This year, the Webby Awards are holding a separate ceremony to honor outstanding film and video that’s made for the Internet. The nominees and winners will become part of the Museum of Moving Image’s collection of artifacts. (I know, I know, it’s a digital file, etc. so what does it mean to be “in a collection,” etc. Blame the conceptual artists, I guess.) From a Webby Awards press release:
According to (Webby Awards executive director David-Michel) Davies, from now until December 15th, original films and videos can be entered in 11 categories, including Animation, Comedy, Drama, Events, Experimental, Music, News/Documentaries, Reality, Student, and Viral. The awards will be judged by a jury of entertainment industry leaders including Harvey Weinstein, Showtime’s Matt Blank, The Firm’s Rich Frank, Sundance Channel’s Larry Aidem, and Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO, Fox Entertainment.
Link to press release, Link to enter the Webby Awards (deadline December 15)
UPDATE: Francis Hwang, former Director of Technology for Rhizome.org, writes:
Regarding the question of what it means for a digital file to be in a museum collection: If the good folks at the Museum of the Moving Image are doing it right–and they usually do–one important role will be of preservation. A lot of pioneering works of online design, art, etc, have been lost, since the medium is so ephemeral. But a museum is supposed to think of these artifact in terms of decades, not days and weeks, so if a website is put in a museum collection, then that drastically increases the chances that our grandkids will be able to see it. (This archival work is often complementary to that of the Wayback Machine, which, although wonderful, is massively unfocused and as such can often miss notable moments in a site’s evolution.)
Those interested in these issues might consult the work of the Variable Media Network, which helps coordinate inquiry into these sorts of archival issues.