Case Study: Rhizome
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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.