The second edition of Institution's International Forum on the Sustainability of Culture was dedicated entirely to the idea of culture as a commons. Over two days (September 25–26, 2026), the forum connected artists, economists, scholars, and cultural workers across six hubs; Tokyo, Shenzhen, Tanguiéta, Jakarta, Santa Sofia, and New York. The event was livestreamed online.

I joined alongside David Isaac Hecht (The Cybernetics Library, Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative, Wikimedia NYC), Gavin Marcus, executive director of ABC No Rio, Ann Matsuuchi, librarian at CUNY, and member of worker-owned technology cooperative, EMMA, Ramsey Nassar. Following a lecture by the iconic, Silvia Federici, our session begun with an informal, working session facilitated by each representative of the roundtable.

Watch the forum on institution.tv or see the full forum programme

On April 10, 2026, Ashley Lee Wong, co-founder of digital production studio MetaObjects and Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, hosted an event to celebrate the launch of her book Ecologies of Artistic Practice, which looks at the cultural economies of artists working at the intersection of art and technology.

The talk was followed by presentations by me, beloved artist-duo LoVid, Kelani Nichole, of TRANSFER gallery, artist and speculative futurist, Chris Woebken.

I shared an emotional performance/presentation flashing through elements of my life; their effect on the way I approach my practice. During the later discussion, moderated by art historian and CUNY professor, Emily Verla Bovino, it was hard to resist discussing Josh Klein's freshly published essay.

In a quiet place, view this presentation in "present" mode and read aloud to yourself.

The roundtable was a pick in Alex Feim's New York Art List.

Rhizome turned 30 at Capitale, the former Bowery Savings Bank, built in the 1890s to resemble a Roman temple. After the benefit dinner, the building opened up for an afterparty of performances, games, and drinks.

I curated the afterparty lineup: DJ sets by vocalist, producer, and multidisciplinary artist James K and by composer and producer DEBIT, a 7x7 2026 participant, plus live sets from Macula Dog (the electronic hardware duo of Ben Mendelewicz and Matt Cutler) and Star and Stan (Kate Williams and Reed Rushes), whose high-energy satirical performances bring together drag, video, and props. I also designed the flyer and organized the afterparty host committee.

The night paid homage to ARTCASH, the 1971 benefit staged by Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), where artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Marisol made their own bills for guests to spend on games of chance.

• "I made mine very easy to copy, because everyone should have money."
  - Andy Warhol, on his 1971 ARTCASH bill

For ARTCASH 2026, I assisted with curating the bills and invited most of the participants for activations. Nine artists made their own currency, in ascending order of denomination: Simon Denny, Manfred Mohr, Beeple, Canal Street Research Association, Maura Brewer, Morry Kolman, LoVid, Genevieve Goffman, and Cory Arcangel. Guests received a short stack to spend on artist-made games, experiences, and installations, from a money laundering simulation to horse race betting.

Activations by Inpatient Interactive, Alex Declino, Luke Shannon, Blake Andrews, Club Chess, Donna Dimitrova, and Paizley Lee, with scratchcards by Parker Ito. I also worked on the night's video segments.

Afterparty host committee: Alejandro Lafontant, Florian Meisenberg, Lauren Boyle, Whitney Mallet, Saarim Zaman, RaFia Santana, Selwa Abd, YATTA, Alyssa Davis, Katya Austin (of Iyanna Gallery), Genevieve Goffman, David Lisbon, acompi.nyc, Maya Kotomori, Creative Code Art, Alice Demoëte (of IRL Gallery), Mackenzie Thomas, Imani Thompson, Projekt Blank, Monica Mirabile (of Fluct), Miranda July (in spirit), Chris Llyod, and Tommy Martinez.

Read more in Welcome to ARTCASH 2026, which walks through every bill, and in Rhizome's thank-you note for the full list of everyone who made the night happen.

• "Artists who arise out of computer culture speak the language of the images that made them. Ranging from Newgrounds gamers to teletext writers, we approach the act of creation, as artists always have, in relation to our means of circulation and the tools available to us."
  - from my curatorial essay for the collection

Escaping the Calculating Machine asked eleven artists to select works that offer insight into their relationship to their tools: how software limitations have shaped their work, and the subcultures that form around the tools they use. The collection launched in July 2026 as a 48-hour auction of 1/1 works alongside a series of limited-edition artist prints.

Featuring work by Nicolas Sassoon, Bleu281_, Parker Ito, Botto, Jonathan Gillie, Parker Davis, Raquel Meyers, Rafael Amarante, amonsilex, and Julian Gallese.

Alongside co-curating, I wrote the collection's essay and all of its written components -- artist outreach, exhibition statements, and social copy -- and conducted interviews with several of the artists, including Parker Ito, Parker Davis, and amonsilex, whose quotes appear throughout the collection. Raquel Meyers also documents her contribution on her site.

"This collection celebrates artists' efforts to work through digital tools, escaping the flattening pressures of the calculating machine to embrace parts of ourselves hidden from science. The pieces that hide from algorithms, datasets, and circuitry."

Six designs for the terminally online driver, including HONK FOR HTML, MY OTHER CAR IS A BROWSER, LOOKING FOR WIFI, ONLINE SINCE 1996, and of course, 𝔦 ❤ 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔭𝔲𝔱𝔢𝔯.

The stickers were released through Rhizome's Metalabel in a limited run of 39 -- and sold out. The promo shows a faux TV set playing the POV of a car driving through a tunnel, with all six stickers overlaid.

"...could easily work on a Nalgene or laptop!"
- Personal Canon, on the stickers as a gift pick

Counterstructural Commons is a 10-week cultural R+D residency program functioning as a collaboration between rhizome and mozilla foundation. The program ran from February to April 2026 and was focused on artists and creative technologists developing counterstructural projects—tools, artworks, or systems—addressing themes like community governance, AI consent, and technological agency. Residents received a $2,500 stipend, weekly work sessions, guest lectures, and the entire program culminated in a public presentation, a short video, a published book, and a short residency report.

I wrote the open call, facilitated the jurying process (w/ Sam Lavigne, Ruby Justice, and Laurel Schwulst), created the syllabus, and organized discussions, workshops, and guests speakers.

• "As AI and algorithmic systems increasingly mediate human decision-making, and as ecological crises demand new models of consensus formation and collaboration, communities need accessible frameworks for examining technological systems. The Counterstructural Commons residency provides technology-focused artists with resources for prototyping and developing a project over the course of 10 weeks. Projects could take many forms, including but not limited to an educational tool, cooperative game format, or a workshop syllabus."
  
  - excerpt from the open call

The residency culminated in a preview of the eight works at the New Museum on May 16, 2026, alongside Rhizome's 7x7, ahead of their online launch on May 20. Mozilla Foundation's press release framed the program as treating imagination itself as critical infrastructure.

Residents: Michael Candy, beck haberstroh, Shakti Mb, Ari Melenciano, Ramsey Nasser, ZZYW (Zhenzhen Qi, Yang Wang), Steven Jos Phan, and Chris Woebken.

A few of the resident projects:

• SAWA ~ Ramsey Nasser's decentralized wiki, built on a web of trust rather than admin privileges.
• We are already gathered ~ Beck Haberstroh's series of teach-ins and zine-making sessions for communities who share surveillance risks.
• Machine as Memory as Orientation as Condition ~ writing by ZZYW (Zhenzhen Qi and Yang Wang).
• Office of Non-Human Standing ~ Chris Woebken's civil registry for the non-human workers of New York's polluted waterways.

The residency outcomes were also showcased at 7x7 2026, as previewed by FAD Magazine.

The Counterstructural Commons Residency brought eight artists and creative technologists together in New York City for ten weeks to prototype alternatives to extractive technological systems. This publication collects their project essays alongside theoretical contributions, project descriptions, and imagery from the projects.

I edited the volume and designed it, including the typographic system and layout.

Read my introduction essay for the Counterstructural Commons Publication or Read the full Publication

The publication opens with a foreword by Michael Connor tracing Rhizome's history back to Mark Tribe's 1996 mailing list, and includes a long theoretical essay by Lucilla Grossi on the commons -- from medieval shared land through enclosure to today's platform monopolies.

postpostspace reviewed the publication, describing my introduction as fragmentary and poetic -- recording the residency through its small, specific details, from missed takeout orders to the yellow light of the 26th-floor office.

Possibly a dream project? What started as an impulse trip to Delaware, NYC to visit the studio of the digital avant-garde artist, G.H.Hovagimyan, lead to a rather snowy weekend of listening and watching dozens of undigitized tapes from "Art Dirt," a pioneering, dot-com era broadcast featured on Josh Harris' "Pseudo.com" network. Also of interest, a variety of tapes featuring footage from inside the "We Live in Public" house and a VHS CU-SeeMe screen recording from ISEA 98.

Leading up to an in-person event between me, ex-Art Dirt co-host and artist, Adrianne Wortzel, and G.H. Hovagimyann, I was able to digitize and edit montage from the show that we all reacted to live. These edits featured lost video interviews featuring cultural figures such as media artist Mark Amerika, gallerist Sandra Gering, Wolfgang Staehle (Founder of The Thing), Simon Worthington of Mute Magazine. We screened these clips in front of a packed (thanks to EARTH.NYC x Christopher Kulendran Thomas for hosting!!) audience, before ending with an impossible-to-forget Q+A with Josh Harris.





The event was listed as a pick in Screme's Report and Field Notes NYC, for which I am thankful ;)

• "It was crazy to see Pseudo's logo and footages of the spaces after all these decades."
  - Kenzo Minami, reflecting on the night

As a part of a New York City Cultural Development Fund grant, Bri Griffin facilitated and designed a workshop series alongside Kayla Drzewicki and Diwa Tamrong titled "Solar Web in Schools" at four different public schools in New York City. Students were primarily 3rd and 4th graders, with ages ranging from 8-10 years old. Lesson plans and other resources from this series is available on rhizome's filestore (password: asciiart123)

Based on written student responses to questions such as "What does the internet look like?" or "What are good things about the internet?" it was obvious that students in a class together might have varying levels of access to technology. Despite familiarity with smartphones, tablets, and gaming consoles, overall skill levels assoicated with computers varied dramatically. Many younger students, of course, had difficulty with using traditional desktop computers, not having the patience to find which letter to type on a physical keyboard or right-click to copy and paste their ascii into a shared document.





The most common uses for the internet according to student responses are social media platforms, primarily Roblox, TikTok, and YouTube. The bulk of their time online is spent watching short-form video content, playing games, and talking to family and friends. A few students mentioned more complex interactions, such as navigating via Google Maps and cooking recipes. Spanish-speaking students rely heavily on the Internet to learn English.

--

When discussing negative aspects of the Internet, students reflect on lessons about the safe use of technology that they might have been taught by guardians and/or teachers, such as "stranger danger" or "inappropriate content." Most students are aware that there is adult content online and that they must be careful when browsing.



We put together a collection of easy to use tools that allow students to express themselves via photography, hand drawn sketches, and various digital art tools and techniques, such as dithering, ASCII art, and pixel art. Students were able to choose their favorite color, via an introduction to HEX codes. There was also a small collection of "kid-friendly" examples of digital art/fun websites (historic and contemporary) that were excitedly explored due to their often game-like interactivity.



"What is Internet Art?" Notion Mini-Site

Read "There is no nice web"

Laguna-B, the glasswear maker, commissioned this short essay. It grew out of an are.na board on the same theme and traces a brief history of discovery techniques online, are.na among them.

An excerpt:

"We have instant access to petabytes of data. However, our 'access' depends on internet infrastructures existing alongside stable energy sources and caches of electronic devices, all of which must meet specific hardware and software requirements. Data must then be consistently hosted online and made discoverable. You must spend time and money to learn each platform's rules, optimize your content for search engines and algorithms, survive structural and technical updates, pay for server/hosting costs, and catch domain renewal notices. Governing bodies, including internet service providers, then filter and modify incoming data, based on who you are and where you live."

This was a huge group effort that consisted of me co-organizing and co-curating with Michael Connor, Kayla Drzewicki, and Thalia Stefaniuk with endless production support from Danica Newell. I also contributed towards the art direction for the visual style, that Digital Council used to create an incredible graphics identity and promotional materials.



Rhizome World was an experiment in gathering a wide-range of artistic disciplines that relate to the use of software in one massive, nerdy wonderland. It featured a ton of archival works, mostly emulated in virtual machines and running on a variety of CRTs/tablets thanks to rhizome's preservation team. A ton of guest curators/partners from everywhere in the world - that really made it feel like this insane community effort Plus, a few of newly commissioned works, thanks to fleeting federal arts funding~



Rhizome World was on view at Water Street Projects (161 Water Street, New York) from April 18 to May 11, 2025. Per the New Museum's announcement, it was organized by Michael Connor and produced by Danica Newell, with curators Bri Griffin, Thalia Stefaniuk, and Kayla Drzewicki; digital art conservation led by Dragan Espenschied with conservator Nicole Savoy; exhibition design by Bench Architecture; and art direction and digital strategy by Digital Counsel, led by Marcella Zimmermann.

The exhibition was covered by Forbes, which highlighted the large-scale installation of p5.js works and an immersive poem by Bladee and James Ferraro played like a video game, and by Artnet.

The second weekend, "Another Internet Is Possible," focused on alternative and experimental networks -- including Small Batch, a farmers market covered by Phone Time.

Initial planning for rhizome world imagined it as a mini-LAN party that featured immersive spotlights of different eras/moments in the artistic use of software. It was important for us to have flexible space for events and workshops, as well as nod into some of the early 2000s media/internet artist vibes.




The series was broken down into 4 weekends, each with its own talks, performances, workshops, special guests, and curatorial additions. I came up with all four of the weekend themes:

• Hello World -- celebrating code as a creative medium, including a p5.js party that kicked off a new partnership between Rhizome and Processing Foundation.
• Another Internet is Possible -- exploring alternative networks, with a talk by Mike Pepi on his book Against Platforms and the launch of Lori Emerson's Other Networks.
• More than Human -- relating to "more than human" entities in nature, AI, and gaming, including a talk by Daniela Lieja Quintanar on the work of Beatriz da Costa.
• Community Memory -- inspired by the 1970s Berkeley bulletin board experiment, highlighting digital histories and alternative models for arts organizations, anchored by a night of live ambient sets from Huerco S. and Spencer Zahn.

A few of the events I curated and programmed across the four weekends:

• Cory Arcangel x Dragan Espenschied on Software as Embodied Knowledge (April 26) -- artist Cory Arcangel and Rhizome's digital preservation director on the possibilities and pitfalls of working with old software, drawing on Arcangel's practice and the Rhizome ArtBase.
• Small Batch: A Dataset Farmers Market (April 27) -- "buy fresh, train local": a market of artist-curated datasets, from manga screenshot troves to heartbreak maps, curated and organized by Claire Hentschker.
• CLOUDS (April 27) -- the interactive documentary portraying a generation of artists and hackers working with open source tools, presented with its directors.
• Flow State Machine: Ezra Miller on TouchDesigner (May 2) -- a look into Ezra's TouchDesigner process, his approach to generative style, and how it connects with other tools and media.
• Wikicurious: Amplifying Media Art (May 10) -- a cross-community gathering of Wikipedians and media art enthusiasts, with lightning talks, an intro to editing Wikipedia, and source material from the Cybernetics Library.
• LARPA: Today's Solutions Creating Tomorrow's Problems (May 11) -- the LARPA gang diving into a few of their greatest hits.

I also commissioned and programmed Emmett Palaima's Heaven and Earth Diptych, which has its own panel.



A few of my personal favorites:

- Laurie Anderson on Puppet Motel
- Mr. Art Needs a Break
- Laurie Emerson's Other Networks Book Launch
- Ezra Miller - Flow State Machine
- Dmstfcn presenting GOD MODE
- CLOUDS interactive documentary
- Wikipedia Media Art Edit-a-Thon
- Huerco S. and Spencer Zahn with Reflections

Bonus: This event featured a hat that I "designed" that simply features the word "internet" in Times New Roman (lol)

Heaven and Earth Diptych pairs a 32-channel hanging speaker array with a single subwoofer platform built into the floor, both driven by Emmett's custom electronic audio system. High frequencies move through the room so you can follow where each sound is coming from, while low frequencies are felt through the body as much as heard. Between events, the piece ran its own long-form composition for visitors; during events, it became an instrument for other artists to play.

I initiated the commission for Rhizome, and the work premiered at Rhizome World at WSA, 161 Water Street. It has since moved to WSA's 160 Maiden Lane, where it is open as a public artwork. The piece is part of Emmett's long-term body of work built on his ShiftDriver spatial audio system, which was supported by a NYSCA Support for Artist grant.

Because the installation was designed to be played by others, I curated a run of activations that invited artists to spend time with it and translate their own practices into its sonic form:

• Carol Parkinson + Emmett Palaima: electronic media makes sound (April 25, 2025) -- Emmett in conversation with Carol Parkinson of Harvestworks, where his earlier installation Cathedral-64 was shown, on the pasts and futures of electronic sound.
• A night of experimental performance (April 25, 2025) -- live sets on the Diptych by MIZU, Daniel Neumann, Madeline Stephenson, and Kwami Winfield.
• Mr. Art Needs a Break (A Rhizome World Parody) (May 2, 2025) -- a parody performance by Isa Spector staged on top of the platform, featuring Ari Dalbert, Sheldon Donenberg, Aliza Russell, and Madison Wata, with sound and music by Taul Katz and Ben Shirken and costumes by Max Lillian. Maya Kotomori, writer, cultural critic, and managing editor of Byline, wrote that it was "genuinely in the top five performance art pieces I've seen" in her nearly nine years in New York. Family Style later described the piece as exploring the erotics of capital and power in relation to creativity, and Ben Shirken documents it alongside his other scores for Isa.
• Spectral Fantasy (May 3, 2025) -- Tommy Martinez on multichannel spectral panning in Max for Live, followed by spatial performances from Tommy and Michael J. Schumacher.
• Reflections x Rhizome: Huerco S. and Spencer Zahn (May 10, 2025) -- I brought in the ambient series Reflections, who curated most of the night, to organize an evening activating the installation: live sets from Huerco S. and Spencer Zahn played through the Diptych, immersed in projection-mapped visuals.

As part of DEMO2026, I programmed a series of conversations for Studio DEMO exploring how artist-made games have developed into a visually rich and economically viable field:

• Role Playing As Praxis -- convenes Caratoes, Jacky Connolly, and Skawennati in a conversation examining simulation as a space for transformation. Through avatars and roleplay, these artists explore how characters can function as tools for expanding empathy and authoring new realities.
• Origins of the Artist Game -- features Mitchell Chan tracing the history of experimental game practices and artists who challenge the conventions of the AAA industry.
• Prototyping Worlds -- brings together Alex Declino, Mitch Anzuoni, and Tess Elliot as game designers working with real-world data to model climate futures, economic ideologies, and systems of care.

Brain Rot Aesthetics: Original; was conceptualized by the genius Raul Zbengheci for New Inc's 2025 DEMO festival. The panel featured cultural figure/curator/editor-in-chief Whitney Mallet and Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum David Lisbon.

• "How has social-first video content evolved to dominate visual culture, and what does it mean for culture and society overall? This conversation will outline the aesthetics of "brainrot" content as a new genre, with its own signifiers and motifs. The discussion will zoom out to examine the internet's effects on the evolution of contemporary art."

Autre mentioned the panel in its recap of DEMO 2025.

The conversation continued at Offline Gallery as Brain Rot 2: A Slow Syrupy Death. There's a rough recording and slightly edited rambling transcript and a (slightly cursed) zine we made as well!

Somehow we ended up in Miami, on the outskirts of Art Basel for one, final(??) talk:Brain Rot 3: the internet and the end. We were hosted at Locust Projects on December 5, 2025.

Artwrld partnered with Rhizome for Season 3 of the Artwrld Podcast, a series of live online conversations with key figures working across art and the internet.

These talks are full of suprises, intimate screenshares turn into performance, lecture, and spirited discussion and Q+A. Co-host Josh Goldblum is not only a podcast pro, but refreshingly inquistitive.

I curated and organized the following sessions:

• dmstfctn: Role play with AI
• Rosa Menkman: Angel's Remains
• Mark Leckey: Recent Work | Artwrld Sessions x Rhizome
• Peter Burr presents: USEFUL FANTASY
• Chia Amisola presents: How to Make Love (HTML)

Each year Rhizome partners with NEW INC on its Art & Code track, a year-long program designed to help artists realize or prototype a creative project in community with a network of other artists and thinkers.


The track is designed for individuals who critically engage with technology and the internet in their work. Last year's cohort responded to the rise of vibe coding and the impact of AI on culture and history with the online exhibition "Edge Cases." Past cohorts have produced work across sculptural and digital forms, including works that have ranged from CD-ROM games and hacked toys to interactive installations and augmented reality experiences.

This year's cohort features Alice Yuan Zhang of Plot, ash herr of TIAT, artist Ashton Reeder, Dr. Yvette Mutumba and Nan Collymore of Contemporary And, software designer and writer Celine Nguyen, Prashast Thapan (founder of award-winning game studio Pariah Interactive), Lee Seung-a and Lee Sang-ik of Tissue Office, transdisciplinary designer and researcher Yemariam Mamo, Peter Nichols of LA-based game designer studio Elfsend, Nichole Shinn of indie game studio Ultraviolet Softworks, security engineer Jack Huang, transdisciplinary artist Erica M. Kermani, and art-game collective [[rect*]]repair.

I'll be primarily running monthly meetings and developing opportunities for members in the lead-up to NEW INC's annual DEMO Festival in June.

What started as a one-time, irl workshop blossomed into a multi-session working group. The first session took place at NEW INC on June 27, 2024, hosted by Trust, Rhizome, and NEW INC. Calum, Brian, and I co-wrote a write-up of the workshop, with more documentation on are.na.

The session opened with a "question burst," then turned to para-institutions -- artist-run spaces, online communities, open-source platforms, and DAOs -- and to worlding as an infrastructural act. Themes that kept coming up across the dream projects: shared spaces, digital and physical hybridity, decentralized governance, and the different rhythms of support, from one-off events to long-term platforms. The question we closed on: "What does it mean to ask about dreams instead of needs?"



For the first iteration of Dream Infrastructures and following our ice-breaker massages (thanks to Calum), we all wrote down our dreams, but them into a hat, split into groups, picked one dream, and then dug into our natural reactions, difficulties, questions, etc. related to actualization. Our working doc from this session exists in a google doc



For the more intensive working group, we dug into everything we could think of that enables or inhibits the dream infrastructures that we exist within and work around to survive. The participating group consisted of other community organizers and practicing artists from different timezones and with different experience levels.

As an icebreaker, we explained our practice, then did the "explain like i'm 5 (in 5 words)" version. We wanted to dig a bit into the tendency to have to translate what you do into different languages/contexts and played a little game with mixing and matching them up.



We repeated a similar exercise as the IRL session, collectively picking dreams then digging into how to actualize that dream via feedback + response.



We had a guest (director of new inc, Salome) dive into the way New Inc + members' have adapted and shifted to different funding models.



We talked a lot about feeling censored or empowered based on "where the money comes from".



As a meta-exploration, I wanted to dive into thinking about our practices as 4 major bubbles of interest. We all gravitate towards certain aspects of these 4 – yet in order to survive, we must shift to different focuses, causing a bit of a passion dissonance.



When it comes down to it, everyone needs to work on pretty similar problems in order to achieve their dreams. As facilitators, we learned a lot from the different organizers within the group and what their strategies are.

2024

We received nearly 1000 applications were submitted and all reviewed by rhizome staff (Mark + Dragan + Kayla + Me!), with a finalist list of 200 applicants reviewed by guest jurors (Mindy Seu, Chia Amisola, and Tega Brain).

I wanted to experiment with a few new things from the program this year, building off of last year's introduction of a community program and light freedback/review process. This year, we had two grantwriting/question-and-answer sessions that outlined some of the things we look for in a successful application.



I also reached out to graphic designer, Darius Ou, for help creating a beautiful visual system for communicating about the program.



Requests for submissions were broken down into 4 categories:

Natural Cycles with Solar Protocol: Imagining lighter alternatives to an over-developed and resource intensive web, inspired by rhythms found in nature. The Brooklyn Rail wrote about this call, which invited artists to reimagine what a website could be when hosted on a Solar Protocol node -- rethinking how, what, and when information gets served.

Lost Web Histories: Gathering experience or research-based stories of "lost" media, forum discoveries, niche communities, and personal collections.

Desktop Performance: Diving through file structures, browser windows, and automated triggers for the purpose of live performance via a screen.

Money as Medium: Breaking out of dominant global systems of exchange and value to bring into focus narratives related to alt-systems.



Excited to say that we're moving forward with this program! 19 Awardees were announced in February 2025.

2025–26

The program continued into a 2025–26 cycle, again organized by me and designed to be highly accessible to anyone who wants to make something weird on the web, requiring only a very brief submission. I wrote and designed the open call, held an information session and micro-grantwriting guide event, and announced the 17 awardees in December 2025.

This cycle's themes: Network Commons (reimagining how we connect), Public Personas (navigating fame and identity in algorithmic environments), Narrative Systems (breaking free from traditional interaction mechanics), and Synthetic Agents (collaborating with other intelligences). Submissions were reviewed by Rhizome staff and guest jurors Francis Tseng, Constant Dullaart, Hundred Rabbits, and Claire L. Evans.

Awarded projects span online performance, an off-grid solar server, a 24/7 simulated call center in the Philippines, and more. Funded by small donations from our community, the cycle also had additional support from Octant, which funded nine projects in support of a more open internet: free and open-source software, interoperable or decentralized systems, and greater transparency around digital infrastructure and policy.

Life in 256kb was originally created for Gray Area Festival in San Francisco with support from the Teiger Foundation, it been expanded/updated for a workshop for ITERATIONS 2024 festival hosted at The Design Museum Bosch in the Netherlands.

The workshop also grew into a public conversation, Endless Data Forests and the Solar Web, held September 28, 2024 at WSA (161 Water Street) alongside "Group Hug," an exhibition Rhizome presented with Onassis ONX. Taking Tale of Tales's slow, ambient The Endless Forest as a counterpoint to the infinite scroll, the talk brought in Solar Protocol's creators, Tega Brain, Alex Nathanson, and Benedetta Piantella, to discuss digital climate impact and alternative digital cultures, along with Rhizome's own climate impact research and West Coast Solar Protocol node. It was briefly mentioned in this Brooklyn Rail article.



"Can computers exist in a way that doesn't harm the environment or the people interacting with it?"
- me, quoted in the Brooklyn Rail

The Rail described the workshop as introducing tiny data as both a limitation and an opportunity: each participant got a data budget of 256kb to build a solar-friendly website, and could either work alone within it or pool budgets with others. The Life in 256KB website is also listed as a resource on Contre la Machine, the course platform for the Re/Production class at HEAD – Genève (Haute École d'Art et de Design).

A few aspects of this workshop that I enjoyed were gathering and experimenting with various tooling for creating tiny files.



This website also featured alt-text as the default state for images that were lazy-loaded. After reading the description of the image, participants had the option to click to load it. The intention is that for all links on the webpage to have a similar data-title that describes what the link leads to and how much data it takes to load the full page. Users have the choice to proceed/load more.

Life in 256kb would not be possible without rhizome.org , support from the tieger foundation, solar protocol, and advice from mark beasley regarding file sizes.

• For as long as the internet has existed, it has been estimated that about 90% of people online will never post, comment, blog, or message. Instead, they "lurk," silently observing other users' posts and exchanges."Lurking" has an overwhelmingly negative connotation; and researcher initially described someone who "lurks" not only as a "non-contributor" to a community, but also someone who brings a sinister presence.

The research was first shared in November 2023 as "What type of lurker are you?", a Trust x Rhizome session where I presented a cross-disciplinary review of lurking-related research and a map of lurker archetypes, then asked participants to figure out which type of lurker they are. Dirt wrote up the session -- including a stream commentator's name for us: "lurker-bees."

• "Actions in taking information have reactions, [outputs] of information that traverse among and between networks both online and IRL."
  - me, quoted in Dirt

Alongside a growing movement of researchers, I argue that the "silent majority" of the internet may simply be "non-public participants" who, although rendered invisible by UI design choices - feel as engaged lurking in some places as they do contributing to others. Although not easily traceable, lurkers' actions (reading, learning, bearing witness, remembering) have effects that often extend beyond any one online or IRL network.



As motivations and needs change, lurkers shift between different forms of lurking. Varying from pure consumption to periphery learning, lurkers tend to follow a more-than-average amount of content from a diverse range of potential sources. When considering who might hold the knowledge and memory of the internet—maybe it could be lurkers?

Rhizome Forever was a dinner and party that celebtrated figures who cultivate community and infrastructure for artists and creators, and who have explored new ways of being in the world through technology. The event was featured in Paper magazine, Document Journal, and was discussed in Artnet for the exactly the reason we contextualized the performances within Rhizome's digital art world; "But it doesn't mean that it escapes the logic of feeds as their duration performances get spliced into the most sensational bits" - Kate Brown

"Since Rhizome's inception [in 1996], net artists have sought to define and defend their right to appear in the physical environments of more traditional art institutions. The artists we engage with don't easily fit into conventional categories or white boxes, and our in-person events reflect this. Varying from web surfing competitions and meme-laced screenings to exhibitions and conferences, Rhizome's IRL events adapt to the endless, yet necessary shapes required to engage with the internet."
- me, to Paper magazine

Spike named the afterparty's Young Boys Dancing Group performance one of its tops of 2024, noting how the audience split between rapt and scrolling: "who knows what draws attention anymore."



The party was organized by Ben Shirken of 29 Speedway, me, with additional production help from Rhizome staff + Danica Newell.


I viewed the party itself as inherently cybernetic and organic; a reflection of realities possible when gathering bodies, colors, lasers, sensors, screens, and slime. Traversing between sound art, improvisation, and noise by way of cross-genre manipulation, you'll find glimpses of this night later commodified into smaller, compressed, and digitally consumable forms. However, these acts are best experienced IRL and by a collective audience in their entirety.



The benefit dinner raised funds for Rhizome's microgrants program, a program that attempts to provide experimental, technology-focused artists' with some of their first institutional recognition, support and mentorship.



The honorees included Shu Lea Cheang, an artist and filmmaker who has long explored hacktivism, gender, and the "digital commons," artist Lauren Lee McCarthy, who makes social practice art for the algorithmic age and founded the p5.js programming language, activist and technologist Anil Dash who contributed to open web standards and served as an advisor to the White House Office of Digital Strategy during the Obama admistration, and artists Jennifer + Kevin McCoy, whose work has long explored data-driven culture and the corporatization of the internet.

A gathering of a few favorite artists, speakers, and teachers in one room. The event featured talks by Morry Kolman, Amad Ansari, Laurel Schwulst, Michael Connor, and Joshua Citarella. + workshops led by Tee Topor, Laurel Schwulst, and Bri Griffin

All graphics were made in kidpix by me! :)



There were video presentations from Ditcher's Eddy and Temporary Files collective. DJ sets from Axine M, Pent and finn. Vending from over 20 of the coolest artists and organizations, including:

One of the difficult aspects of this event is that the floor plan was significantly less wide IRL / so we had to reconfigure the entire layout during setup the day of.



Are.na, Bella Carlos, bleu281_, Blake Andrews, boshi's place, Caldo Worldwide, Call Waitn + Cal Fish, Conspecifics, czechwun, deathbysheep, Dizzy Books, Dreamland Forever, Jackie Liu, Kaleidoscope Studios, Inpatient Press, Knit_b0dy, LARPA, maegaze, Mil Mundos Books, Molly Soda, Morry Kolman (WTTDOTM), Orange Milk Records, O-R-G small softwares, Palestine Online, Permeable Self, Random Man Editions, Ravon Ruffin Feliz, Sahiba, Spencer Chang, Toy Box Coffin, @VXPX.INFO, Yuliya Vasilyevna, and more!!

Rhizome's super ultimate internet day was our very first day fest/holiday market, held December 14, 2024 at HEART, Maya Man's project space -- and Maya featured it in her newsletter. Molly Soda invited her readers to come say hello at her table, Joshua Citarella lists his talk, "Info-Wars," on his CV, and Are.na noted in their investor report that their book sold out at the market, the day after selling out at their own launch reading at HEART.

Container, curated by Imogen Brent and Bri Griffin opened with live performances and featured generative environmental Sound by Benjamin Shirken and Dorothy Carlos. This intimate, generative piece has been crafted specifically for the space using a combination of Max/MSP, Modular Synthesis, and the complex soundscapes of the two artists.





It was hosted by Intima, thanks to Joni Glam in a historic Iron Factory in Queens, NY. Container featured work from Max Popov, Mischa Langley, Rachael Rosheger, Imogen Brent, Muein, Sister Engineering, Yuma Burgess and Stewart Bird. The exhibition featured performances for opening and closing.




Presenting a range of artworks across material and ethos, this group of artists are united by a unique interest in technology, interpreting the rapidly changing set of tools that govern our material constraints. Enveloped by the networked systems that surround us, the work presented in Container foregrounds the presence of the artist's hand; tending to and caring for the residual objects left behind in the wake of our increasingly dislocating digital world.



Additionally, through selecting artists who primarily work with industrial materials and waste, we hope to engage in a conversation around the material of this fleeting space. Closing in February for renovation, the essence of this raw and untouched warehouse is finite. In this brief moment, we use the form of the space as a starting point, adding to and expanding from the factory's textural walls, engaging with the shared history of the architecture we find ourselves situated within.

"The past and futures of transmission technologies will always reflect our humanity back at us. From playful, gesture-based performances of the computer mouse to the pseudo-anonymous assemblage of collective cognitive labor, each screening is a conversation between our material realities and the internet."

View my full write-up for cinema of transmission on rhizome's website!

FWB introduced the series to FEST-goers as three hour-long screenings -- a chance to escape the heat and slip off into movie land. Conor McGarrigle also lists Breaking Bad: the Bittorrent Edition as shown in the series at FWB Fest in Idyllwild, California.



"Cinema of Transmission", a reference to the NYC-based undeground film movement of the 1980s, "Cinema of Transgression" and initially used for a rhizome event in 2022, sought to explore artists' varying relationships to an evolving internet. A manifesto regarding the original movement, written by Nick Zedd directs us to "pass beyond and go over boundaries of millimeters, screens and projectors" and this collection of works does just that.



Part 1 : Performing Internet To stare into a webcam and demand it stare back at you, the choreographer of pointed, white cursors that dance across the browser. What makes typography scream "read me now !?" What rests between hardware, software, artist, mind, and body? "Performing Internet" is a showcase of work that demonstrates ways in which we've performed through, on, and around the browser.

Featuring : Paper Rad, Troy Innocent, Ana Voog, Kit Galloway & Sherrie Rabinowitz, Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, Lorna Mills, Yoshi Sodeoka, Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, James Nielssen, Sebastian Schmieg, and Viktor Timofeev



Part 2: Living Internet Proliferation of ourselves into a mess of content. Yet - there are stories to be told if you know where to look. The circulation of a commentary that's been felt a million times, reflected in metrics, likes, and reposts. What are the stories to be told of the internet? What shouldn't have to be loud? A moment of silence.

Featuring: Tabita Rezaire, Sally Pryor, Seth Price, Aria Dean, Conor Mcgarrigle, Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski, and Francois Knoetze

Part 3: Being Internet What are the things we must do online now to be heard? To listen is to define together what must be told. Shared aesthetic codes wrap around ourselves inside the safety of gated communities—yet onlookers recontextualize our words. A leak of the self. Content. Your words as building blocks for the meta commentary they substack about. Part 3 is an attempt to ride the wave.

Featuring: Kurosai, Coincellpro7, Filip Kostic, Ville Kallio, Sebastian Schmieg, and Meriem Bennani

Rhizome Office Hours was a recurring, informal online community event and conversation series hosted from 2022 until 2024, each show curated and hosted by me, with a handful of exceptions. A ton of documentation from office hours is available on video.rhizome.org (rhizome's peertube instance).

• The Lore Zone with Libby Marrs and Tiger Dingsun
• The HTML Review (Issue 02) Launch with Shelby Wilson and Maxwell Neely-Cohen
• Browsers as a Playground with game-designer and professor, Pippin Barr
• "Criticality" Screening + Magical Max/MSP with sound artist and developer Dillon Bastan, screening his short film Criticality
• How to Make Your Work Last Forever (Almost) with Mark Beasley
• Celebrating 10 Years of One Terabyte Of Kilobyte Age with Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied
• Visionboarding with Molly Soda
• Multiplayer Miniverses with Arthur Röing Baer of "utopian conspirator" paradise, Trust, "weird gaming" research studio, Sybil, and R&D lab, Moving Castles
• Internet Pigeon Network with NYU Professor, Helga Tawil-Souri
• Situated Memes with Cem-A of freeze_magazine
• Our Friend the Computer: Zine Launch! w/ hosts Ana Meisel and Camila Galaz.

The Web Art Jam was an international weeklong series of talks and workshops, leading up to a 2-day website creation jam! We designed the programming/structure of the festival to work for anytimezone participants might be in. The festival involved a temporary discord that closed following the end of the events -- we streamed talks to twitch. A few remnants of this event are on archive.org



Organized by me + Hyacinth Ramsay

The event was run through discord with about 300 participants ! In the discord group, structures were provided to encourage collaboration, exploration, and learning - including a 24/7 group of volunteer HTML/CSS instructors.



All of the graphic identity for this event was created by me. The process for creating graphics was inspired by systems design theory.

Of course, they became a bit more playful and organic, building hype for the events to come! The theme overall was worldbuilding, something simple that anyone could build their own ideas off of.



The discord group itself was heavily stylized - every detail paying homage old school webart, integrated plenty of custom GIFs and ascii art into communications.



The festival also featured a series of talks and panels. Panelists discussed everything from their earliest experience with internet communities to what the future of online interaction and art community might evolve into.

A few talks live on outside the Discord: Nathalie Lawhead published a transcript of her talk, "The Browser is a Creative Playground," from the jam's opening in March 2021 -- a case for weird, low-stakes, handmade browser art that ends: "Small, personal, strange, unique… is at the heart of the web." Kevin Cadena's panel "Connected From Afar: Telling Stories Via The Web" is archived on archive.org, where he credits it to Lightshine Chamber's web art jam.

Participants kept building after the jam ended, too. nyanseong wrote in their diary about spending the following weekend polishing the webzine they started at the jam, shortly, briefly -- including writing alt text for every GIF, which became part of the artwork itself.



The jam became a starting point for some participants. The artist behind Marcos World -- a personal forum abandoned by a hobbyist birder in 2004, exhibited at The Cell Theatre -- writes that a fascination with dying web forums inspired them to attend Lightshine Chamber's 2021 Web Art Jam and teach themselves the basics of HTML.

Bonus: a screenshot from an extremely supportive chat :3

Hosted by Scott Schwartz and streamed live on New York Television, this episode paired two guests walking through their Are.na channels: Shelby Shaw on her channel Dating Online, and me on ☆ websites that are chefs kiss with the ruffle flash extension ☆.

I was excited to reflect upon one of the greatest extinction events of our digital times, the end of Macromedia Flash, because due to many incredible preservation/emulation initiatives, many old files are easily accessible (w/ the ruffle browser extension)!

If you're tapped into NYTV; watch the show!

Fun fact -- this was the discord that I first created the-image-game ! :)



The culture found within the discord is extremely fluid - members shifting between frequent posters and lurkers, becoming the occasional organizer, and using the discord itself as an indexed reference library.



Typical descriptors like specialties, education, and geographic background vary dramatically - including plenty of artists, programmers, design historians, planners, game designers, grassroots organizers - even a grammy-award winning foley artist.



Despite interest in complex subjects - the group collectively practices translation, patiently making sure every person who is interested is able to learn something - no matter their background or experience.

The structure of the group allowed every member to collectively run the group - anyone could create channels, host events, and spark discussion. There were a few reoccurring events such as 'movie nights', 'discussion groups', and monthly "present anything" days.



Our tenets, as listed when Virtual Goods Dealer included Lightshine Chamber in its 2021 roundup of Discord servers for research and creative inspiration:

• Knowledge must be accessible and easy to access.
• Knowledge is a privilege.
• Knowledge means nothing without context.

The roundup highlighted our mix of general channels and specialized ones on topics like surveillance, memetics, and anime, and the shared are.na group where resources posted in the server were organized.

Links shared in the group are roughly beginning to be documented in are.na channels - but the bulk of resources are found within the discord.

My favorite event are the casual presentations. It was designed to be a format that allows anyone to have the stage to talk about something they love.

Each member is given 10 minutes to discuss their research, practice their speaking skills, or just have a little fun.

A few presentations we've done include topics such as:
- the web + digital environments as healing and sacred space
- fandom culture, OSINT, and community organization
- history of advertising in games, especially marketed towards children
- a guide to "slow internet" and exploration into html homepages
- my experience playing a clone of the first MMO
- history of phracking, open source, and freedom of information

The primary methodology behind these speculative spaces was that they should be permeable, adaptable, and playful. By design, the city would inspire, teach, and be used as a tool for further research and development.

This process was heavily inspired by natural design trends, sustainability research, existing critique of smart cities/technology, as well as principles associated with the design thinking process, and collective learning theories.





A DECENTRALIZED CITY

All parts stand on their own, but use a combination of technological infrastructure and human care to form the necessary playground for ecological progress. A "center for "innovation" must be decentralized; consisting of nodes that are self-sustaining yet permeable.

Each module shifts and adapts to the needs of their community, slightly modifying systems for maintaining essential resources (such as food and electricity). Successful methodologies are collected and shared in an open-knowledge culture.

Built into the fabric of the "city" are shared resources, such as libraries, archives, and translators. This is crucial to enable a sustainable system, encouraging citizen participation to improve these systems. Large-scale systems, such as transit, technology/internet, and logistics networks, are collectively owned and maintained.

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Each phase of the creative process has unique implications for physical, digital, and in-between touch points.











The project also included imagining different culture within the city. Two examples are renewable creation and embedded gaming mechanics.

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-- Finally, this whiteboard outlines some of the initial synthesis of research that would continue to outline strategy for this entire project.

This project involved a month long study on-site of a hotel considered one of the most luxury in the world.



For the duration of our team's stay - I designed and conducted a series of interviews and studies that would help us to develop an overarching picture of all of the hotel's services and specialties.







Eventually we had so much data, that I wrote a quick python program to easily sift through common threads. This was used as an aid in my analysis, that was used to create a final series of themes that would be used to further examine each different section of hospitality.

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Awarded "Store of the Year" 2022, by the Retail Design Institute, and was also covered by Forbes as a result.



Tempurpedic wanted something special to capture the attention of the increasingly inattentive new yorker. After research into their demographics, the experience design team recommended an "interactive digital experience".

My role was the experience design concept and art direction, feasibility studies, pricing and coordination with an external A/V team, and implementation of final screen animations.

MLB wanted a flagship home for the millions of visitors who travel through NYC and explore sixth avenue.

This project features a speculative translation (both short and long-term) of a technologically enabled chick-fil-a brand based on observational studies and research.









Designed around hospitality and natural ingredients, the "future" for a brand like chick-fil-a involves pioneering in sustainability, championing inclusivity, and emphasizing a human touch (despite an extremely advanced technological back-end).

Leading up to the official launch of 5G in Canada via Roger's Flagship Store, Rigers 302, was a large scale branding and experiential opportunity.