About NETescopio
This project of the MEIAC, started in 2008, consists of an on-line archive in continual development dedicated to the conservation of works of art generated for the web. This includes net art, digital poetry, electronic literature, CD ROMs, applications, actions and interventions with technological devices and other formats that imply digital strategies.
Its primary objectives are to protect, distribute and catalog the abovementioned works
It gathers works made by both national and international artists, although with an emphasis on the Ibero-American sphere, trying to give international diffusion to those productions made in Iberian languages.
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Exhibitions and events by the NETescopio archive

Cibergeografias
Algorithmia: Art in the era of AI
The MEIAC opened its doors in 1995, the year in which the WWW also began to become known. The museum's 25th anniversary invites us to evaluate the important technological changes that have occurred since then and to reflect mainly on the preponderant role taken by algorithms, social networks and artificial intelligence, and how these have drastically transformed society and, therefore, have impacted the field of art.
MEIAC 2021

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Cibergeografias
Cybergeography
Since the appearance of the Internet - and later, of new technological networks such as mobile phones or satellite location systems - communications have managed to form a new global topology beyond the geographical one. The works that make up this selection make use of technological means to propose a reflection that is both critical and innovative on topics such as metaverses and virtual universes, new cartographies, surveillance and control. The show was produced by AECID and MEIAC.
Touring exhibition across Cultural Centers of Spain in America between 2015 and 2016

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Tácticas del arte en la red
Net Art Tactics
Organized by Acción Cultural Española (AC / E) and the MEIAC, this traveling exhibition was presented in different international centers as a “mobile laboratory” in search of redefining the practices of the art of networks and imagining its future. On its tour between 2012 and 2014, it visited the following centers: Edith Russ-Haus for Media Art, Germany; V Ibero-American Congress of Culture, Zaragoza; Cultural Center of Spain and Alameda Art Laboratory, Mexico (Transitio MX Festival); SUBTE Exhibition Center, Montevideo, Uruguay; FOROSUR 12, Cáceres, Spain; Guimaraes European Capital of Culture, Portugal; MEIAC, Badajoz, Spain.
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NETescopio Sessions
NETescopio Sessions
The show aimed to highlight those artists included in the archive whose works are dominated by the audiovisual component and who frequently participate in live sessions such as VJ, electronic performances or sound experimentation. For this, videos with recorded sessions and navigations through audiovisual pieces were shown, to which live sessions with Spanish and Mexican artists were also added. The exhibition also included talks and presentations of works. Laboratorio Arte Alameda de México, 2013
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Intrusiones
Intrussions
This third stage is focused on proposals that involve an artistic intervention through a new public space: the Internet. Here you will find projects intervening common use spaces such as Wikipedia or Google Maps, some others that parody or subvert pages for private use, or stealthily invade or infiltrate the user's own computer. We will find individual proposals in which the artist takes a role of spy, intruder or solitary flaneur, but also collective proposals demanding the massive participation of the public. MEIAC, 2012
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Reapropiaciones
Reappropriations
This exhibit opens the second phase of the Netescopio project. It focuses on a recurrent practice in artistic productions on the web: the reappropriation and reuse of symbolic materials. Unlike with other technological media, digital media makes possible not just reproduction, but manipulation as well. Instead of invariability, perpetual mutation. The artist’s role on the web will no longer be that of a creator, but rather that of a "redirector" of information. MEIAC, 2010
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Desmontajes
Disassemblings
As an initial phase of the NETescopio project, for this exhibition the focus has been placed on those productions which came about during the web´s early years. Works which experimented for the first time with the medium and which played with its particularities in terms of interactivity, the use of interfaces or alternative browsers, the tactical use of the media, and other strategies which gradually defined the lines of activity during the first years of art on the web. MEIAC, 2009
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Glossary on net art, digital poetry and interactive art


The works that make up NETescopio are organized in a database that can be browsed in various ways: through an alphabetical list of authors, a list of works, using the search engine, or browsing the thematic tags.
Each work is also cataloged according to its format. Digital works can adopt different characteristics either due to the different devices used -web protocol, FTP, networks and mobile devices, augmented reality, virtual environments such as Second Life, CD ROMs-, but also according to the artistic proposal and the role that the author is adopted as the one assigned to the public or the device –interventions, actions, generative, interactive, time or site specific, participatory, random formats, etc.-. The following glossary can help you understand these different practices in more detail, which you will come across later as you walk through the database.


Actions on the Internet

These are actions that can be carried out on one or more levels of the Internet, that is, not only on web pages but through email, social networks, Wiki spaces or even electronic commerce platforms.

Actions in Second Life

These are actions carried out by the author through an avatar - which may or may not be the artist - and which take place in public or private spaces in the 3D multiverse of Second Life

Augmented reality

This technology is used mainly in projects that involve the spectator's participation in the physical world, whether in public spaces, inside museums or government buildings, urban routes and drifts, or artistic signs or historical events.

Augmented Reality Actions

These are actions that are generally carried out in public space and that use augmented reality markers to add content or make a mark on a specific spatial point, such as buildings or monuments with a strong symbolic or historical significance. These actions used to be announced through email groups or web pages and in recent years, through social networks.

Actions using FTP

These are actions in which the FTP protocol is specifically used. Generally, two or more artists or even the public is authorized to download, modify and upload files through an open FTP address or with a key distributed especially for the occasion. In some cases, the action can be extended in time, leaving the web open so that it can be freely intervened and modified by the public.

App for Google Glass

Applications developed for Google's augmented reality glasses, generally associated with events or interventions in public space.

CD ROM

Widely used until well into the 21st century, especially for multimedia works, due to its storage capacity and the limitations of the bandwidth of Internet connections in its time, which made it difficult to view complex audiovisual content online.

Electronic poetry (Cyberpoetry, Digital poetry)

Poetry projects that use the potentialities offered by the computer, either through random, generative, or interactive systems. They should not necessarily be published on the Internet, and may have been developed for offline applications, installations or CD ROM.

Executable

Works that can generally be downloaded for offline use and that focus on generative, random capabilities or other functions that a computer can provide.

Facebook application

Applications developed for the FB environment that take advantage of the interactivity and propagation provided by social networks.

Fotolog

Blog format focused on images. Was very popular until the appearance of social networks. Its successors are posts on Tumblr or Instagram.

Generative audiovisual piece

Algorithmic works that result in an automatic generation of images and sounds. They are usually works that address geometric issues, either in 2D or 3D.

Generative paintings

Plastic works that resort to algorithmic potential or to image or pattern libraries, preserving in a certain way thematic or compositional aspects that link them to traditional painting.

GIFs

The animated GIF reigned for some years on the web as the only animation format supported by the first browsers. The format fell into oblivion for a few years until it was recovered with the appearance of smartphones and social networks.

Interactive biotelematic installation

Projects that involve the public in the biological development of plants or other living ecosystems. This can be through turning lights, sounds or generating different types of waves.

Installations in Google Earth

These are based on the installation of objects, labels, legends and other editable features that Google Earth allows, either as interventions in “public space” or as forms of signage or activism.

Interactive

Any open work that, due to its non-linearity, requires public action. There are different formats: among them, those in which the user must choose between a series of options and others in which participation is free, such as, for example, collective texts. Interactive works should be differentiated from random or generative ones.

Interactive narratives

Texts that call for the participation of the reader, either by choosing between different proposed plots or as a collaborator in their writing.

Interactive video

It is an audiovisual product that uses some of many techniques that allow interactivity. Generally, this interactivity is limited to choosing one of different options, generating a different narrative for each viewer. Its use began to spread with the appearance of interactive DVD technology and later on the possibilities offered by video platforms on the Internet.

Intervened Video Game

Interventions, appropriations or hacks to the software or the platform of a video game, generating a totally differentiated experience in the user. In some cases the result can be an image generator or a sound toy, and in others a parody of the original game. They are available online, they are on CD ROM and there are others to download and play offline.

Mobile app

These are artistic developments to be executed on Smartphones, taking advantage not only of the portability of the device, but also of the different technologies that are in a mobile: camera, microphone, GPS, sensors.

Multi-user interactive virtual environment

Platforms that allow the public to participate in a virtual environment developed by the artist - unlike other commercial virtual environments such as Second Life.

Net Art

Name that was assigned at the end of the nineties to digital productions specifically developed for the Internet. It must be differentiated from the word net.art, which designates a very specific aesthetic and group of artists, identified as the pioneers of network art.

Net Art Time specific

Works of net art produced within a well-defined time frame and which generally define themselves as ephemeral art.

Net cinema

Works that rescue the heritage of cinema, in some cases its symbols or narratives, but that take advantage of the characteristics of the network: public participation, temporal and spatial differences, randomness, web cameras.

Net film

These are audiovisual works that use some of the characteristics of the Internet, such as randomness or the multiplicity of images on the same screen, to develop a different story for each viewer.

Net installation

Artistic installations, generally hybrid -physical and digital-, that use the potential of the network, either as a source to collect information, to distribute an audiovisual product or to allow the interactivity of the public from different physical spaces.

Net poetry

These are poetry projects that need the Internet for their generation, either through random or generative systems, or collaborative thanks to the participation of the public.

Net Sound Art

These are those sound works that generally use the network for the production of sounds, such as soundtoys, but also those who use it as a distribution medium such as projects that focus on soundscapes, urban maps, automatic radios or online numbers radio stations.

Online application

Programming developments that can only be run through a browser. Generally, these works are either code-centered - random or generative works - or they emulate and parody commercial or corporate shows.

Online event

events that call for the participation of the public, either from hacktivism -the demonstrations or virtual “pickets”-, commemorative actions or for collective creation.

Online Interactive

These are those interactive works that can only be operated through the Internet. This differentiation was necessary especially at the time when interactive works were mostly developed for CD ROM.

Online project

This category includes all those works that do not have the status of a piece, action or intervention, generally being an open project, a collaborative device or a work in progress.

Online Radio

There are many formats that result from the intersection of the Internet with the heritage of radio, not only as a device but above all from the aspect of its history and its use as an alternative means of communication. There are online radios that aim to collect soundscapes, automatic radios with random sounds or those that emulate the mysterious "number radio stations" that there were since the Second World War.

Performances for Google Maps

Performances, actions or interventions made for the cameras that Google uses, in order to appear in the Street View photos.

Performances in Second Life

Works in which the artist's avatar does a performance in SL, in some cases after calling the public in RL, in others appearing before the occasional public. These performances are generally recorded by capturing the SL viewfinder screen, so the result is usually video and images.

Processing Sketch

It is a programming development that allows the control or operation of a large number of devices. Unlike an interactive installation, in this case the software itself is isolated and turned into the main piece, and can be viewed on any device that supports or emulates Processing.

Real time performances

These are performances transmitted in streaming over the Internet and that can be performed in physical, hybrid or purely virtual space.

Site-specific Net-interventions

Projects that are developed for predetermined virtual, hybrid or physical spaces. There may be net-interventions to platforms such as Wikipedia, spaces such as Second Life, or emblematic places such as the New York Stock Exchange seen through Augmented Reality applications.

Software art

All those works in which the main element is the programming code itself belong to this category. Many of the pieces also reflect on concepts close to the code, such as natural language, Artificial Intelligence, or asignifying semiotics.

Soundtoy

Digital sound device, generally based on random or generative combinations, interactive or based on sound libraries. For the most part, they are audiovisual, and in them the image is usually treated in a similar way to how sounds are generated.

Urban video-interventions

Actions that take place in the public space, projecting on walls, emblematic buildings or different urban spaces. Although in the 1990s these actions required complex transport devices, their use multiplied with the appearance of projectors and easily portable players.

Virus Art

This category includes the design and spread of computer viruses, developed for artistic purposes and not intended to damage infected computers. Although the viruses were detected and neutralized by the antivirus, the objective was achieved since, in reality, what was sought was the signaling and reporting on certain issues, taking advantage of the dissemination generated by the social alarm.

Weblog (Blog fiction)

It is a narrative format, framed within electronic literature, which in some cases derives from the novel in installments, in others it uses the automatic generation of texts, or adopts the format of the personal diary.

Wiki Art

It is a format that appeals to the participation and active collaboration of the public-user of the Wiki. Actions or interventions that have been developed within Wikipedia can be framed in this category.

 


Concept and curatorship: Gustavo Romano
[ netescopio @ gmail.com ]
A project by MEIAC
Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo

http://www.meiac.es/