Editor's Note: Net Work is a new column by ARTINFO Assistant Editor Kyle Chayka that explores new media, digital, and Internet-based art, introducing the emerging artists, curators, and writers who are defining these developing practices.

There aren't too many art exhibitions in Chelsea that you have to hunt for, with the rare exception being those fifth-floor galleries that don't seem to have an elevator or staircase. But even through Michael Manning's "Street Show: The Things Between Us" has a street-level Chelsea location, most viewers will pass it by without a second glance. That's because the entire exhibition is condensed onto a USB stick embedded in the façade of Eyebeam, a new media art center and gallery space on West 21st Street. The only way to view the show? Bring your own laptop along, and ideally your own USB extension cord, too.

"Street Show: The Things Between Us" gathers the work of 22 new media and Internet artists, a sampling that features such well-known names of the Internet art community as Tom Moody, Nicolas Sassoon, and Jennifer Chan. Each artist has contributed a piece that focuses on the theme of "transfer," according to the curatorial statement. But the real significance of "Street Show" stems less from any single work than from the exhibition concept, execution, and viewing experience itself — an experience that starts in the real world and ends in the digital.

After searching out the metallic USB stick protruding from Eyebeam's slate-gray wall (it's at about chest-height, and that's the only hint I'll give to its location) I balanced my laptop and downloaded the show from a folder called "StreetShow_TheThingsBetweenUs" while struggling to keep the port lined up. The file transfer quit halfway through once or twice when I strayed too far from the wall. The process felt a little like violating my computer; the USB was slightly rusty from exposure to the elements, and it takes a certain amount of trust to plug your laptop into an anonymous-looking wall fixture. (You don't know where it's been!) The risk is all part of the "Street Show" package.

The exhibition is a species of "Dead Drop," a genre of digital art exhibition (or publication, or seeding) originally conceived by Aram Bartholl that involves loading up a USB with art and leaving it up to the viewer to decide what to do with it: exhibition-goers are free to download the contents of the USB, delete or alter them, or upload their own work. Once it has "dropped" in public, all bets are off. The strategy brings a needed physical dimension and an imposed scarcity to work that is difficult to pin down to a particular source or venue. In the case of "Street Show: The Things Between Us," Eyebeam is not so much the exhibition's venue as merely the location of the "drop."

After downloading the contents of the USB — while resisting the urge to trash or edit anything — I brought the files back to my office computer for viewing. Sassoon has contributed a black-and-white pixilated version of the video tour for his proposed headquarters for Computers Club, a collective of Internet artists who share a collaborative Web site. A self-reflexive remix, it's like seeing a painter do the same still life twice. Tom Moody's addition is an animated GIF of a moving sin wave glitching and smudging as it travels, an abstraction characteristic of his work and a literal illustration of "transfer" — the transfer of energy. Chris Shier's GIF "cww" is energy in a more static form, with ever-shifting checkerboard patterns that move over and under each other, creating a hypnotic moiré.

The exhibition gets more surprising when it treads non-GIF territory. Matthew Williamson writes a short story on the iPhone "Notes" app in a series of screenshots, a tale of young people so attached to their cellular digital devices that the technology becomes a part of them, leading to a mutated group of androgynized humanoids described as "a glittering trans-national syndicate of trans-human youth." Jennifer Chan's "Anytime" is a movie file with stock images of generic technology set against transcendent commercial landscapes, a tourist beachside, a magnificent yet generic pine forest. A scrolling, faux-hand written typeface reads: "objects are forever ppl [people] are not."

The über-public, democratic nature of Manning's "Street Show" puts it in the standard open discourse of Internet art, but its artificial scarcity provides an interesting element of danger and chance of loss to the viewing experience, feelings not normally applicable to safely viewing from an Internet browser. Even better, Manning's curation of his chosen artists is intelligent, fun, and thought-provoking. You should go pick this show up.

 ~ ~ ~   DOWNLOADING   ~ ~ ~ 

FOR CHEATERS: During the writing of this column, 0-DAY has put Manning's "Street Show" up for download on Bittorrent, so it's possible to see the whole thing without leaving your desk. The gallery hunt is part of the fun, though.      

BAD FOR BUSINESS?: As one of the participating artists, Tom Moody reacts to the "Street Show" concept on his blog, bemoaning the fact the collector (or downloader), "(i) doesn't pay, (ii) receives no certificate of authenticity, (iii) has the option to hoard or recycle the collected work, (iv) has to jockey with others on the street with USB-equipped gear to obtain (v) an electronic file that is unique only because the artist serendipitously decided to do a 'one-off' — an even worse businessmodel!"

DIGITIZING NATURE: An exhibition of digital art at Chicago's Kunsthalle New called "A Small Forest" shows artists interacting with the idea of landscape and features work with landscapes appropriated by artists and "manipulated within the space of the screen." Looks good.