deconstructing social network

speedshow-brussels/

Desconstructing social networks & Web 2.0 landscapes Throughout the last years, social networks became ubiquitous and deeply changed our usage of Internet and the mental landscape we build about the online world. Social platforms such as Blogger, Youtube, Facebook, Google or Flickr are interfaces for people to produce and share content, they are new virtual interactive spaces for socialising, the new fields where our data interleave, weave, aggregate and collide, enabling us to interact daily with other millions users. The latest statistical data show how much more time we spend online and how the top 10 Web2.0 sites contribute 80% of the total Internet traffic.

Since the beginning of the Internet, net artists have developed sharp and critical attitudes, infiltrating its protocols and glitches, playing with its functionalities, reappropriating its usages, amplifying its processes to the extreme and absurd. Social networks are not a protected territory, and they inspire artists with projects exploring and questioning how we use them. With humor, irony, creativity and irrelevance, artists question our fascination and addiction of Web2.0 and confront us with its risks and deviances. The web is a medium and a creative space. For this SPEEDSHOW Brussels in the context of TodaysArt.be festival, we have selected recent artworks by international artists exploring and (mis)appropriating social networks and Web2.0 sites.