Harm van den Dorpel on internet art

Last Tuesday (24 February) Harm was our guest and we invited him to talk about cyberspace..
He showed multiple examples of the work of mainly young artists on the internet. Artists who mainly develop works which explores the formal notions of internet as a medium. Harm collects these artworks on internet at the ‘online-gallery’ Club Internet and presented them in online groupshows as a curator. So, Harm is actually an online curator.
He collected the works and used to email the owner/artist for permission, this approach led to an online community of internet artists from all over the world. At the same time he tried to create a sort of imitation of an opening. By imitating this ritual moment in the artworld, these artists all over the world created a sort of parallel world in which they performed this festive moment..

Etherealself - Harm van den Dorpel, 2008 - Courtesy Manetas Collection

We discussed quite briefly the difficulties on authorship and ownership: how to sell or collect these (temporary) works of internetart?

We were totally surprised by the wonderful artworks, containing beautiful web based concepts. Don’t forget to check his own website presenting internetart: www.harmvandendorpel.com