It was inevitable that the internet would have an impact on art. But you could be forgiven for not having noticed ‘internet art’ (or that it had morphed into ‘post-internet art’) over the past couple of decades among all the blockbuster shows and gallery exhibitions dedicated to the more traditional art forms that make up London’s cultural landscape. But with a major institution like the Hayward giving it some attention, maybe the tide is turning.
And there’s some good stuff in this little show. In ‘Life in Ad Words’, Erica Scourti reads out words from ads that had (legally) scanned her emails and diary for ‘targeting’ purposes, delving into the uncomfortable levels of intrusion that we facilitate. It’s not a pretty work, just someone speaking into a webcam for an hour, but it gets its point across. And so does Liz Sterry’s ‘Kay’s Blog’; an exact replica of a Canadian blogger’s bedroom, created simply by following that person’s public online activities. That’s how much information we’re putting out there – enough for a total stranger a thousand miles away to recreate our bedroom and plaster it in our own selfies. Creepy.
Nothing creepy about Cory Arcangel’s brilliant compilation of piano-playing cats, culled from YouTube and meticulously edited together to play Schoenberg’s ‘Drei Klavierstucke’. It’s everything you want net art and the internet to be: incredibly stupid and brilliantly clever.
Elsewhere, Ami Clarke and Richard Cochrane’s work explores automated news services, Tyler Coburn looks into outsourced labour and Jon Rafman’s brilliant ‘9eyes’ blog of bizarre images from Google Street View gets an unconvincing slideshow treatment (it really just belongs online).
There’s a lot packed into this small space. But the show is a useful primer on art made by people who are just as embroiled in Facebook, Gmail and YouTube as we all are. It’s brilliantly relatable.
Eddy Frankel