Jeffrey Shaw
The Net.Art Browser
1999
- Artist / Artist group
- Jeffrey Shaw
- Title
- The Net.Art Browser
- Year
- 1999
- Category
- Computer-based
- Installation
- Description
- A video monitor glides along rails mounted on a museum wall. It stops at various positions – each marked with the name and URL of a net artist. At the press of a button, visitors select a position, the monitor travels there, and the corresponding website appears on screen. What normally happens privately at home becomes a public performance: browsing the web takes place in the exhibition space, websites hang on the wall like paintings. Jeffrey Shaw developed the installation for the ZKM exhibition »net_condition« (1999). Curator Benjamin Weil selected the websites on display – works by net artists engaging with the then still young medium of the internet. Visitors control the monitor with a wireless keyboard, moving it from position to position and exploring each work in the manner prescribed by the respective artist. The installation raises fundamental questions about the location of art: Where does a work exist if it only lives on the internet? How can it be exhibited? Shaw responds by giving transient data a physical anchor – a concrete position in space towards which the monitor travels. The underlying concept – Shaw calls it a "linear navigator" – has since been developed further in various contexts: in the ZKM Anniversary Browser, the CityU Creative Media Centre Navigator, and the Pacifying The South China Sea Scroll Navigator at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Chris Ziegler also used the principle for his interactive work 66movingimages (2002).
Author
MR