online | offline is an exhibition curated by Marcus Neustetter for the 3rd Annual Conference on World Wide Web Applications. While the exhibition aims to introduce and profile web artworks to the gallery and conference public, the display of the digital works on and off screen will serve to illustrate the relationship of the more traditional art-making process to the contemporary creative uses of new technology. These uses of new technology range from interactive CD Rom artworks internet platforms for creative e-mail activity. In the process of taking on new spaces, such as the virtual, artists have explored the implications of the alternative identities and characteristics within their works. Defining these identities, works have been revolving around issues such as gender, language, race, context and interactivity. For example, Australian artist Linda Wallace, in her video lovehotel, explores the emergence of new formations of desires in the space of new technologies. Christian Nerf's e-mail project Project #001 - A Digital Séance allows for communication with the dead in the virtual arena. Inventing an identity, Nathaniel Stern, a visiting artist from New York, will be showing his hektor.net, a navigable artsite of one character's photography, spoken word and video poetry. Also exploring the translation of one medium to another, Stefanus Rademeyer animates a sculpture to create a 3d animation work entitled Identity and Difference.

For the opening event the audience will be able to physically interact with Nathaniel Stern's live video installation [odys]elicit which picks up movement to generate strings of text.

Nathaniel Stern will also be collaborating with performer and choreographer Jeanette Ginslov on a performance integrating [odys]elicit.

With growing interest in "the digital" and the establishment of new arenas for creative exploration in the virtual environment, a set of aesthetics have emanated from the language of the media. These aesthetics are built from the marks that the new tools make, such as the pixel or the code of the computer, or the renegotiation of the traditional practises and spaces in the "real" environment. Brad Hammond's video Transmission (2000, feedback painting) uses the abstract visuals that grow out of the editing process whereby frequencies are re-routed back into their source, creating a meditative space within the material fascination with machines. Abrie Fourie affirms objects out of his environment - overlooked beauties - which are represented photographically on transparency-light-boxes and eventually on the computer as screen savers, illuminating the represented objects from within.