Computer technologies and the birth of the Internet has had an unfathomable impact on modern society. Whitechapel Gallery’s new exhibition, Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966), brings together 100 works to trace the key technological advancements that have influenced artists for the last five decades.

Arranged chronologically backwards, beginning in 2016, the curation focuses on artistic stimuli birthed from the dot-com boom that has impelled users into digital traps of social anxiety, manipulation, fallaciousness and overpowering capitalist functioning. (Example: the fastening commercialisation of the World Wide Web was represented with merging online activism and art by collective, The Yes Men.)

Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T), an art-based venture that happened in New York during the mid-60s, is where the exhibition ends. Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage and Yvonne Rainer collaborated with Bell Industries and its engineers to conduct the first-ever project between the technology industry and art.

Artists like Nam June Paik (who coined the term ‘electronic superhighway’ in 1974, which related to technology’s potential for global development), Lynn Hershman Leeson (who produced the first-ever, interactive installation), Olia Lialina (who used a black-and-white browser screen to present a love story) and over 60 more are involved, all capturing the super significance of art within the confines of the digital revolution.

Electronic Superhighway runs from 29th January to 15th May 2016, Galleries 1, 2, 8 and 9 (Victor Petitgas Gallery 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX)