From 7-23 April 2006 an international project of Internet and Computer Art called Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers is taking place in the Youth Educational Center of the State Hermitage within the framework of the Topical Art of the 20th - 21st Centuries program.

Its objective is to dispel the myth that all hackers are Internet pests and hooligans, and to show that they are talented programmers who combine the search for a new aesthetic with strategies of direct social action. Our understanding of the situation is dictated by the culture of the mainstream against hackers, whose activity in our day carries only a pejorative meaning. However, if we investigate the process itself, we very quickly come to understand that hacking is a very effective means of giving expression to the creative impulse, forming a powerful combination of creative solutions for the Internet, dynamic skills and the dissemination of information.

One of the main tasks of the international project entitled Unauthorized Access: Hackers and Crackers is an audio-video dialogue between Internet artists and viewers. Participants in the project, who are Internet artists, often avoid showing off their "arts" in public institutions. For some of them this is the first time they can present their "binary masterpieces" to the broad public.

World-class experts in Internet art have prepared for St Petersburg's young people, a very wide program: they have presented not only their own projects based on media-performances, modifications of programs and direct contact with the audience, but also have used Internet works as a basis.

Within the context of this program, on 8 April there was a Round Table discussion entitled "Hacking as an Art" with participation by Russian and foreign Internet artists, programmers and curators. There were lectures by the publisher and editor-in-chief of NY ARTS Magazine, consultant on questions of art, and artist in the performance genre, Abraham Lubelski - "Media Art as a Properly Constructed Business" - and by the media artist and curator Jolanta Gora-Wita - "Internet Culture as the Art of Communication."

St Petersburg is the first city of the UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS project. Later on this will be shown in New York, Warsaw, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing and Valencia.

Curators of the project

Opening of the program

Getting to know the project

Internet art in the Youth Educational Center of the Hermitage

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