Materialising the Internet
I’m really proud to have been part of the exhibition Materialising the Internet curated by Nadine Roestenburg & Angelique Spaninks at MU artspace in Eindhoven. From October 6 to November 12 and during the Dutch Design Week my work was displayed in a darkened room. A spotlight made my 3D printed Web Spaces in precious metal shine, and the huge cinema projector made it seem as if you could really enter the world of Web Spaces.
In the video above some of the artists talk about their fascination with the internet, digital spirituality and digital materiality. It gives a good impression of the exhibition. Down below you can read what We make money not art wrote about my work in the show:
In his series Web Spaces, Jip de Beer literally unfolds the structure of the internet homepages and reveals their hidden hierarchies and three dimensional layers. His work maps the support structure underneath the architecture of Facebook, Google, Amazon and other famous domains. MU shows both the interactive installation and the 3d printed models of the websites. The screen installation allows you to a walk around the virtual 3D representation of a particular page while the stunning models of 3 of the most popular websites demonstrate what their physical volumes looks like. The architectures of the websites are incredibly different from one another. Google, unsurprisingly, distinguishes itself by the complexity of its search bar. Facebook, on the other hand, is recognizable by the importance of its ad spaces. The website’s building blocks are covered in precious metal. The material seems to point to the gigantic power and wealth that the Silicon Valley tech giants have amassed over the past few years but also to the geological origins of our techno-mediated civilization. Brilliant work that encapsulates perfectly the theme of the exhibition!
