Towards the Virtual Internet Gallery

The still rapidly growing Internet offers new ways to reach an increasing number of people in all areas of life. More and more companies take advantage of this fact by advertising and selling their products through this new electronic media. Art is a great example for using this new approach, because the visualization is the most important aspect and the physical presence of the exhibited object has just a secondary significance for the buying process, in contrary to other products (e.g. instruments, perfume, cars, etc.). This paper introduces an electronic service for galleries and artists to exhibit their artwork on the Internet easily and efficiently. The Virtual Internet Gallery (TVIG) utilizes a database to offer fast search functionality and performs a 3D visualization of the user´s query result, applying VRML. Users, who are interested in the exhibited art, can contact the gallery or artist directly through the system