Rhizome's ArtBase

If you're interested in new media art, be sure to check out Rhizome's ArtBase.  This growing online collection currently showcases over 2,500 works dating back to 1997.  Rhizome is the eminent new media arts organization affiliated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.  It defines new media art as "contemporary art that uses emerging technologies in significant ways."  These works include net art, software art, computer games, and documentation of new media performance and installation.

You can browse the latest additions on the ArtBase home page, and also browse the entire collection by artist, title, keyword, or date.  Rhizome is currently working on a redesign for ArtBase, and welcomes suggestions via an online survey.

The ArtBase selection criteria include that works are "of potential historical significance."  The curatorial staff evaluates this by looking at:

• the work's aesthetic innovation, conceptual sophistication or political impact
• the work's relevance to the discourse of new media art
• any discussion of the work itself on Rhizome.org or other relevant networks or publications
• the work's place in the artist or artists' oeuvre
• the work's provenance, including commissions, exhibitions and collections

ArtBase features work by our department's own Mark Amerika, as well as a number of other artists with ties to the CU-Boulder Department of Art and Art History, such as Rick Silva, Timothy Weaver, Michael Arnold Mages, and Joseph Farbrook.

Image: Scott Hessels, The Image Mill: Sustainable Cinema #1, 2009. Photo by Joel Swierenga.  Featured in ArtBase.