Clubnetz AR is an augmented reality app based on Clubnetz (1994). The app was created for the Transmediale 2020 exhibition.
A project by Blank & Jeron supported by Sakrowski
Clubnetz was an early Internet chat project based on IRC in the 1990s Berlin art and techno scenes.
Hosted around 1994 in clubs and bars like Frisör, WMF, and Tresor. Clubnetz manifested itself through the hardware of its internet terminals to connect visitors with each other and with the Internet. For many, it was certainly the first time online, as Internet connectivity was not as commonplace then as it is today.
The recently developed Clubnetz chat app (2018) has transformed Clubnetz into an instant messaging service which is now used for the Real Life-Laser-Chat-Performance - Clubnetz Performance - at the exhibition opening of the Transmediale 2020.
In the same place at HKW’s central exhibition hall, Clubnetz AR is placed as an virtual sculpture.
In Clubnetz AR, historical and current chats overlap as a space-filling, converging and ultimately barely legible condensed set of words – a stable, but immaterial sculpture as counterpart to the temporality of Clubnetz Performance.
Joachim Blank and Karl Heinz Jeron are regarded as pioneers of net art and post-internet art. Since 1993, they co-founded Internet projects such as Handshake, Clubnetz and Internationale Stadt. As Blank & Jeron they deconstruct the utopian promises of the internet with experimental websites, spatial installations and hybrid settings.
Sakrowski is a curator who focuses on early forms of net art as well as artistic practices around current web phenomena. Since 2016, he has been curator of panke.gallery. He is also a founding member of the Berlin-based net art research and presentation hub Zentrum für Netzkunst.
