Another example of a piece of work involving the viewer to make his choice is the one of Tomi Knuutila, who with its collagerator suggest that the visitor makes a collage based on his own personal image bank and that he then downloads it on a web site to exhibit it.

Several young Finnish and Belgium artists offer an urban experience and a totally different look on the city and its space. Mia Makela for example, suggests that we meet some people in different areas of Brussel and Helsinki by following some soundtracks on a map combining the two cities. It gives a feeling of moving in a superior dimension. Two students holding a Sint-Lukas of Brussels degree present two sets of ways to discover their city.

Bart Vandeput introduces us to his town by giving the visitor several panoramic and mobile scenes that he goes over via a map of the town. With “Bronxelles”, Frederic Feyfer designs a CD-ROM in which we travel around the city through four interconnected screens showing a map of the town, a time indicator, a car race and a look on the street.

Several sites present an exchange via Internet. It is the case of Kristian Simolin who intends to create a universal monument for Brussels, after the ideas and drawings sent on his web site. Emmanuelle Castillon also suggests to visit a computer’s collective memory made up of image fragments.

At last, the Continent exhibitions meant to be a creation of events and several events where organized there as artists performances, discussions and on October 7th a big party gathering people from the two cities at the same time in a different place.

We can also underline that such an exhibition is interesting because it allows us to concentrate only on the creative aspect generated by the new media. Nevertheless, we sometimes feel sorry because of the lack of poetry and the coldness of the exhibition space, the different works being separated by partition walls. After all, isn’t the cyberspace above all a place for sharing?

The Continent Exhibition
Date: September 8th – October 12th, 2000
Place: iMAL
Address: 30 Quai des Charbonnages Koolmijnenkaai 30, 1080 Bruxelles
Tel: +32 (0)2 410 3093
https://www.continent-imaw.net