Gallery 9 - Art Entertainment Network

Art Entertainment Network (AEN) is an online exhibition of Web-based work by more than 40 artists working in the interstices of art, entertainment, and networked media. From a meta-video game by Natalie Bookchin based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges to artist software by Andy Deck and Mark Napier that allows participants to collaborate on their own online art to performative storytelling by Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, AEN is a cornucopia of contemporary net work.

Curated by Steve Dietz and designed by Vivian Selbo, AEN is constructed as a portal, an artists' version of Yahoo! or MSNBC, except that each of the functions of a portal--the search engine (Mongrel, Natural Selection), the webcam (Ken Goldberg, Dislocation of Intimacy), the calendar (Claude Closky, Calendar 2000), membership (Michaël Samyn, I Confess), or the daily meme (Robbin Murphy, Wrestling Tips from the Coach/Curator)--is an artist project. In toto, the AEN portal exposes that which may already seem normal as the not-yet-necessary. These artists have the vision to imagine something different, both entertaining and disturbing.

From February 12-April 30, 2000, AEN was presented in the Walker Art Center's exhibition Let's Entertain via a specially designed "portal," which was a freestanding revolving door with an embedded computer screen. As a participant pushed the door around, it accessed different projects in AEN, moving through cyberspace but always returning to the same physical space. The AEN gallery portal was designed by Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger of Antenna Design New York Inc., and made possible by generous support from Aveus.

Walker Art Center Calendar, Art Entertainment Network, February 2000.