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.

From a 1.0 web of static and closed content, we have evolved to what Dale Dougherty would call the Web 2.0, in which the use of blogs, rss, and wikis has created a hierarchy involving interaction and the creation of social networks, transcending the mere publication of contents for supposedly passive consumption. Under this new web paradigm, we are witnessing the appearance of another model: Net Art 2.0.
Perhaps it is time, then, to review those first works, which with a greater radicalism and with a stress on experimentation and the deconstruction of the medium, began to define those explorations which today are taken up again within a new context of production and distribution.

Gustavo Romano