Happy birthday to Rhizome’s ArtBase, which launched 25 years ago today!
It comes as no surprise that with the advancement of new technologies comes the risk of digital art and culture becoming lost to time. "I thought that artists should have the right to determine the future of their work or lack thereof," recalls artist Mark Tribe, Rhizome’s founder. "I also thought that there should be a safe place where they could put their work for long-term storage and access if they chose to."
Today, ArtBase contains more than 2,000 works, including software, code, websites, moving images, games, and browsers. The archive has become a vital resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the history of digital art. It’s also a vital engine for research about maintaining and sustaining access to legacy digital culture.
To mark the 25th Anniversary of ArtBase, we asked 25 artists, curators, writers, and critics to each reflect on one work from the archive—we’ll be sharing their selections here and on Instagram in coming weeks!