Choose Your Filter!

We all access the internet daily. Our web browsers determine what we see - and what we don't see. This has fascinated artists from an early stage. Based on a research project by the KIT Institute for History of Art and Architecture on Browser Art, the exhibition provides insights into 30 years of browser development. You can discover and try out browser visions yourself via interactive installations.

Cyberspace opens up to everyone

When the first webpage went live in 1991, the internet became accessible to the general public. The first step towards the World Wide Web had been taken. But to realize his vision of an information network consisting of hypertext and organized into websites, internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee needed a very specific user interface: the web browser. So, in 1989, he began work on developing the WorldWideWeb browser of the same name at CERN in Geneva. This laid the foundation for what we understand by the internet today – a paradigm shift in information networking.

After the development of the first multimedia browser Mosaic in 1993, the economic growth of the web accelerated. In Europe, widespread use of the internet began in the late 1990s, with a rapid increase from around 1998. At that time, the internet became accessible and affordable for many households, leading to its increasing proliferation. Given their importance as the main portal to the internet, the development of web browsers also flourished. 
 

Artists broaden the spectrum and create new visions

From 1994 onwards, artists entered the scene and enriched the emerging ecosystem of web browsers by creating browser applications themselves. Artistic browsers do not necessarily correspond to the general characteristics that distinguish commercial browsers: user-friendliness, efficiency, high transmission speed, or multifunctionality take a back seat. Rather, these applications explore surprising possibilities for storytelling, composing music, viewing web structures, sonifying background activities, or introducing painterly functions that allow the Internet to be experienced in unexpected ways. 

Such unconventional approaches, which today seem rather exotic, were quite common in the early days. Since the look and functionality of web browsers were still being negotiated, the proposals were very different. In the last ten years, however, the diversity of web browsers has been greatly reduced, in favor of a few dominant providers such as Google's Chrome or Apple's Safari. Today this development has culminated in the social media platforms. These offer their own closed browsing experiences, which are increasingly replacing the open web and shaping the way we access and consume content.
 

When you choose a browser, you choose a filter!

»Choose Your Filter! Browser Art since the Beginnings of the World Wide Web« draws attention to long-forgotten concepts and pieces of software that demonstrate how extensively, wildly, and playfully the internet and its emerging content were used and continue to be used today.

The fact that today’s commercial web browsers are in many respects highly standardized and restrictive only becomes clear when one looks at these grassroots initiatives. The exhibition shows that the internet can take on different guises depending on concept, task, technical sophistication, and aesthetic choices. In one browser, we may encounter a homepage as a VR paradise scenario; in another, the same website reaches us as a soundscape. Whichever browser we choose, it comes with a set of conceptual filters that determine what we see, how we see it, and above all what we do not see. From browser to browser, we experience the internet in different ways – or even a completely different internet.