RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY: INTERNET ART – OPENING AT SBMA MARCH 15 – EXPLORES HOW ARTISTS ENGAGE WITH THE INTERNET AS A TOOL, ARCHIVE, AND CULTURAL TOUCHSTONE
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to present RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY: Internet Art (March 15–September 27, 2026), an exhibition that brings together digital projects by three multimedia artists: Zhanyi Chen, Claire Hentschker, and Andrew Norman Wilson. This is the first exhibition at SBMA solely dedicated to the Internet as both a source and a subject.
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The Internet is the ubiquitous medium of 21st-century life and our primary mode of connection, entertainment, and research. Despite its familiarity, the Internet continuously resists predictability. RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY frames the web as a living memory system—ever-changing, contradictory, and subject to distortion—where personal histories blur into collective narratives.
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From early “net.art” HTML experiments to digital content shaped by today’s algorithm-driven platforms, artists have embraced both the possibilities and constraints of the web as creative tools. In RANDOM-ACCESS MEMORY, the Internet is actively and critically examined as opposed to treated as a neutral backdrop. All three projects are crafted from highly specific and traceable online sources; the results are curious and unexpectedly poetic.
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