End User, Hayward Gallery - exhibition review: hot young artists examine the web's loss of innocence

This small but compelling show features hotly tipped young artists and taps into the phenomenon of "post-internet" art. The term End User means us — the human being at the end of all the software and hardware that generates our web experience. We've all mindlessly accepted End User Licence Agreements when accessing apps and websites, opening up our data for exploitation by corporations and governments.

Much of the work here mines what one artist, Aram Bartholi, sees as the web’s loss of innocence, something he characterises in forlorn, sarcastic placards with cheap, flashing signs saying "open" and "internet".

Erica Scourti’s Life in AdWords is self-portraiture for the post-Edward Snowden era. Scourti wrote a daily diary and sent it to her gmail account, and these entries prompted targeted ads to appear based on keywords. Scourti filmed herself daily, reading the keywords to a webcam. Tellingly, “anxiety” and “stress” dominate.

Jon Rafman’s Nine Eyes features screen grabs of the unexpected, now often deleted or anonymised images from Google Street View (whose nine cameras provide Rafman’s title) — a transfixing work capturing the unexpected beauty, surreality and occasionally horror that appears under Google’s voracious lenses.

If much of the work encourages paranoia, Cory Arcangel reminds us of the web’s possibilities. Using open access editing software, Arcangel pieced together a version of composer Arnold Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstücke from 170 YouTube clips of piano-playing cats. Fluffy internet frivolity meets stark avant-garde art.

Until January 18 (020 7960 4200, southbankcentre.co.uk)