The rise of the Internet has allowed the spread of images from the most diverse categories and productive-origins. Everything’s becoming accessible: from the classics of world cinema to the esoteric videos of underground visual artists. It’s not that everything we find on our screens is worth the same. Far from it. But everything’s within arm’s reach; or, rather, within our field of vision. Here’s perhaps the greatest and most beautiful aspect of our century: new media’s giving rise to an era of plenty.

Some new media artworks, however, evade distribution on the Internet. These artworks heighten our curiosity and fascinate us. They seem to bear one of the essential features of new media creations. I’m thinking - of course - of real-time new media artworks.

The real-time new media artwork’s extended in time, just as much as it’s extended in space. You can only experience it if you go to it. Our presence is required so that all of our senses can be stimulated. Unlike paintings or films, the experience of art is no longer just about looking. It’s about an unprecedented synaesthesia of all the senses. The artwork’s life depends on our touch.

This organic spectacle intimately interacts with our bodies and sensations. We become an integral part of the new media artwork. Formerly inaccessible, tactile adventures become available to our bodies. A whole new sensibility will hatch from this artwork/art-experiencer bond.

Everything - from pebble to star - seems fresh, lively, and passionate. The universe appears a living organism. A plethora of relationships make a nexus of its realms. These artworks form a strange bridge to these phenomena; allowing us to see and to feel them.

New media art opens the way to a heightened sensibility open to the mysteries of life. It transforms us - in spite of ourselves - into mystics and psychics.

Hugo Verlinde
Co-founder and Artistic Director, Le Pixel Blanc