The Internet Café as Net Art Gallery

The format of the night is simple: go to an Internet cafe, rent all computers they have and run a show on them for just one night with online work from various new media artists, shown in a typical browser with standard plug-ins. The Speed Show Manifest, which is written by Aram Bartholl, further demands that any creative physical modification to the Internet cafe itself is not allowed. The show should be public and taking place  “during normal opening hours of the Internet cafe/shop. All visitors are welcome to join the opening, enjoy the art (and to check their email).”

“It’s about time to revisit net.art in an era of 500 million Facebook user. net.art never really found it’s way out of the media art bubble. The browser was the promising canvas in the early 90s and is today more than ever capable to do whatever you like. Within the last (…) 5 years the Internet arrived and became totally mainstream. The Social Web unfolded its power and became part of everyday life of hundreds of millions users. (…) The potential size of an audience for on-line art work has grown infinitely large. (…) In an era of Internet memes and 20+ million YouTube views on one video in a day, artists need to reconsider the web from a different perspective.”

Themed ‘Peace’, the third edition of Speed Show presented a wide selected of recent work from well known artists to a new generation of “web savy coders and Internet renegades”. Click here for photos of the event, made by Anne Helmond. Check out the website to find a Speed Show near you…