The Feed: The Internet’s Archaeologist

An Artist For Our Times: Ryder Ripps is an artist who you should know about. His medium of choice is the Internet: in 2009 he started InternetArchaeology.org, which, as the site’s mission statement explains, “seeks to explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture…the chief purpose of Internet Archaeology is to preserve these artifacts and acknowledge their importance in understanding the beginnings and birth of an Internet culture.” Ripps is constantly putting out new projects and works (many of which involve Facebook) that explore the strange world that is the Internet. As Ripps explains in an interview with L Magazine, “Facebook is sort of our everything. All the most important things, the things which truly define character — what we like who we have sex with, what we do — is what Facebook is attempting to mirror. I’m interested in the ways we emote through a computer and the ephemera left behind in the process.” Check out the rest of the interview and keep an eye on all of his Internet art projects.