Stop motion studies
David Crawford

Views from
the ground floor...
Jess Loseby

Electric sheep
Scott Draves

Execute
Zohar Kfir

Secret.room
VioletRabbit

LoveStoryProject
Florian Thalhofer,
Mahmoud Hamdy

French trash touch
SYSTAIME

DemoKino
Davide Grassi

Normative bebilderung
Guido Braun

[he]  [es]

Current exhibition endeavors to analyze the peculiarities of video art as it develops on the net. The exhibition is not merely concerned with the digital/network platform replacing the more traditional support - the tape, but also, and above all, with development of the new narratives and aesthetics granted by mechanisms of network and digital media: deconstruction, interaction, randomization, multi-layerness, browser dependence, real-time broadcast and editability; alteration, combination and incorporation of various media within video medium or video elements within them. These narratives, already aesthetically influenced by multitude of digital compressions, raise a question of possibilities and limitations of video art as it has been known and been developed since middle sixties and until eighties and their transformation during the Internet age.

All the exhibited works are selected from the projects offered in response to the open call for submissions published by no-org.net on the web last February. The exhibition presents the approach to the concept of video-net-art taken by the participating artists who deal with net & digital art.

Several features of video art on the net are formally deployed by different works making the exhibition.

Stop motion studies by David Crawford invoke questions of direct impact of formats and methods by which data is transfered through the network and their influence on the final design of a movie with every new transmission. The number of frames per second, one of the factors that shaped and characterized the cinema in the beginning, is brought into focus of this internet video, where the network connection stream defines the speed of transitions, decomposing the film into primary elements - still images/frames. The subject matter of the movie draws metaphorical parallels between subway conjunctions of different underground city networks and the virtual network of the Internet, where a particular passenger's route and an internet user's route alike cross and overlap with routes of other passengers/users.

Net-film by Jess Loseby Views from the ground floor it's an interactive work built of video pieces, stills and animations in Flash, where the multiplicity and the combination of different media success in creating a poetical and singular work, as a result of the harmonic combination of a digital aesthetics and intimate, domestic themes.

Electric sheep, work of Scott Draves is an auto generating screen-saver constructed according to random codes that depend on different actions of participants, to whom it arrives in format of MPEG animation. Electric sheep is an open source software, presenting original and unique approach to video and animation on the Internet.

In work of Zohar Kfir Execute the viewer turned to accomplice - or objector in a process of execution. The execution process, probably recorded from TV, split to several movies presented in chronological order. An interactive video, a linear narrative, divided in simple and direct way, places the spectator in a dilemma: to become an executioner or to stop the execution in a virtual way. User becomes responsible, in the linear path of restructured and unavoidable execution. Simple interaction endows the "PLAY" button with a new signification of aesthetic, human and political responsibility.

The net.drama of VioletRabbit/Coniglioviola and IRAA Theatre Secret.room presents a narrative constructed of several movies of different lengths sequentially and simultaneously screened in random order in the continuously opening pop-up windows. The work aims to put the viewer and his/her computer under absolute control, turning the user in a passive spectator through the renunciation of interactivity: "THE BROWSER IS YOUR DIRECTOR-DON'T RESIST"

LoveStoryProject - collaborative project by Florian Thalhofer and Mahmoud Hamdy produced in Germany and Egypt gives user full control over the flow of documentary movie contemplating different love stories. The project presents possibilities of hyper-video, linking among different movies, fragments, stories, people and cultures, positioning the spectator in the middle of action as a co-editor of non-linear random documentary narrative.

French trash touch is a website dedicated to web movies, net and digital art. The website resembles a Pandora's box - every click unfolds a new panorama, often chaotic and uncontrollable. It presents the cyberpunk culture - the "french trash" - not only discovering new aesthetics and forms but also serving as an active web mediateque, an alternative to traditional video archives.

DemoKino by Davide Grassi is using the possibilities of the network for creating a virtual parliament. Each parliamentary online session begins upon watching a movie, a parable related to the issue at hand, which invites the user to vote for and against. DemoKino is critical art work which questions the democratic system as it occurs in the political arena.

Normative bebilderung by Guido Braun is a creation made of every-day's movies, taken during artist's stay in Frankfurt. This video-diary, characterized by a poetic approach and minimalism, resembles the blog language testing the edge between public and private. It is the frame of the work's presentation that makes it video-net-art.

*special webcam event was held on July 10 between 20:30 to 23:30 GMT+3 (report to follow)