URL to IRL: Controversial Artist Ryder Ripps Captures the Struggle of Existing on the Internet

The bold digital artist and entrepreneur rises above recent criticism with new installation, "Alone Together."

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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For his latest feat, the multifarious artist and digital designer Ryder Ripps has remade the vast Internet in miniature.

Ripps, 28, constructed the piece, titled Alone Together, at the cavernous Red Bull Studios in New York for the eponymous energy drink manufacturer. “It’s like a geode, the inside of a gem,” he says of the installation, which opened on February 27.

Visitors ascend metal steps into a rough-hewn box. Inside, an immersive rainbow of projected imagery and text covers every wall. This content is provided by the live web-surfing of six people stationed in faux-corporate cubicles downstairs from the gallery space, linked to the Internet-geode by a thick set of cables. “Each has their own unique use of the Internet: a gamer, blogger, someone who’s obsessed with online shopping,” Ripps says.

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