Hello World

Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh

20^th November 2010 – 5^th December 2010

For the past decade, ‘internet art’ has emerged as a vital sub-category of the contemporary art world, yet it remains decidedly under-represented by exhibitions. The trouble, of course, is that the Internet insists on existing in an inconveniently immaterial form. Virtual reality, on the whole, fits much better onto a laptop screen than a gallery space. How, exactly, are you supposed to curate this disembodied entity into an exhibition, whilst still offering the viewer an experience they couldn’t get more easily from whipping out their iPhone?

Its credit to the Embassy gallery, then, that they have succeeded in coming up with a genuinely inventive and effective method to bypass these restrictions. Hello World is divided into two parts; the first exists within the concretely material walls of the Roxy Art House, whilst Part Two expands into the intangible domain of cyberspace. Taken together, they comprise a compendium of the copious manifestations of the Internet.

Part One deals with the age-old issue of appropriation, and examines how the Internet has facilitated an upheaval of our engagement with data. This boundlessly intriguing topic has not yet received the critical attention it deserves. After all, if as Walter Benjamin claimed, mechanical reproduction stripped art of its “aura”, then its fair to say that digital technology has ruthlessly ransacked its last vestiges of inspired authorship.

Luke Collins, for instance, samples posts of 1960s Polaroid photographs, which have been uploaded onto flickr, and re-creates them in his own unique interpretation. In doing so he draws attention to the meandering path of inference which photos are exposed to once they are online. Stina Wirfelt similarly deals with the endless reproducibility of the internet by producing a ‘limitless’ poster. This is a never-ending series of lithographic prints wherein she ensures that supply will infinitely keep up with demand.

Part Two incorporates an impressively varied range of ‘experimental online seminars’, which are added to daily. These range from analytical articles evaluating our methods of internet usage, to amusingly nonsensical YouTube-esque film clips amassed purely from animated gifts.

By melding criticality with frivolity, this exhibition comprises a realistic portrait of the paradox of Internet interaction. Ultimately, the question seems to be does this technology really offer us absolute communication or absolute isolation? As life becomes every more entangled in the web, it’s a question well worth considering.

 Originally published 7th December 2010