Creative "CyGnet" Art Gallery on the Internet
http://www.shiseido.co.jp/cygnet/
Scheduled to start late July, 1998

CyGnet (Cyber Gallery Network), the gallery on the Internet which
Shiseido has newly introduced, is an experiment to explore the
possibilities of using the Internet for art. New works of this special
net art, created by collaboration among people such as artists, web
designers, and curators, will be added to about three or four times a
year.

The first exhibition will show two works: "Tyrell.Hungary" by EastEdge
(led by Daniel Molnar), a group based in Hungary promoting digital
culture going beyond genres, and "Constellation Project" by Japanese
Akane Asaoka, based in Barcelona.

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1) "Tyrell.Hungary" by EastEdge

In this project, a virtual corporate website "Tyrell.Hungary" is set up,
which provides various services to meet the needs of contemporary
people. The user will have access to services such as "Virtual Idoru,"
"Future Radio," and "Gene Bank." The word "Tyrell" comes from "Tyrell
Corporation," the replicant-producing company in the movie "Blade
Runner" directed by Ridley Scott. "Tyrell.Hungary" functions as an
agency which can expand our desires at the same time that it promotes
currently acceleratedly developing technology. By establishing a virtual
corporation on the net, it allows users to tap into issues between
providers of information and themselves in the information-environment
of the Internet and focus on boundaries between local/global and
real/fictional. For example, the issue of ethics concerning the
treatment of life (which we now face through the development of
bio-technology) obscures the border between self and others, and between
humans and that transcendental being above the level of humans. It also
questions how humans can be defined in this contemporary era.
Tyrell.Hungary is, in a virtual sense, a slice of reality.

2) "Constellation Project" by Akane Asaoka

In the Constellation Project, vehicles' lights and other city lights are
seen as stars, connected to make virtual constellations which are based
on photographs. Constellations are, to begin with, a group of stars
which are created through man's imagination. They are actually located
by some light-years apart in real space. Constellations are creations of
human imagination as humans try to find meaning in a void and create a
world they can comprehend.

Each viewer making access to the Constellation Project would start to
make his/her own virtual constellation with the city lights. The viewer
might also imagine how numerous virtual connections are made on the net,
which can be regarded as a kind of constellations. Asaoka shows the
Constellation Project as a telescope which allows one to look around the
original world through daily objects.

The Constellation Project consists of the "Ginza Planetarium" and the
"Table of Summer Constellations." In "Ginza Planetarium," the viewer
looks at the constellation called Ginza through the virtual planetarium.
(This geographic place called "Ginza," located in the center of Tokyo,
can be translated as "Silver Constellation" by reading its Chinese
characters/ ideographs.) The content of the "Table of Summer
Constellations" will change with the season. Viewers worldwide will send
in photographs taken at different times at different locations, and in
this way new constellations will be continually added.