The Net Art (Is) Open

international | arts and media | feature Thursday June 02, 2005 18:28 by Conor McGarrigle - Stunned.org

The Net Art Open is an ongoing uncurated exhibition of net art on Irish new media artsite Stunned.org. The exhibition is an open submission state-of-the-art showcase of Irish and International net art with a difference. All work submitted is accepted and rather then a traditional 'all work being simultaneously presented' the Net Art Open is blogged over the period of a year and delivered directly to the audience with RSS syndication.

Net Art is the newest art movement around, an art movement where the art is delivered directly from the artist to the public without the mediation of the art world. For artists it offers an opportunity to reach a global audience without art world institutional backing, to have that audience experience your work in the intimate space of the web browser and even more importantly to reach an audience who may never set foot in an art gallery.

There's no surprise then that in the last few years the net art scene has exploded with artists seizing the opportunity to take greater control over their own work, how that work is seen by their audience, and to escape the strictures placed on them by an art scene increasingly dominated by curators and 'gallerists'. Add to that increased access to computers, software tools ( thanks to the open source movement) and cheaper net access and the result has been a vibrant international net art scene with the physical limitations of gallery based art removed. Most importantly though net art offers the artist access to a much larger audience and a more direct relationship with that audience.

The problem, if indeed you can call this a problem, is that there is so much activity that even with the best will in the world it's hard to keep with all the new work being created online. Traditionally this has been done with community sites and mailing lists and these still play an important role in getting access to net art. However, as the net art world develops, curatorial models are becoming more important. While they have a role to play it is important to maintain the spirit that informed early net art and important to realise that curators tend to show only a snapshot of the net art scene that fits with their curatorial vision.

The Net Art Open was developed to fill this gap and to create a space which would show net art direct from the artists without any curatorial mediation. Originally conceived by Artie Doyle as part of the irishmuseumofmodernart.com project the concept was taken over by Stunned.org in 2004 and given a new format. The Net Art Open's central concept is that it is an open submission exhibition in which every submission (which meets the criteria of being net art) is accepted. In the latest edition the exhibition is rolled out one work at a time in blog format with each entry getting equal prominence. The exhibition is designed to make seeing new work as simple as possible so RSS feeds are published so the audience can incorporate the Net Art Open into their daily routine of checking their blogs and newsfeeds. A javascript feed is also available to facilitate easy integration of the exhibition into other websites.

What about quality? Common sense would tell you accept all work quality must suffer but we were pleasantly surprised to find this hasn't been the case. In fact quite the opposite has been the case and the work the Net Art Open has shown from Irish and International artists, well known names and fresh faces is often assumed to be a curated 'best of' show. It's unclear as to why this is, it may be that there are no bad net artists or maybe that they just haven't heard of the net art open yet.

Personally one of my favourite aspects of the Net Art Open is that it introduces you to art that, perhaps, you wouldn't choose to see out side of the context of this exhibition, it's format persuades you to go beyond what you know you like and try something new. What better recommendation could any exhibition have?

The Net Art Open is ongoing at www.netartopen.org and you can subscribe there to the XML feed.

Florian Thalhofer and Mahmoud Hamdy, 7 Sons

John Vega, Wirescapes