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Visions Up & Down
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Released by JavaMuseum on 15 April 2002, the show “Visions Up and Down” ´”Visions Up and Down” – including net based art works by following artists . Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Maya Kalogera, The Red Team – offline, Myron Turner, Calin Man, j.t.wine – is happy to invite visitors to participate live online in “Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s project ” Vectorial Elevation” , participating in the show in its current version —>
on occasion of the opening of “ARTIUM” – Museum of Contemporary Art Votoria-Gasteiz, 
anyone who logs onto his project via the JavaMuseum show from April 22 to May 5, 2002 will be able to design giant light sculptures using 18 robotic searchlights placed around the Museum’s central Square. The light beams will be visible at a distance of 15 kilometres and every six seconds a new design will be displayed as it arrives from the Internet. The designs may include participants’ names and dedications, which will be shown on a large screen in the Square. A web page will be produced automatically to document each participation.
That this can be true, Wilfried was proving via his own participation in “Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s project ” Vectorial Elevation” “Vectorial Elevation” on 26 April 2002.
This article would actually like point to a specific issue, that sometimes between 2010 and 2012, the Javamuseum server had been hacked, causing severe fatal results. The files of particular JavaMuseum shows 2002 and 2003, had been removed or more precisely deleted from the server by unauthorized intruders. This crime had been recovered only much later, when it was too late – and additionally, the backups had been deleted due to a harddrive crash.
While the list of participants were left, of course, and press releases give evidence that the respective JavaMuseums shows were existing, the shows as such and the specific exhibition design are lost, probably new recovering technology will make it possible to reconstruct the lost files on the crashed harddrive, which is still existing.
So, only the press releases on Rhizome /NY or Noema Magazine Noema Magazine give information, besides “Visions Up and Down”, also the shows “I – Highway – netart from Canada” – released on 2 May 2003, including these artists – Michael Alstad, saibot & ssiess, Isabel Hayeur Babel, David Clark, Myron Turner, Robert Kendall Gustave Morin, Karen Ostrom, Gregory Chatonsky Barry Smylie, Kate Armstrong, Alison Chung-Yan Marc Tuters, Tara Bethune-Leamen, Richard Barbeau Jillian McDonald, Kelty McKinnon, Tomasz Konart Guerrera del Interfaz, Katie Bush, Oliver Dyens, – and LatinoNetarte.net – netart from Latin speaking countries (Spanish/Portuguese) released on 21 March 2003 – are affected including these artists Marina Zerbarini, Ana Maria Uribe, Paula Cordova, Juan Manuel Patiño Gabriel Otero, Irene Coremberg, Indira Mariam Montoya, Robert Echen Jesus Macarena-Avila, Paco F. Parado, Humberto Ramirez, Eduardo Navas Alvaro Ardevol, Clemente Padin, Marcelo Frazão, Fernando Rabelo Regina Célia Pinto, Antonio Alvarado, Cindy Gabriela Flores Fernando Llanos, re:combo, Lucia Leão, Josér Alvarez, Ivan Abreu Fran Ilich, Julian Alvarez, Antonio Mendoza, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, santo_file, Ricardo Rendon, Arcángel Constantini, Christian Oyarzún Andamio Contiguo, Brian Mackern, Yucef Merhi, Claudia Tribin Andrei Rubina Thomaz, Bela Rosemberg, Marco Casado, On Air, Guerrera del Interfaz, Ivan Monroy-Lopez, Raul Ferrera-Balanquet, Jorge Luis Antonio, Liliana Molina Moreno, Mashica, Dina Roisman.
While Wilfried tried to find solutions to reconstruct these shows, it became obvious, that the reconstructions would loose the charme of the original, but what is most relevant, which had been stated already earlier at another place, most of the works selected for the JavaMuseum shows were not only removed from the original URL, but mostly completely removed from the net, and this loss is so dramatic, that it did not make any sense to reconstruct just an empty shell full with dead links. The latter is a problem of all platforms for netart active between 1998 and 2010.
Wilfried actually would have preferred to present the netart shows in their original state, when he was curating for the 1st time virtual space and create a specific exhition design for virtual space, but for presenting netart in the framework of NewMediaFest2020, he had to find new solutions which he can take over when he starts reconstructing JavaMuseum for new generations of users on the net.
By no means, it is like that, that the entire genre of netart would be lost, but time made its own selections, either older growing artists found their youth works embarrassing, the used low technology obviously is out of date or servers, projects and artists simply vanished due to carelessness or other reasons. But as long as some relevant artists active in netart care exemplarily for their own art works, it is still possible to demonstrate the artistic potential of this art genre according to the technology available at the time of creation.
