NETworking 

Net Art From the Computer Fine Arts Collection

November 3, 2007 - March 23, 2008

Curator: Ilana Tenenbaum

"NETworking" is the first Israeli museum exhibition devoted to Net Art. This exhibition bespeaks the New Media Center's deep commitment to presenting new developments in technology-based art, and to examining their social and cultural dimensions.

"NETworking" examines the new frontier of digital art, and presents 12 works by different artists - including several pioneers of Net

Art - which all belong to Computer Fine Arts Collection. Owned by Doron Golan, one of the first collectors of online art, this collection has been functioning since 2001 as an online archive of Net Art accessible to all Web users. In 2003, Cornell University took upon itself to preserve and catalogue the works in this collection, which includes approximately 170 projects representative of this new medium's various facets. 

The works included in this exhibition highlight a number of the fundamental qualities of Net Art, which substitutes software programming for manual processes of artmaking: the visualization of data; interactivity, open-code access and connectivity; hacking and online voyeurism, which involve critiques of government authorities and economic powers; virtual behaviors that simulate behavior in real space, and the mobilization of forms in virtual space. 

The concepts and ideas that have evolved in the context of Net

Art - such as virtual communities and the invention of time-based spatial forms, which fluctuate like the Internet's data flow - reflect contemporary reality and the rich reciprocal relations between art and technology. The works in this exhibition present viewers with a new kind of experience, which is partially based on interactivity and on exposure to the possibilities and unique challenges embedded in Net Art.