu/
This gallery features an impressive photo collection of graffiti from cities around the world and explores the aesthetics of graffiti as an outlaw art form. The project was started in May 1994 by Susan Farrell and its goal is to help preserve and document this constantly disappearing art. Art Crimes promotes the idea that art belongs in public places--and cyberspace not only provides endless "legal walls" for graffiti, it also is the ideal public space for an art form that is difficult to exhibit and collect. (Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)

"Art Gallery at the University of Maryland"
http://www.inform.umd.edu/ArtGal
The virtual incarnation of the University's art gallery provides visitors with access to images from this season's and past exhibitions. Their last show--On the Map--was a collaboration between faculty and students at all levels that focused on putting the diversity of the studio art program "on the map." The site also features items of the permanent collection, which comprises nearly 1000 objects ranging from traditional African sculpture to twentieth century prints, photographs, and paintings by American and European artists (including Andy Warhol and Kathe Kollwitz).(Vol. 1 No. 12, April/May '97)

"ARTSCOPE"
http://www.artscope.com/
Artscope is a massive website resembling an art fair with displays by galleries, art publications, and artists. Much that the visitor can find here will doubtless be of great interest, but also be prepared for disappointments. How much art is there in the world? A lot--the visitor quickly gets the sense, but only a small portion of it necessarily benefits from being displayed the size of a postage stamp on a screen in the same repetitive way. Of course, you can click to obtain a larger copy of the image, but how many times is a visitor going to do this? The prestige of some of the artists, galleries and publications located here is bound to draw many visitors, nevertheless it's easy to be reminded of the seemingly endless cemeteries that border many cities. (Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)

"The Artwalker Project"
http://www.artwalker.com
"The Artwalker Project" lets visitors to the website explore locations around the world by clicking on a world map and accessing paintings of cities, college campuses, landscapes and other environments. At some spots, one can "walk" through the painting by clicking on special navigation icons and moving through the scene. Presenting locations worldwide through scenic and landscape art rendered in the digital medium, "The Artwalker Project" creates a unique virtual world with a slightly retro feel. Submissions are welcome. (Vol. 1 No. 11, March '97)

"@art"
http://gertrude.art.uiuc.edu/@art/gallery.html
A low-bandwidth-friendly excellent site, @art is a terrific place to get excited about the future of electronic art galleries and the work of the artists they show. The artists whose works are either currently exhibited or carefully archived here demonstrate many kinds of savoir-faire about using the Web judiciously. The site is affiliated with the School of Art and Design, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is curated and maintained by Nan Goggin and Joseph Squier. (Vol. 1 No. 6, October '96)

"Casa das Rosas"
http://dialdata.com.br/casadasrosas
According to its manifesto, "Casa das Rosas"--.based in Sao Paulo--"faces the challenge and challenges all": this virtual gallery strives to translate and codify the language that will pervade the leap to a new (electronic) civilization. "Casa Das Rosas" is a space to watch and visit: the site features interesting online exhibitions, contests and Web-specific works (among the recent projects was Eduardo Kac's "Time Capsule"). Not all of the information at the site is available in English. (Vol. 2 No. 2, Spring '98)

"Christo and Jeanne-Claude"
http://pomo.nbn.com/youcan/christo/index.html
This site is not the creation of the artist Christo and his collaborator Jeanne-Claude. Instead, it is the creation of three Californians passionate enough about both this art and the Web to contribute their time to making this photographic documentation possible. Adam Ciesielski took the photographs, Jok Church and Von Wall did the HTML and image-processing. The photographs are sometimes breathtaking, and the website has been well designed not to hold up the visitor while images download. Nevertheless, this archive begs the question of how these two artists themselves might someday imagine using the Web.(Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)

"The Eli Broad Family Foundation"
http://www.broadartfdn.org/01a.open.html
This foundation grew out of a personal collection and now acts as a lending resource for contemporary art. Not all of the artists whose works are in their collection have works that can be viewed at the website, but a number of them do, including John Baldessari, Sue Coe, Anselm Kiefer and Barbara Kruger. Each selection is linked to a brief biographical sketch of the artist. The site is knowledgeably curated and very much worth a visit. (Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)

"Favela"
http://www.favela.org/intro/main.html
"This site has a number of intriguing online exhibits, including Sex Machine: Fetishism and the Digital Feminine and Sun Tzu's The Art of War. The artists featured at this site appear to be avid readers of books on cultural studies and very savvy about the current politics of art. The site also contains an online journal called Rabid Sphinx, which--not surprisingly, given the site's emphasis on textuality--contains some of the site's most interesting material. (Vol. 1 No. 5, Sept. '96)

"Fluxus Online"
http://www.panix.com/~fluxus/
"Fluxus is like a Korean plant," the artist Nam June Paik is reputed to have once said, "when it looks dead, it's about to bloom." This art movement from the the late 50s and 60s has sprung up again, this time on the Web. Sense the Zen sensibility of not making sense. Works available include collages, photographs, film and music. (Vol. 1 No. 1, April '96)

"Franklin Furnace"
http://www.franklinfurnace.org/
Ever since it was founded by Martha Wilson in 1976, Franklin Furnace's energies have been focused on "time-based" programming and arts. Their twentieth anniversary season coincided with a new direction for Franklin Furnace as a virtual and alternative media space. The Twentieth Anniversary Final Exhibition that was shown in the Franklin Street Gallery continues on the Web: "IN THE FLOW: Alternate Authoring Strategies," exhibits a selection of work that treats content as flowing information and is still one of the best examples of quality art media programming.(Vol. 1 No. 12, April/May '97)

"IAMfree"
http://www.artnet.org/iamfree/
Propelled by the belief "that the age of technology as an important center of enlightenment is now," Artists for Revolution through Technology on the Internet have created an online music, art and literature museum, the Internet Arts Museum for free. IAMfree showcases art in the categories 'Sound,' 'Vision' and 'Words,' which is downloadable and 'free.' Currently featured are "Bits 'n Pieces," a CD-length collection of computer music available for performance over the Internet, as well as visions by Gregory Rubin and words by Harrell Fletcher. (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)

"Internet 1996 World Exposition"
http://japan.park.org/Japan/DNP/indexj.html
World Fairs, such as the Crystal Palace of 1851 and the 1939 New York World's Fair, have always been considered landmarks in technoculture, although the meaning of these landmarks will continue to be debated. This latest version in cyberspace looks as if it is very well on its way to becoming as fascinating as its predecessors. International corporate heavyweights have provided sponsoring at the urging of the fair's founders, computer consultant Carl Malamud and Vinton Cerf, vice president of data architecture for MCI Engineering and "an Internet pioneer," as Time Magazine called him. An open invitation stands for anyone to set up an exhibition, so check it out! (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)

"Intima"
http://www2.arnes.si/guest/ljintima3/ibey.html
http://www2.arnes.si/guest/ljintima2/intima1.html
Founded in June 1994 and maintained by Igor Stromajer, "INTIMA Ljubljana" organizes and exhibits Web and performing arts projects, online conferences, as well as exhibitions and word-events. (Occasional financial support is provided by The Ministery of Culture of The Republic of Slovenia and Ljubljana City Community.) Uniting different creative media and forms, "INTIMA" opens a window on and for Slovenian art. (Vol. 1 No. 11, March '97)

"Kaleidospace"
http://kspace.com
Kaleidospace is an art space/commercial gallery that allows visitors to choose from 10 categories. At the 'Art Studio' visitors may browse through exhibited works by medium and subject, and at 'Center Stage!' through performance clips by genre. The selections are rather eclectic and without apparent standard. The 'Interactive Arena!' (worth visiting) features links to interactive works, among them Luis Prieto's "About Us" and David Blair's "WAXweb". (Vol. 1 No. 1, April '96)

"Moscow WWWArt Centre"
http://sunsite.cs.msu.su/wwwart/
The first thing you notice about Moscow's online art center is that it has multiple entrances--created by, among others, jodi and Heath Bunting--which seems only appropriate. "Moscow WWWArt Centre" is an initiative created by Alexei Shulgin, Tania Detkina, Alexander Nikolaev, Olia Lialina, and Rachel Baker.They define their aims as "translation of Russian underground (= mainstream) art into Internet" and "approaching the highest possible level of art/life uncertainty." Visitors may explore the areas "self-expression," "communication," and "information." Always original and entertaining, this site is a refreshing reinterpretation of the art center on the Web. (Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)

"New York Digital Salon Computer Art and Design Show"
http://www.sva.edu/
The annual "New York Digital Salon," hosted by the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, is an international juried competition featuring a gallery exhibition, screenings and "Net-Works." If you missed the exhibition in New York City, you still have a chance to visit the virtual salon at the SVA's website. The "Net-Works" section of the exhibition, curated by Ken Feingold, will remain online until November, 1997 and is worth a bookmark. (Vol. 1 No. 9, January '96)

"Photocollect"
http://www.webart.com/photocollect/home.htm
Anyone interested in putting photography on the Web in an interactive way that takes advantage of the user's desire, tantalizing the user with hotlinks that appear like doorways that Alice would have found in Wonderland should run not walk (ISDN not 9600) to this site. It helps that the director of the gallery, Alan Klotz, has a tremendous collection of photography to draw from, but his skill is also evident in the site's way of anticipating how the user might best like to explore the collection. Laying down thousands of dollars for an original of any of the photographs is strictly optional and offline.(Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)

"Plexus Art & Communication"
http://www.plexus.org
Plexus has changed a lot since we first reviewed it in our April issue. The site--designed as an interface to the flux of ideas contained in the works presented here--has added more areas and features (see our Forums section) and is now one of the important resources for a variety of disciplines: Plexus is a broad environment--an online gallery, journal and selected archive of art, video, criticism, theory, poetry and literature. Principal areas include the 'Gallery,' featuring specially curated shows, the 'Artists' section, as well as 'Tracts' (a journal of critical and poetic writings) and 'Links', leading to art directories, labs and publications. (October '96)

"Postmasters"
http://www.thing.net/~pomaga/
This website is affiliated with the Postmasters gallery located in SoHo. While other galleries have gotten involved with the Web and multimedia without knowing much beyond the hype, Postmasters has already played an important role in facilitating the emergence of "digital culture." A notable example of this was their exhibition "Can You Digit?" held at their physical gallery space earlier this year. Their virtual gallery exhibits the same sure sense of curatorial direction, although at this point it's still just getting started. (Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)

"Public Netbase"
http://www.t0.or.at
Public Netbase / t0 Institute for New Culture Technologies was co-founded by hyperreality researcher/developer and interdisciplinary event designer Konrad Becker, who also is the institute's chairman. Featured at the site are various projects, "Zero News," and "e~scape museum"; the latter is a show by Becker that explores the intermediation of art and technology, society and culture. A real-time interaction application located at the server allowed users to contribute to the show; check out the museum to find out more about the Cu-See-Me reflector and the interactive billboard system. The site's interface may turn out to be confusing for some visitors, but it's a place that's worth exploring. (Vol. 1 No. 5, Sept. '96)

"SITO/Synergy"
http://www.sito.org/
SITO (previously called OTIS--a lawsuit filed by the Otis College of Art and Design changed that) bills itself as "a place for image-makers and image-lovers to exchange ideas." The site features extensive "Artchives" as well as exhibits. What distinguishes SITO from many other virtual galleries is the "Synergy" section, which features collaborative, interactive projects; among them are "Corpse"--a revamp of the classic "exquisite corpse" drawing exercise--and "PANIC"--a project that gathered artists in real-time to manipulate images. (Vol. 1 No. 3, June '96)

"Surrealism"
http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/juju/surr/surrealism.html
The mission of this website seems to be 'providing everything you ever wanted to know about Surrealism'--and it's doing its best to fulfill it. The site is a terrific resource, featuring surrealist writing, listings of upcoming and current exhibitions related to the movement and links to permanent exhibits, such as the photographs at the Dali Teatro Museum. Further categories include "Surrealist Games of the fantastic and invariable," "Sound Surrealism," and "Automatic Writing and the perfection of Critical Paranoia." (Vol. 1 No. 5, Sept. '96)

"The Synagogue Space"
http://www.panix.com/~ilduce/
This site is maintained by "The Synagogue Space," a not-for-profit art and performance space situated in a former synagogue on New York's Lower East Side. The website is sparse but well-organized, and the use of images effective. The online history of the building would in itself make this site worth a visit. The site also includes an illustrated history of the Lower East Side and a listing of other local artist spaces and local still-functioning Synagogues. In the fall they'll be hosting the Lower East Side Film Festival; submission information is available online. (Vol. 1 No. 4, July/August '96)

"Syracuse University Art Media Studies"
http://ziris.syr.edu/home.html
This "Digital Art Experience" is brought to you by the Art Media Studies-Computer Graphics program at Syracuse University. Designed to bring together artists and other individuals across the Internet, this site displays student and other captivating collaborative art endeavors. Among them are Digital Journeys and ChainReaction--an international collaborative event which was shown at SIGGRAPH and ISEA in '95.(Vol. 1 No. 10, February '97)

"Sztaki Gallery"
http://www.sztaki.hu/sztaki/gallery.html
This is a website that's just being set up by the Hungarian gallery Sztaki . It's like walking into an exhibition space that's still being set up: the floor is still being sanded; there's a pile of tools over in one corner until someone removes it; a cold cup of coffee you notice on the floor beside you has been used as an ashtray. In other words, there's very little here here... so far. But what is here shows a rigor of thought about what to do on the Web that already surpasses by the far virtual galleries that look like cheap knock-offs of Sears-Roebuck. (Vol. 1 No. 6, October '96)

"Turbulence "
http://www.turbulence.org
Dedicated to facilitating artistic work that explores the specific characteristics of the Web as a medium and makes use of online technologies, "Turbulence" is worth visiting for its content standards. The site presents interactive hypermedia works (by Helen Thorington , and others) that range from commercial to avant-garde art forms and creates a turbulent environment for experiments with digital art. (Vol. 2 No. 1, Fall '97)

"The Works: Art in a Digital Age"
http://www.dorsai.org/~jkurland/agif.html
It may be a small gallery, but it's one worth visiting. "Works" provides some information on the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) and Artworks New York and exhibits, of course, artists' works.Jeffrey Kurland is the prominent figure here, exhibiting his minimalistic and enjoyable The Dotted Line as well as his latest creation Duchamp Chew Chomp, using GIF animations and the Talker plugin.(Vol. 1 No. 7, November '96)

"Zone I Gallery"
http://www.gate.net/~eak3/
Zone I Gallery bills itself as a showcase of African-American photography. The site is terrific in terms of content: current topics of exhibitions include "Muhammad Ali, A Thirty-Year Journey" by Howard L. Bingham, "Bob Marley: Spirit Dancer" by Bruce Talamon, and "Amazing Grace: Portraits from the African-American Church" by E.A. Kennedy III. Even so, the site in the future will hopefully include more links to the richness of possible paths of inquiry that these works bring to mind. Photographs at the site are protected from unauthorized reproduction by the ancient Yoruban god Chango.(Vol. 1 No. 2, May '96)