On the archival of Flash artworks
With the inception of Plunge! in 2002, its collection falls within the ArtBase’s open submission phase from 1999–2010, before it transitioned over to filtered submission from 2010–2015, and eventually by invitation only from 2015–2020. In the initial open submission phase of the ArtBase, all new media artworks were accepted into the collection under a selection criteria that prioritized “potential historical significance.”¹
Heather Corcoran, then the Executive Director of Rhizome, explained that for such a nascent art form, “philosophically, they were opposed to filtering for quality because they felt they might end up rejecting works that would later be deemed important.” As such, all submitted works were accepted as long as they suited Rhizome’s On its submissions page in 2004, the ArtBase defined new media art as inclusive of “net art, software art, computer games, and documentation of new media performance and installation.”²