The artists' work varied and operated from a broad and sophisticated skills base. These skills included 3D and form synthesis, VRML, VR, media-based life forms, animation, programming, interactivity, web-based interactive Java programming, Artificial Intelligence routines and simulations, multimedia applications, sound design and engineering, and video production. That list constitutes a remarkable range of specialised knowledge and is a credit to the many artists who self-propel into accumulating new skills by self-teaching and/or taking courses in order to create unique ways of reinventing and transforming their conceptual works into physical realities. As an overview of contemporary artists working with technologies Cyber Cultures gathered together a group of competent and well-established artists whose reputations, in a sub-group of the broader group called 'the art world', are founded on substantial bodies of work. In this review, rather then discuss the individual artist's works, I will query the relationship of the audience to interactive works, and the changing notion of the 'prototype'.

The Cyber Cultures exhibition was one of an ever-increasing series of exhibitions that are attempting to shift parameters to work comfortably with exhibiting technology. The private space of interaction within a computer environment translates uneasily into a public space. The public space disrupts the womb-like embrace that the gaze into the monitor delivers and distorts our 'expected' responses and 'usual' operating demeanour within a solo environment. The gallery operates as a performative space and 'the one caught with the mouse in hand' is forced to act as 'performer' for the surrounding 'audience'. As a performer the user becomes responsible not only for the entertainment of the audience, but also to the art work and artist/s to demonstrate what the work 'does'. Accordingly the user is obliged to display their skill and expertise with the technology and, if they should happen to be a new and inexperienced user, this can become an uncomfortable experience. As the user progresses through the unfamiliar territory of repetitions and errors or crashes they may begin to feel more and more like a character in a Leunig cartoon. IF user can_not_display 'art work well', THEN user_is_a_loser. The heat is on and their 'inadequacy' can readily be revealed by the prowess of the next 'one with mouse in hand'. Alternatively they may be an experienced user familiar with the work, wanting to check out the new improvements, skipping over the early bits amidst crowd dismay. Consequently artists and curators are devising ways to circumvent this problem by installing more 'immersive' environments or providing more private singular areas for interaction to occur. Projected screens and horizontal surfaces extend the audiences' modus operandi. An unfortunate side-effect is that site-specific installation multimedia works can often end up proffering a 'naff' aspect, with artists inexperienced in answering installation and site issues, developing unresolved works by adding unnecessary clutter to otherwise accomplished pieces.

Technology has advanced some of the concepts perpetrated in the 1968 Post-Structuralist 'overthrow' into the corporate and the art sectors, revealing a different understanding of process, progress and product. Some of the works in Cyber Cultures have been exhibited before and had been added to, or were in a 'prototype' form. The 'prototype' works query the notion of the finished product, (the complete anything for that matter), and reveal the 'truer' nature of art work processes, and in particular technology-based processes. Apple can sell their computers without ever making a system that 'really works', and that will always be the next up and coming and ever-more space-hungry system. Microsoft can sell their software with all sorts of glitches they won't reveal. They will however, attempt to sell the un-canny the more expensive 'stuff', instead of giving out the patches, and then vary it all with the next version. If it operates to our bemused dismay in the corporate sector, and one understands that an artist works in an 'ever-evolving' process, then working with the promise of fast-changing technologies can only compound this phenomenon. The 'prototype' has become symptomatic of the contemporary condition.

There are too many artists to discuss their works individually, but I would recommend visiting the site if you missed the show to see these exemplary works.