Cornelia Sollfrank is a conceptual artist, interdisciplinary researcher and educator, and an early pioneer of Net Art and Cyberfeminism in the 1990s.

She studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Hamburg and the Academy of Fine Art in Munich; she worked in the media industry as product manager (Philips Media) and completed a PhD at the University of Dundee (UK) in the field of art and copyright: “Performing the Paradoxes of Intellectual Property.”

As a pioneer of Internet art, Cornelia Sollfrank built up a reputation with two central projects: the net.art generator – a web-based art-producing ‘machine,’ and Female Extension – her famous hack of the first competition for Internet art.

Since the mid 90s, she has investigated the worldwide communication networks and transferred artistic strategies of the classical avant-gardes into the digital medium. Her special interest lies in experimenting with new models of authorship, in continuing various forms of artistic appropriation and in deconstructing myths around geniality and originality. In the core of this strand of works is the concept of her net.art generator (since 1998) – a computer programme, which re-combines and collages material from the Internet. This project has directly influenced her practice-led research into the field of intellectual property.

Photo: Courtesy of the Artist