PRESENTATION - GENERAL

Objectives:



- To establish a new platform for artistic creation, experimentation and exhibition on the internet, based on the use of new technology in the cultural domain
- To enable groups of visual artists to work together on common projects directly in virtual space
- To organize a series of workshops based on artistic creation/presentation in virtual space
- To make it possible for the public to accede the internet and virtual artwork in a new intuitive way

Purpose/State of the art:
The idea of an electronic gallery & laboratory for virtual art reflects today’s status under which the artists create and present their artworks. There is a kind of misunderstanding between the common way of art presentation in galleries and museums and the very emerging artistic forms, directly on electronic media (e.g. net art or virtual sculpture…).

Though the galleries and museums are getting on-line these days, still they treat the artists and artworks in an old-fashioned way. Even the progressive net-galleries are founded just on a simple point & click navigation which is hostile to both artists as well as the audience.

What is missing these days is an intuitive approach in the field of virtual environments and communities oriented into visual arts and artistic collaboration. A new type of gallery is needed, combining and/or transforming the advantages of virtual space of the Internet with the traditional aspects of artistic creation/presentation.

Anticipated results/Innovation:
The goal is to transgress the frontier of old tradition towards the new trends of emerging artistic forms exactly through the activities of artists using new technologies.

The project is intending to develop a shared 3D multi-user platform on the Internet with its own navigational/operational system for artists /but later will be also useful for broad public/ service as a gallery and laboratory at the same time.

This platform of e-GaLab will enable artists not only to present their already existing artworks from the real world, which is common practice today, but also to create new ones directly via this platform and to present them.

The multimedia navigation system e-GaLab will introduce everyday very actual artistic information (full multimedia system: sound, music, image, animation, video) from existing virtual spaces on the internet(web sites, flash or JAVA creation etc.). This information will be presented in real time in e-GaLab and visitors to this virtual 3D space will have the opportunity to select their own individual avatars; these avatars will represent them and enable them to communicate interactively with other avatars by chat, animation and sound.