Data Dynamics at the Whitney

Curated by Christiane Paul and indicative of the early millennium enthusiasm for digital art—as the Internet sucked more and more of the cultural air—New York’s Whitney Museum hosted two major digital themed exhibitions in 2001 with Data Dynamics (March 2001) and BitStreams.

lerandom.art:

“Overall, I would say I’m always a little bit skeptical because we have seen these waves before. For instance, 2000 was a big one when, at that moment, the Whitney did BitStreams and Data Dynamics and suddenly all of the institutions were commissioning net art.”

The exhibition itself was inspired by the recent enthusiasm for net.art and showcased Internet-based art, addressing the challenge of visually representing the fluidity of data and information. The exhibition featured installations in the museum and online, anticipating our contemporary digitized art market by nearly twenty years. The online experience also provided diverse navigational experiences through visual and textual data in a net.art-inspired interactive experience. Works by Marek Walczak, Martin Wattenberg, Mark Napier, Maciej Wisniewski, Beth Stryker, Sawad Brooks and Adrianne Wortzel explored various data dynamics, from mapping language and stories to traffic in physical and virtual spaces.