Rhizome is a not-for-profit arts organization, that supports and provides a platform for new media art.
Contents |
Artist and curator Mark Tribe founded Rhizome as a small email list in 1996 while living in Berlin.[1] By August, Rhizome had launched its website, which by 1998 had developed a significant readership within the Internet art community.[2] Originally designated a business, Rhizome became a nonprofit organization in 1998, switching to the domain-name suffix ".org."[2]
Rhizome established an online archive called the ArtBase in 1999.[3] The ArtBase was initially conceived exclusively as a database of net art works. Today, the scope of the ArtBase has expanded to include other forms of art engaged with technology, including games, software, and interdisciplinary projects with online elements. The works are submitted by the artists themselves. [4] In addition to hosting archived work, Rhizome's digital preservation work includes conservation of digital art and updating obsolete code.[5]
In 2003, Rhizome became affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.[6] Today, Rhizome's programs include events, exhibitions at the New Museum and elsewhere, an active website, and an archive of more than 2,000 new media artworks.
Founded in 2001 to support artists working with technology, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded fifty-four commissions to-date. Projects realized through the Program represent some of the forward-thinking and innovative works of media and internet-based art.
In 2008, Rhizome expanded the scope of the commissions from strictly Internet-based art to the broad range of forms and practices that fall under the category of new media art. This includes projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies or reflect on the impact of these tools and media. With this expanded format, commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices.
The Rhizome ArtBase is an online archive of new media art containing some 2110 art works. The ArtBase encompasses a vast range of projects by artists all over the world that employ materials including software, code, websites, moving image, games and browsers to aesthetic and critical ends.