netart-extinction
A public timeline of how dependency changes — API shutdowns, plugin end-of-lifes, browser removals — break digital artworks.
What it does
A public, standalone site documenting how digital artworks “go extinct” — not on their own, but because their dependencies change underneath them. When an API is shut down, a plugin reaches end-of-life (the classic case: Flash Player), or a browser removes a feature, the works that relied on it break. The site charts these breakages as a navigable timeline. Live at extinction.zkm.de.
Content model
- Events — extinction events such as “Flash Player EOL” or “Google Images API sunset”, each referencing the affected artworks with a per-work severity and status
- Artworks — canonical records (title, artist, year, URL, medium)
Content lives in validated Astro Content Collections, so events and artworks are typed markdown rather than a database.
Tech stack
Astro static site with a client-side D3.js SVG timeline, served by nginx in Docker behind a reverse proxy. Deployed via GitHub Actions to the ZKM registry with auto-deploy on main.
Context
Part of the net-art preservation toolchain at ZKM: netart-extinction documents the problems, while companion tools — the exhibition VM controller and a wayback cache proxy — keep the works running and resilient against the same disappearing dependencies. MIT (code) + CC BY 4.0 (content), with a Zenodo DOI for citation.