When Jia Tolentino wrote that the internet seemed like a pretty good place at first, I knew exactly what she meant. Democratic conversation, transparency, inexpensive publishing – that was digital’s promise. But the reality is so much murkier. Cheap and ubiquitous internet advertising has eroded public journalism, elections are fought and lost on social media, Soylent-slurpers jizz their new wealth all over us while coveting our data. We’re addicted, and we know it, yet we can’t stop scrolling and imbibing, hour after hour into the night.

Prototype is a project of digital utopianism. It’s deeply weird that the internet has made cats and radio famous, but not video art. Digital art and video art are the least attended type of visual arts event with only 17% of attendees – or 7% of all Australians – going to these events a year. A year! And yet video culture is exploding, and the vessel for viewing – the smartphone – is right in our hands.

In that lush open space of screen culture between cinema and contemporary art, Prototype takes the least visited art form and lets it live outside the gallery and the museum, by going straight to you: the audience. You are the prototype. Every week, Prototype delivers a new video work – curated, experimental, personal – from a vital artist or filmmaker. All of the artists have something to say about how it feels to be in the world at this moment, all their works are handmade with conviction and intelligence, and their ideas are opened up and contextualised with a short text. Direct to your inbox, with love.

It is our world, our internet, our history, our future.

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Lauren Carroll Harris,
Editor and curator