The internet and the world-wide web simultaneously pose a threat and hold out a promise to museums. On the one hand, the instant online availability of all kinds of media threatens to make museums redundant as specialised locations of culture and history.
On the other, it offers museums the opportunity to share their unseen objects and stories with new, global audiences and begin a conversation about them. It’s daring, therefore, to turn the tables and put the internet itself on display.
With what it claims is “the world’s first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet”, this is just what the National Media Museum in Bradford has done, and few museums are better suited to the task.
Life Online packs a lot into a small footprint, tucked into the museum’s foyer gallery. The permanent exhibition offers four sections. In the Beginning: The Internet is Born shows life before the internet through a well-chosen selection of “old media” objects (a paper diary, vinyl records) before introducing the idea of the computer network and its pioneers.
Into the World: The Internet Goes Public, deals with early online communities, culminating in the world wide web. Here, an interactive terminal allows you to build your own web page.
Meet the darknet
Into Our Lives: The Internet and You investigates the impact of the internet on everyday life, from the dotcom boom to social media.
A cluster of wallmounted monitors display the cheesier side of internet culture such as the rickrolling and Downfall parodies. Into the Future: the Internet Evolves, encourages you to think about the issues facing internet users today.
Drawers in a filing cabinet open to reveal text panels dealing with topics such as freedom of speech, and the uncensored “darknet”. A series of vitrines embedded in the floor display artefacts by decade, from the 1970s onwards, leading you through the gallery from the internet’s origins to the current day.
Familiar objects in cases always have a slightly disorienting effect: while an old Commodore evokes nostalgia in this former home-computing nerd, the same model of Kindle that nestles in my own backpack seems somehow unreal when labelled and on display. The balance between objects and interactives is especially tricky in the context of a display about the internet.
Life Online perhaps has a few too many “find out more” stations, displaying web pages that you could more comfortably peruse at home. Worse, glare in the gallery makes several of the screens hard to see. Some interactives are inspired, however.
Destroy the Network is a sophisticated game that teaches you how resilient distributed computer networks are, by inviting you to destroy a series of them, each more complex than the last. Built using a multi-touch table (which a whole group can use at once), it’s one of the most effective uses of this technology I’ve seen in a gallery.
Unseen, but real
The excellent object displays concentrate on the domestic side of internet technology: home computers, mobile phones and modems. What is missing are objects from the internet’s core infrastructure.
One of Cisco’s famous routers or a section of submarine fibre-optic cable could have brought home the extent to which the internet depends on a real but unseen physical network.
The permanent display finishes with a case of experimental objects created by Microsoft Research for archiving online memories. Based on digital technology, they take the form of old-fashioned media objects such as a slide viewer, suggesting that despite the pace of change new wine can still be drunk from old bottles.
The story abruptly segues into a temporary display on the seventh floor of the museum. Work by contemporary media artists is structured around the themes of Net Neutrality and Open Source. Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee (An Early Warning System) by Thomson & Craighead displays a picture of the inventor of the web composed of feeds from publicly available webcams.
Should the internet ever falter or fail, the portrait will begin to symbolically disintegrate. The National Media Museum should be congratulated for putting together a serious and genuinely engaging perspective on the internet through its native medium, new media art.
Art museums have historically had a troubled relationship with electronic art, particularly when it comes to collecting and preserving it, and one wonders whether the museum’s National New Media Collection might not be a more fitting place to keep some of these works once their life in the gallery is over.
Threats to internet freedom are very much a live issue: internet architect Vint Cerf made headlines in the technology press criticising EU internet legislation at the launch of Life Online.
But the curators’ assertion that open source simply means “we are all able to create, consume, collaborate on and share content online” doesn’t do justice to the complex economy of online content, much of which is free to consume but far from free to share or reuse.
The permanent gallery doesn’t shy away from explaining technologically complex ideas such as network topology and data rates, so this interpretation of open source feels patronising rather than inspiring.
Together, the two halves of Life Online more than do justice to the complex, evolving internet. Displays remain family friendly without avoiding difficult issues such as pornography and free speech.
It’s ironic that this exhibition in particular could have benefited from less interactive technology and a few more of its wellconsidered object displays.
They powerfully demonstrate that it is still the physical apparatus of screens, switches and wires that make our online world, however intangible and all-pervasive the internet may seem.
Danny Birchall edits the website of the Wellcome Collection in London
On the other, it offers museums the opportunity to share their unseen objects and stories with new, global audiences and begin a conversation about them. It’s daring, therefore, to turn the tables and put the internet itself on display.
With what it claims is “the world’s first gallery dedicated to exploring the social, technological and cultural impact of the internet”, this is just what the National Media Museum in Bradford has done, and few museums are better suited to the task.
Life Online packs a lot into a small footprint, tucked into the museum’s foyer gallery. The permanent exhibition offers four sections. In the Beginning: The Internet is Born shows life before the internet through a well-chosen selection of “old media” objects (a paper diary, vinyl records) before introducing the idea of the computer network and its pioneers.
Into the World: The Internet Goes Public, deals with early online communities, culminating in the world wide web. Here, an interactive terminal allows you to build your own web page.
Meet the darknet
Into Our Lives: The Internet and You investigates the impact of the internet on everyday life, from the dotcom boom to social media.
A cluster of wallmounted monitors display the cheesier side of internet culture such as the rickrolling and Downfall parodies. Into the Future: the Internet Evolves, encourages you to think about the issues facing internet users today.
Drawers in a filing cabinet open to reveal text panels dealing with topics such as freedom of speech, and the uncensored “darknet”. A series of vitrines embedded in the floor display artefacts by decade, from the 1970s onwards, leading you through the gallery from the internet’s origins to the current day.
Familiar objects in cases always have a slightly disorienting effect: while an old Commodore evokes nostalgia in this former home-computing nerd, the same model of Kindle that nestles in my own backpack seems somehow unreal when labelled and on display. The balance between objects and interactives is especially tricky in the context of a display about the internet.
Life Online perhaps has a few too many “find out more” stations, displaying web pages that you could more comfortably peruse at home. Worse, glare in the gallery makes several of the screens hard to see. Some interactives are inspired, however.
Destroy the Network is a sophisticated game that teaches you how resilient distributed computer networks are, by inviting you to destroy a series of them, each more complex than the last. Built using a multi-touch table (which a whole group can use at once), it’s one of the most effective uses of this technology I’ve seen in a gallery.
Unseen, but real
The excellent object displays concentrate on the domestic side of internet technology: home computers, mobile phones and modems. What is missing are objects from the internet’s core infrastructure.
One of Cisco’s famous routers or a section of submarine fibre-optic cable could have brought home the extent to which the internet depends on a real but unseen physical network.
The permanent display finishes with a case of experimental objects created by Microsoft Research for archiving online memories. Based on digital technology, they take the form of old-fashioned media objects such as a slide viewer, suggesting that despite the pace of change new wine can still be drunk from old bottles.
The story abruptly segues into a temporary display on the seventh floor of the museum. Work by contemporary media artists is structured around the themes of Net Neutrality and Open Source. Live Portrait of Tim Berners-Lee (An Early Warning System) by Thomson & Craighead displays a picture of the inventor of the web composed of feeds from publicly available webcams.
Should the internet ever falter or fail, the portrait will begin to symbolically disintegrate. The National Media Museum should be congratulated for putting together a serious and genuinely engaging perspective on the internet through its native medium, new media art.
Art museums have historically had a troubled relationship with electronic art, particularly when it comes to collecting and preserving it, and one wonders whether the museum’s National New Media Collection might not be a more fitting place to keep some of these works once their life in the gallery is over.
Threats to internet freedom are very much a live issue: internet architect Vint Cerf made headlines in the technology press criticising EU internet legislation at the launch of Life Online.
But the curators’ assertion that open source simply means “we are all able to create, consume, collaborate on and share content online” doesn’t do justice to the complex economy of online content, much of which is free to consume but far from free to share or reuse.
The permanent gallery doesn’t shy away from explaining technologically complex ideas such as network topology and data rates, so this interpretation of open source feels patronising rather than inspiring.
Together, the two halves of Life Online more than do justice to the complex, evolving internet. Displays remain family friendly without avoiding difficult issues such as pornography and free speech.
It’s ironic that this exhibition in particular could have benefited from less interactive technology and a few more of its wellconsidered object displays.
They powerfully demonstrate that it is still the physical apparatus of screens, switches and wires that make our online world, however intangible and all-pervasive the internet may seem.
Danny Birchall edits the website of the Wellcome Collection in London
Project data
- Cost £2m
- Main funders Yorkshire Forward; DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund
- Project leader Joe Brook
- Curators Tom Woolley, Sarah Crowther
- Exhibition content Start JudgeGill (temporary exhibition)
- Exhibition design NRN Design (permanent gallery)
- Interactives Martello Media
- Animations and interactives design Ay Pe
- Graphic design Rachael Lightowler