SHORT INFO

The Net Art Project DINGWELT is an approach to examinate the consumption culture in the ebay era. The picture catalogue of the DINGWELT exchange market offered 12 things with history as art printings - digital photo works with "SOFT TOY MÜMMY, unwashed", the "SINCLAIR ZX-81, self tuned" or the "THAI-MINIBAG, eye catcher".

Everyone could select one of the picture articles and send an own used thing for it in return by (package) mail. It did not play a role, which thing was sent to the DINGWELT team, only a short story about the thing had to be written by hand. In this way a small, fine collection grew out of personal things and their stories as a symbolic place for memory online. And the art printings are scattered around the world: Paderborn, New York, Shanghai.

The idea of the action is simple: Exchange a thing with history for an art printing with a thing. The DINGWELT team has been collecting small and big things with a hand written story of their owners and staged them. But where are the limitations in virtual exchanging if material is even disappearing? How do things get their value and their attribute, perhaps by the exchange process itself? Can we increase the value and the relation towards things with their stories in digital space?

The collection was growing in process. In this documentation the individual relations to things and the memories survive online. Social, symbolic and aesthetic concepts of things come in the foreground while the functions and the material constructions of things get in the background.