ArtBase Update

Takeshi Murata – Untitled (Pink Dot) (2007)
Here at Rhizome HQ we have been quietly working away from within the depths of the ArtBase. I'm pleased to announce that we have recently archived six works by Takeshi Murata, spanning from his early hand drawn animations, through his pioneering datamosh works, the 3D animation that was included in Free, to his recent body of work that debuted at Ratio 3 gallery last April. The excerpts of his work now available in the ArtBase are in most cases the only high quality (read: not bootlegged) examples available freely online.
Untitled (Silver) • Untitled (Pink Dot) • Melter 2 • I, Popeye • Homestead Grays • Get Your Ass To Mars
Here are some more recently archived works we are particularly excited about:
Christian Oldham – Selected works 2010-2012
Brenna Murphy – facingface~terrestrialtrancetree
Nicolas Sassoon – Mansion Studies
John Transue, Micah Schippa, Tabor Robak, Parker Ito, Jon Rafman – PaintFX
Adam Cruces – Desktop Views
Justin Kemp – Proclaiming My Love
Kim Asendorf – ExtraFile • GIF MARKET • Solo show in Sim City
Jonas Lund – Collection Enlargement • I'm Here and There • Over and Over Again
Jon Rafman – Woods of Arcady
Sarah Weis & Emilie Gervais – blinkingsite.com
What are we missing? The ArtBase is a constantly growing and evolving archive – if we are lacking to represent a particular facet of net.art history or contemporary practices, by all means let us know. As well, we are always accepting submissions. Stay tuned for an update soon on a few big projects that are in the works!
YouTube Censors Petra Cortright, But 'VVEBCAM' Lives on in the Rhizome ArtBase

RIP 2007-2011 – 65,403 views
On Saturday December 10th 2011, Petra Cortright received an email stating that a video of hers had been flagged by a member of the YouTube Community. The automatically generated email said that upon review it was verified that the video did indeed violate the terms of the YouTube Community Guidelines and has thus been removed. The video in question, titled "VVEBCAM" was uploaded to YouTube in 2007. It has exhibited internationally, is discussed in several new media and contemporary art texts, and is taught in academic curricula.
The video, likely known to most readers, features Cortright mundanely clicking through the stock effects of a $20 webcam, gazing bored into the screen of her computer, trance playing in the background. Far from offensive content. The violation lies in Cortright's use of keywords. The video description contained 733 keywords, ranging from "tits, vagina, sex, nude, boobs" to "san francisco, diego, jose, puto, taco bell, border patrol, mcdonalds, KFC, kentucky fried chicken, trans fat".
Cortright told us over email that she appealed the decision. She explained to YouTube that the video and its contents were part of an original artwork. She referenced interviews that have explained the importance of the use of "spam" in the video's description. Four hours later her appeal was denied, and the video now has ceased to exist on YouTube. The work is also defunct on the artists website, where the video was embedded via YouTube.
Thankfully Rhizome has recently archived VVEBCAM in the ArtBase. We worked with Cortright to create an archival representation of the work as it existed on her site. We have replaced the broken YouTube video with an HTML5 player that references local files and emulates (at least approximately) the look and feel of the original YouTube player.
#DigitalArchivesDay: Anti-Aliasing Arcangel
Today is the first official Digital Archives Day. All day, archivists and conservators working in digital archives of all kinds will be sharing their work under the #DigitalArchivesDay hashtag, and blogging at dayofdigitalarchives.blogspot.com

I wanted to take a moment today to briefly talk about an innovation in digital imaging and computing that has become a frustation to many artists that have been experimenting with the web since the early years: Anti-aliasing. Put simply, anti-aliasing is a method of image processing that uses interpolation, to construct "new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points." This is a function of digital signal processing that has many many important applications, from helping typefaces look good on screen, to making images not look odd when scaled down. The use of anti-aliasing that we are talking about here though, is quite specific: the display of resized digital images and video in web browsers. To illustrate how anti-aliasing has affected an era of web content, we will look at Cory Arcangel's "Data Diaries."

Data Diaries on Turbulence.org
In 2002, when Arcangel created "Data Diaries," if one were set the size of an image or video embedded in a web page larger than it's actual size, the browser would use nearest neighbor interpolation to display the image. In other words – if one were to embed a 50 x 50 px image or video as 100 x 100 px, each pixel would appear to double in size. This default form of nearest neighbor interpolation was exploited to aesthetic ends by many early net artists, including Cory. When Cory made Data Diaries, he rendered the original videos at the dimension of 50 x 25 px - so tiny! He embedded these videos at dimensions of 500 x 266 px ...
Intern Roundup part 1 of 3

We've recently had some additions to the Rhizome team - I'd like to introduce you to Rhizome's newest intern: Thor Shannon. Thor is an undergraduate student studying art history at NYU. Over the course of the next few months, he will be helping to catalog the ArtBase - a process of improving the quality of our metadata, deepening the level of description, and making records more accurate and searchable. This significant work is not easy, and we are so glad to have Thor helping us out. Welcome, Thor!
Update From the ArtBase

The ArtBase team has been hard at work with some very exciting projects involving the restoration of classic pieces of net art – some of which have been inaccessible for years. We will be releasing more details on the progress of ...
#DigitalArchivesDay: Anti-Aliasing Arcangel
In situations such as this, it behooves a web based archive of internet art to promote access to the original, and if necesary and feasible/justifiable, a modified access copy that follows the preservation wishes of the artist. Documentation is an increasingly alluring strategy, and used in tandem with bit-level preservation of the original provides a much more future proof solution for large collections. We will be looking at this strategy and others at Thursday's event. Hope you can join us: http://newmuseum.org/events/584
#DigitalArchivesDay: Anti-Aliasing Arcangel
Client side emulation is not practical when the main goal is broad access (for everyone - not just the savvy) to a web based archive. That being said, there is a solid argument to provide an access copy as well as the original bitstreams.
We should post our g+ conversation.

