May 2001 - Nr. 5
Global Study of Internet Art
TWIG - With the Internet zipping pixels around the globe non-stop and computer screens awash in a never-ending stream of digital images, researchers at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee want to find out just what all the art that is flooding cyberspace means. Using a grant of nearly DM 1 million (U.S.$455,000) provided by the Volkswagen Foundation, anthropologist and art historian Lydia Haustein is conducting an international study of the way the World Wide Web is transforming the way people think and live.
About 180 million people around the world use the Internet today, says Haustein, and by 2005 a billion people will have access to the Net. "The multimedia spaces constructed by artists and designers are changing people’s lives, transcending mental and geographic borders and connecting a multitude of lifestyles in a new dimension," she explains.
Over the next three years, Haustein will be collaborating with researchers at the University of Kumasi (Ghana) as well artists in Africa, South America and China in a study of the role of images in the Internet, video art and television advertising. In the future, says Haustein, cultural identity will arise less and less from traditional customs, rituals, art or architecture, emerging instead from the virtually inexhaustible arsenal of digital products.
"The project is a model effort to further international understanding and look beyond national borders," says Wilhelm Krull, general secretary of the Volkswagen Foundation. Haustein’s grant is one of the largest the foundation has ever approved.
