Panel Statement

Panel: Artistic Identity on the Net

Developed in collaboration with Steffen Meschkat, Ping is a virtual landscape created interactively by the users of the Internet. A virtual camera device called the eye agent automatically renders a flight through that landscape, and this flight is broadcast on TV. Like a self-generating movie, the Ping-Project is the visualization of the Internet and the generation of a real-time movie created on a world-wide basis by Internet users. Originally, Ping was intended as a visual ride through the Internet during the programmed free time of various TV stations. Internet as a world-wide medium created an interdisciplinary structure by merging science, entertainment, arts, politics and other disciplines. The goal of Ping is to make this structure visible and to create a crossculture­ communication basis. Film was the esperanto for the world. The esperanto of the network may be datascapes.

• Antya Umstatter (Germany)  created the Ping interactive networked project.