New media depot Rhizome celebrates 10 years

Volume Number 1 Issue Number 2| October 6 - 12, 2006

Artist and musician Jona Bechtolt, above, was one of the many performers in “They Heart a Computer,” a multimedia show that appeared at The Kitchen this week as part of Rhizome’s tenth anniversary festival.

By Jennifer O’Reilly

Something flickers, and in an instant your screen has turned that sickeningly familiar shade of glowing blue. Small nondescript letters appear, proclaiming a heart-sinking message. “A problem has been detected and Windows has shut down your computer.” Programmers refer to it as the blue screen of death, but in Rhizome’s “They Heart a Computer” performance at the Kitchen on Tuesday, it was just a part of the show, meant to illustrate how our relationship with computers walks the perilous line between love and hate.

Rhizome, a Chelsea-based nonprofit for artists working in the technology-driven field of new media art, has been servicing the computer-dependent art community since 1996. Through their website, Rhizome.org, artists can read blogs, view over 1,700 works of digital art in their online archive, find information about offline exhibits, apply for grants, and continue a discourse about the ever-changing field of new media art within a substantial community of nearly 9,000 e-mail subscribers. This year, Rhizome is celebrating their tenth anniversary, and marveling at how the times have changed.

“Rhizome is a virtual meeting ground for artists working in tandem with the field,” Executive Director Lauren Cornell says. “It’s changed a lot in the last ten years. Now we support sound art, video games, even work built around social structures like MySpace.” It’s also forging ahead into new territory — literally. One particularly innovative field is the practice of locative media, or art that uses location technology such as Global Positioning Systems. It hints at the ubiquitous future of computing as it continues to inform us of our physical surroundings.

“The computer has become an extension of our personal space,” says Cornell.

And a permanent fixture in our day-to-day lives. When Claire L. Evan’s computer broke down during “They Heart a Computer,” fellow artist Jona Bechtolt took over, using sound and images to tell a love story about his relationship with his Mac, which he deemed sturdier than Evans’ unreliable PC. Inevitably, the Mac overloaded as well, bringing up a slightly different error screen. He pouted before confessing to his computer the real reason why he was so upset. “Without you,” he admitted to an animated face on the screen, “I don’t know what I would do.”

Both Evans and Bechtolt, avid readers of Rhizome.org, feel new media is reaching the point of acceptance from the larger art community. “It used to be sort of considered a ‘less than’ art form,” said Evans, “so really the biggest change is that new media has become more legitimate.”

In a field where new technology can become obsolete in a matter of weeks, Rhizome’s staying power has remained constant over the years. In 2003, it formed a partnership with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the premier space in New York City for exhibiting digital art. The collaboration has given Rhizome a permanent home in the physical world as an organization in residence. Meanwhile, new media continues to morph, so much so that “nostalgia art” has begun to pop up in the form of highly pixilated computer animation, instead of the smooth perfection that can be achieved today by the wizards at Pixar.

This longing for the past was apparent in one of the pieces in “They Heart a Computer,” when an artist with the “Doo Man Group” danced like a maniac in a day-glow windbreaker to a MIDI file, a predecessor of the MP3. The live performance, along with a few gallery shows, panels and a Gala party on February 19, provide rare glimpses of Rhizome offline. But its tenth anniversary festival is also going strong at http://rhizome.org/events/tenyear.