Contest Asks People To "Draw The Internet"

Can you draw the Internet? No seriously can you?

ArtWeLove, DeviantArt, digital ad agency Saint, The NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and The NYC Department of Education partnered up this Internet Week in a gallery exhibition of “Can You Draw The Internet?”, a contest that asks people to “capture the spirit of the Internet’s billions of pages in a single image.” Hmm … sounds like a Google job interview.

But more so.  In “Can You Draw The Internet,” digital artists like Douglass Rushkoff and Josh Harris joined schoolchildren in attempts to visualize what a networks of networks based on the IP protocol looks like. While the creative and digital artists received nothing but glory, the best student artist submissions received $100 gift certificates for art supplies. All submissions are being sold through Artwelove, the proceeds going to benefit NY public schools.

Defining let alone drawing something as complicated and ubiquitous as the Internet is a Herculean task, so props to anyone who entered this thing. I mean at this point 1/3 of humanity is online, so there are a lot more ways to win then to start sketching out individual data packets (I’m a huge fan of that USB brain piercing entry below).

So yeah “drawing the Internet” is hard, even for the most tech savvy. But if you’re in a pinch, just draw on the  best definition of the Internet I’ve heard so far, “It’s like all the world is in an room and the Internet is the air between them.”

My favorite entries, below.