Female Extension

Hacking the first competition on net.art

In 1997 the Hamburger Kunsthalle announced a Net art competition. Cornelia Sollfrank drily countered ‘Extension’ into the Net with a ‘Female Extension’: she created 288 international female artists, complete with postal and e-mail addresses. Sollfrank generated individual Net art projects for 127 of these artists, using a computer program that collected random HTML material from the WWW and recombined it automatically. While the Kunsthalle was pleased that so many female artists were taking part – two thirds of the participants were women– the money prizes were awarded to male artists. Sollfrank revealed here intervention, which had remained undiscovered, in a press release. [1]

Cornelia Sollfrank «Female Extension»

Cornelia Sollfrank «Female Extension»

Cornelia Sollfrank «Female Extension»

All images:  © Cornelia Sollfrank, 1997

More on Female Extension at:
http://artwarez.org/static/femext/

[1] Images and text retrieved from: http://www.mediaartnet.org/works/female-extension/