Dear Readers,
Rhizome supports artists. It’s what we do. My aim for Rhizome’s editorial - the daily blog and our weekly mailer Rhizome News - is to give our audience balanced, smart, in-depth coverage of the new media art field. When readers land on our front page, I think about how our content might benefit their work as artists, educators, curators, students, and creative professionals. The blog is a resource for our community. I hope that our posts provide a mainline to our (often underrepresented) field, both past and present. By donating to Rhizome, you not only help our many fantastic programs, such as Commissions, Artbase, Events, Opportunities and Announcements, you also guarantee to keep editorial alive.
In the past year, we’ve covered so much ground on the blog. The diversity of our posts reflects the distinctive place of our organization. Here’s a recap of some highlights from Rhizome’s editorial in 2010:
- Writers Initiative, where we commission original articles by critics and artists on a variety of different subjects. In the past 12 months alone, we’ve featured interviews with sound art collective Ultra-red, new media performance artist Jeremy Bailey, the performance artist behind the Interior Semiotics meme Natacha Stolz, Jamie Warren of the innovative children’s television program Whoop Dee Doo and many others. We’ve run essays on online curatorial collective Jstchillin, the use of the spreadsheet in artistic practice, and even a round up of all the latest artist-produced iPhone apps. Not to mention the book reviews of titles such as Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook’s “Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media”, Steve Goodman’s “Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear” and John Zorn’s edited anthology of writings on music and mysticism “Arcana V.”
- Demoscene Week, where we dedicated the blog to the history of the demoscene for a week, covering computer disk magazines known as “diskmags,” the demoscene in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, demos produced for the MSX, and more.
- Homebrew Electronics series of posts, which documented studio visits with artists and inventors who produce their own electronic instruments. So far, we’ve showcased the workspaces and projects of makers like Brian and Leon Dewan of Dewantron, Sarah and Lara Grant of Felted Signal Processing, video game console hacker Jeff Donaldson of noteNdo, and Steven Litt of CrudLabs.
-Themed Days on the work of particular artists or topics, such as animator Piotr Kamler or artist-produced public access television programs from the past 30 years.
-And then our daily run of posts, where we point to new artworks, often from emerging artists, provide links to relevant theoretical or historical texts, post videos to talks, exhibition walk throughs, and performances, and so, so much more.
If this list is any indication, the coverage on Rhizome is unique. Rhizome’s singularity is a reflection of the community and field we serve. I hope the work I do for editorial only nourishes the creativity of that community, providing inspiration, context and engagement. Please consider giving to Rhizome today, and help us maintain the quality of our publications.
Sincerely,
Ceci Moss