"Web as a Medium" is the exhibition focuses on the characteristics of the Web as the primary medium in code-based art.
The works of 10 artists who use the Web as their primary medium of expression will be displayed.
The exhibition is also a collaborative project with objkt.one, with a special NFT drop scheduled for May 16 on their platform.

Artists:
0xhaiku
exonemo
Canek Zapata
Damjanski
Jan Robert Leegte
Joan Heemskerk
Kitasenju Design
Leander Herzog
Violet Forest
Yehwan Song

Statement

NFT, which became a major global trend in 2021 that cannot be ignored in art history, is a technology that has been explored and experimented with in various ways by artists and hackers. However, three years later, in 2024, most NFT works are still in the form of images, videos, and codes, and the experience of viewing them in a Web browser remains the same. While images and videos do not depend much on where they are played, most code-based works are created using HTML / CSS / JavaScript, and the environment in which they are executed is extremely important. In other words, for many NFT works, especially code-based works, the Web browser is the canvas and can be interpreted as the primary medium. Today's digital art would not be possible without the existence of the Web.

No consideration of the history of the Web and art would be complete without mentioning the net.art movement, whose ancestors, Fluxus and its use of the Internet as a new medium, flourished in Eastern Europe at the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Central to the art were mailing lists such as Nettime and Syndicate. The work of net.art was a diverse collection of experimentation, utilizing and resisting new technologies, and brimming with fresh ideas, from the purely playful to the controversial. They were a collection of diverse experiments full of fresh ideas, from purely playful to controversial. For example, Vuk Ćosić, which produces works using ASCII characters; JODI, which launched a radical website that crashes browsers; and 0100101110101101.org, which attempted to subvert public media with works that copy, alter, and publish websites. There are activities and works in a variety of directions.

While the advent of the Internet has triggered a global movement, a practice using the Web as a medium is also emerging from Japan. As far back as 1991, the "Invisible Museum on the Telephone Network," an exhibition that attempted to access the works and messages of nearly 100 artists, writers, and cultural figures via the telephone network, was held. In 1996, the "Internet 1996 World Exposition," an online exposition of websites distributed across eight servers around the world, was held, and a group of Japanese artists formed to exhibit there. The Japanese group sensorium, which was formed to exhibit at the exposition, put into practice the extension of the Internet's potential to allow visitors to experience a living world by accessing the Web. It should be added that behind this rapid movement in Japan was the backing of giant corporations such as NTT, which wanted to promote new networking technologies.

In the early 2000s, the NEEN Manifest edited a text that defined a new trend in Internet art. The movement led by Rafaël Rozendaal tended toward a lighter, playful, and more personal sensibility unlike the radical politics and critique of the 1990s. In an environment where the technology of the Web has become commonplace and familiar, the texts seem to express a desire not to delve into the nature of such tools, but to create new (and sometimes wasteful) ways of using them.

The 2010s was a time when social networking services such as Tumblr and YouTube became popular and users began to transmit their own content, known as "Web 2.0". New digital artists, who are different from the existing art field, create fresh images every day, and these images travel around the world as they are reposted. For example, Vaporwave, a music genre originating from the Internet, has expanded its power through the methodology of memes, while at the same time creating a unique aesthetic on the visual side. In an attempt to sell digital art online, Rafaël Rozendaal's "Art Website Sales Contract" a contract to sell his website artwork, becomes a hot topic. There is also Kim Asendorf's experiment called "The GIF Market" a marketplace for selling his GIF works. These experiments could be said to have anticipated the emergence of the NFT: "THE INTERNET YAMI-ICHI," an event held by IDPW, a group founded by exonemo to sell Internet-themed artwork and goods, moved to cities around the world. The culture that was born online has leapt out of the Internet and begun to appear here and there in the real world.

In an area a little closer to fine art, there is a movement called post-Internet art. Millennials, those who have grown up with the Internet, have created works influenced by the images flooding the Internet; Marisa Olson's comments and Gene McHugh's "Post Internet" are often referenced as examples of this trend. The movement reached its zenith at the Berlin Biennale, curated by DIS Magazine. "Post-Internet Art" became a buzzword, causing much misunderstanding from those outside the field and strong feelings of rejection from the existing art world. This point can be said to have something in common with NFT, which tends to be avoided because of its speculative image.

These attempts presented new possibilities in the art of the Web. Today, the NFT platform supports a variety of forms of artwork, such as images, video, and code, which are juxtaposed side by side. However, how many of these works are conscious of the characteristics of the Web as their execution environment? What kind of evolution has occurred in works that use the Web as their primary medium? To find out, this exhibition with 10 artists will be developed under the theme of "Web as a Medium".

The following is an introduction to the participating artists and their works in this exhibition.

0xhaiku explores conceptual yet poetic expression through the theme of relational art as a system in which anyone can participate. The work "[DEPRECATED] The Grand Canal, Venice" is an animation work that uses only the marquee tag, which has been deprecated from the HTML standard for the Web. The work, which is destined to stop working one day due to browser specifications, exists on a blockchain that claims permanence, and will remain even if the day it stops working comes. 0xhaiku sees this vulnerability as poetic, and chooses the Web and the blockchain as its medium.

exonemo is an artist duo consisting of Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa. They express human physicality and emotions in the network age in a critical and humorous way by crossing digital and analog media. The work "Find My LOVE - Infinite Computer Theorem" is a work in which the computer keeps generating random letters and repeating them until it finds the word "LOVE". In the late 90s, when the Web began to spread, the world was chaotic and full of random elements. Each person transmitted his or her own enthusiasm, and when they happened to meet, something was born. "Find My LOVE" seems to be a work that evokes the nostalgic "Web of those days". Nostalgia and a sense of emotion may reside in inorganic technology as well.

Canek Zapata is a net artist who focuses on the exploration of automated models of writing, languages. His work "Lands" is a work of generative literature utilizing AI. The poems and images arranged left and right, and the retro music playing at the same time, remind one of old-fashioned computer games.

Damjanski is an artist exploring the possibilities of applications as works of art. "Nude Study RGB Dance" is a video work shot using "Bye Bye Camera" an app he developed. The images, in which traces of people have been erased, evoke a dystopian world in which humanity has become so immersed in technology that it has disappeared.

Jan Robert Leegte is one of the first Dutch artists to work on and for the Internet since the 1990’s. His work "Text Document out of Focus" is a reworking of a work he created in Flash in 2008, using contemporary technology. The motif of this work, a simple text editor, seems to represent a time when social networking was not as active as it is today, and the Web was still centered on homepages.

Joan Heemskerk is a Dutch contemporary artist who creates WWW works. As a member of the art collective JODI, she has been a pioneer in the field of internet art since its early days. "This Is Not <A" is a QR work based on the objkt.one website, in which QR codes refer to the website on which the work is displayed, forming a repeating self-referential feedback loop. The behavior of the code changes depending on where it is executed, and it is a work that truly reflects the characteristics of the Web.

Kitasenju Design is an artist who explores visual expression with the aim of creating a sense of discomfort in familiar landscapes. Inspired by Brutal Web Design, an experimental web design exploration movement, Kitasenju uses CSS to create the graphics that make up the visual elements of a website. The main medium of this work, which uses CSS, which is strongly dependent on browser specifications, is definitely the Web.

Leander Herzog is a visual artist who focuses on generative and interactive abstraction on the Web. In "Downloads", he programmatically moves HTML tags to create minimal but complex movements. Leander has been creating art with code since 2006, and his unique style can be seen in his use of primitive HTML tags rather than Canvas, which is often used in browser-based artworks drawn with code.

Violet Forest is a digital artist and creative technologist who focuses on finding new processes and techniques using new technologies. Her work "OMG LOL Metaverse" is a mini-game-like story that allows the viewer to navigate through an interface reminiscent of the early days of the Web and eventually reach the "Metaverse" that we all dream of.

Yehwan Song is an artist specializing in the creation of diverse and independent Internet spaces that are not user-centered. Her work "Oh Yes Everything's Fine" is a video work about the oppression prevalent online. Windows are symbolic motifs of the Web, and the woman in the video is surrounded by them and almost held down, yet she says, "Everything's Fine". This situation seems to satirize the problems created by the Internet.

Each of them has taken a different approach to the theme of the Web and incorporated its characteristics into their work. As an artist, it seems natural to consider what medium to use for their own work, but I feel that not many artists are aware of the medium of digital art, such as codes, images, and videos that are distributed online as NFT works. Why images instead of prints? Why code instead of images? Why the Web instead of applications? When you see actual works on the theme of the medium of the Web, you may be able to see some answers to these questions.

This exhibition is also a collaboration with objkt.one, where all the works are minted as 1/1 of the Tezos chain. Of all the chains, Tezos was one of the first to be favored by artists, especially digital artists. Compared to the other major chain, Ethereum, Tezos may be a bit behind in terms of flexibility of smart contracts and hurdles for technical experimentation. However, the casual atmosphere of the Tezos community and the "lightness" that comes from the reasonable Gas fees and friendly prices of the pieces are the hallmarks of this chain. What kind of characteristics can be seen when the web-based works become NFT works on the light Tezos chain?
We hope that this exhibition will help us to reexamine the characteristics of the Web as a medium and to consider the possibilities of digital art that will develop beyond the explorations that have been conducted thus far.

Text=NIINOMI / Yusuke Shono