Digital Landfill

(1998-2007)

I created Digital Landfill in 1998 as a web-based interactive artwork, in response to the digital junk that was rapidly accumulating in our inboxes and on the web. The bizarre-ness of the internet as a place without physical decay raises some questions: How do you dispose of something that doesn't rot? And how do we decide what is worth keeping, what is useless, or what is art? The Landfill provided a place to dispose of unwanted e-mail, obsolete data, HTML, SPAM or any other digital debris. Over several years, text, images, html and broken links accumulated in layers of digital sediment.

By the mid 2000s, Digital Landfill was collecting tens of megabytes of data each month, much of it produced by robots generating spam and other automated advertising content. The original intention of the piece was owerrun by the sheer volume of commercial content, and I shut it down soon after. What remains here is the original input forms, and a selection of images that showcased the often bizarre associations that arose from discarded content.

To see the skeletal remains of the original Digital Landfill: Digital Landfill