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Rhizome.org,
an online platform for the global new media art community,
was founded in 1996 by Mark Tribe. The organization's
conceptual frame initially emulated forums such as Nettime,
which used the email mailing list as a means of facilitating
discussions relating to technology, politics, and aesthetics.
Over the past 10 years, Rhizome has evolved into a far-reaching
organization involved in a number of initiatives to support
the exhibition and preservation of computer-based arts.
A resource for artists, curators, critics, and historians,
Rhizome's website hosts online exhibitions and frequently
updated posts of events, projects, and opportunities of
interest to those working in new media. It also makes
accessible the ArtBase, an archive of over 1,700 new media
art projects and supporting materials, and the TextBase,
an archive of the content that has appeared on Rhizome's
mailing lists over the last 10 years. In 2003, Rhizome
affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, as
both organizations saw a shared commitment in emerging
forms of media. Rhizome’s commissioning program,
through which eleven works of Internet-based are awarded
grants each year, culminates here with annual one-night
event. Aside from the New Museum, Rhizome has collaborated
with cultural institutions, galleries and other nonprofits,
to produce new media art related programming in a variety
of physical spaces.
Rhizome strives to create discourse and
visibility around new media art through public programs,
and exhibitions online and off. Examples include Net
Aesthetics 2.0, Celebrating New Media Scholarship,
and exhibitions, Surge and ArtBase 101.
As demonstrated through Surge, Rhizome is also
committed to innovative exhibition contexts that suit
the non-traditional works that it shows. A new online
exhibition portal, Time Shares, organized by
Rhizome and co-presented by the New Museum, confirms both
organizations' commitment to Internet-based exhibition
through a dedicated program. Time Shares features
work by an international range of artists working with
the Internet or networked technology, and recent exhibitions
span from Faultlines, which examines the anxieties
and fantasies in online communities from Myspace to Rhizome,
itself, to 13 Most Beautiful Avatars, an exhibition
of portraiture of Second Life inhabitants installed at
a gallery in this popular virtual world. |