What is this?
➘Dig Archive is an archived collection of digitized media art, text, zines, videos, and other saved works from around the net, and beyond.
It is a personal collection of items collected over the years that I revisit and want to make available to others. Some of these can be found elsewhere online but many others can only be found here, or are in danger of disappearing due to link rot, obfuscation, old digital containers and codecs, or other forms of digital brittleness. Items are also in the collection of the Internet Archive whenever possible.
The title is a reference both to the digital as well as digging through the stacks at archives, libraries and record shops.
What items can be found in the ➘Dig Archive?
I’m an artist and musician working in DIY artist-run spaces, academia, and in creative coding community, so the items reflect those interests. I’m particularly a fan of surfacing old software, tools and writing that may have been missed in the rush to embrace the latest technology.
A survey of selections: there are the informal rules of composer/musician John Zorn’s improvised musical “game piece” Cobra that are handed down from musician to musician. There are coloring books, spells and manuals by virtuosic psychedelic synth designer Peter Blasser.
There are whole books, like the New Art/Science Affinities, on the intersection of art and technology, with big photographs and strong artist profiles, which I assign to students in my classes to read but has disappeared from its original website years ago. There are exhibition catalogs, such as for the exhibit FOOD about the same-named artist-run restaurant that included Gordon Matta-Clark within its community. And the Critical Coding Cookbook, a more recent collection of essays, tutorials and interviews with an intersectional feminist approach to teaching and learning programming.
There are teaching activities on the Gee’s bend quilts, from the Philadelpha Museum of Art; multiple zines about self-hosted feminist servers; user guides for old game-making software Klik and Play - whose paradigm and system for friendly game-making still hasn’t been equaled today; a slide show by artist and graffiti writer Barry McGee; and photographs of the funeral of Kazimir Malevich, which included a truck affixed with the black square to its bumper.
This and many more items can be found in this small archive, which will slowly grow. I hope you find items that you enjoy and potentially even build your own.
About the Design
This site was built and designed by Lee Tusman, using a modified form of his website builder Panblog and set in Bagnard Sans, inspired by the graffiti of an anonymous prisoner of the napoleonic wars. Site code (c) 2025 Lee Tusman. Site design CC BY. No Gods, No Masters.
➘Dig Archive was designed with practical constraints. The site is intended to look consistent, load as quickly as possible, and use a minimum of JavaScript. While we may not always achieve it the goal is for the site to last as long as possible, be as light as possible, be slow to change, and work on as many computers as possible. Inspirations include UbuWeb, Low Tech Magazine, Brutalist Websites and Dr. Bronner’s soap wrappers.
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