eGaLab - a new dimension for artists

Abstract

There is a kind of misunderstanding between the common way of art presentation in galleries and museums and the very emerging artistic forms, directly on electronic media (e.g. net art or virtual sculpture). Though the galleries and museums are getting on-line these days, still they treat the artists and artworks in an old-fashioned way. Even the progressive net-galleries are founded just on a simple point & click navigation which is hostile to both artists and audience. eGaLab (electronic gallery and laboratory) for virtual art reflects today's status under which the artists create and present their artworks. It introduces an intuitive approach in the field of virtual environments and communities oriented to visual arts and artistic collaboration. eGaLab combines and transforms the advantages of collaborative virtual environments with the traditional aspects of artistic creation and presentation. In this paper we describe architecture of the eGaLab platform. We describe its networking part based on a concept of General Variables (GV) and discuss several implementation issues related to its specific character.