Project description

Since the launch of the inIVA website in 1996, the X-Space virtual gallery has over the last ten years provided an opportunity for young, emerging artists who have little or no experience of working with the Internet as an artistic medium to work in collaboration with Web designers in experimenting and realising an Internet based project that expands their art practice, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between culture and technology. This initial foray has inspired many of the commissioned artists to go on and realise other new media projects with agencies and venues all over the world. With research and technological support for the artists and a strong emphasis on the process as much as the final project to be realised the model established by the X-Space virtual gallery proved to be one that was taken up internationally with great enthusiasm. The commissioned artists and web designers have also gone on to contribute to the ongoing debates of new media in a social context, access, skills  development, production, exhibition and distribution.