Wolfgang Staehle
September 2001
Wolfgang Staehle is a media artist and the founder and executive director of THE THING, an independent media project and one of the seminal on-line and off-line forums for net art. THE THING began as a Bulletin Board System focusing on contemporary art and cultural theory in 1991 and moved its wares onto the Web in 1995.
Staehle was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and has been living in New York since 1976. He is widely recognized as a pioneer of the Internet art scene, and his video and new media works have been exhibited world-wide. His work Empire 24/7—a live image of the Empire State Building in New York—was included in the net_condition show at ZKM Center in Karlsruhe (1999) and in Loans from the Invisible Museum at Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco (2000). He had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, (1993) and Marimura Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (1990). His exhibition 2001 (Postmasters Gallery, September 2001) consists of three Web-transmissions—the television tower in Berlin, the Comburg monastery, and a panoramic view of lower Manhattan—offering an instantaneous compression of time and space.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006 an artist was invited to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each of these pages functioned as a portal to the artist's own sites and projects.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
artport
See more on artport, the Whitney Museum's portal to Internet and new media art.