CULTURE

Art in cyberspace

By Andrei Vorobei

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

The National Center for Contemporay Arts and the Educational Center of the State Hermitage Museum have launched a groundbreaking new project dedicated to internet and digital art.

“Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers” features an extensive array of internet works, most of which are for the first time being shown in the context of a classical museum.

According to the organizers, including curators and media artists from New York and St. Petersburg, the aim of the project is to destroy the myth that hackers are pests on the healthy body of the internet through demonstrations of different “unauthorized” internet activities and their possible positive social effects.

With Russian and Eastern European hackers frequently in the news for selling stolen personal data on the world wide web the image of these shadowy figures could certainly be improved.

With more than 100 international works of cyber art, the project tries to overcome another traditional stereotype by drawing a distinction between the internet art and ordinary web design, something which is not always obvious.

Whatever the problem, “communication not representation” is one of the main propositions of this new art.

“Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers” runs through April 23 at the Educational Center of the Hermitage. www.ncca-spb.ru

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