For my digital project review, I wanted to analyze an artistic approach to collecting data and preservation of internet archives. IMG_0001 is a creative project by Riley Walz, a 22 year old artist and programmer from San Francisco. He has created many interesting digital projects, such as an archive of before and after photos of the 2025 LA wildfires, an index of fast food price comparisons across the country, and a random route generator for cyclists and bikers. Walz's projects are critical and artistic, and seem to allow for reflection on a greater social dilemma or trend in humanities.

The recent project of his which I will be focusing on, IMG_0001, is a digital archive inspired by Ben Wallace, an American blogger, automation engineer, project manager, and solution architect. His blog post from November 2024 discussed the 2009-2012 iPhone feature, where videos could automatically be "sent to YouTube" from the photos app. This reveals the endless amount of YouTube videos titled IMG_0001 to IMG_9999, each titled by the 10 000 possible number combinations. Riley Walz must have found this phenomenon as fascinating as I did because he decided to digitize the project, and thus, created IMG_0001.

IMG_0001 as a website is easily to access and navigate as a user. It is aesthetically interesting yet simple enough to understand the preface of the project. Walz's blog showcases the recent digital projects he has made, including a name, image, and brief description. Upon clicking the TV remote graphic, the user is brought to an endless webpage, able to explore the endless amount of videos under the name IMG_0001  to IMG_9999. Along with the video, you can see a date, and view count. When you click on the video itself, it takes users to the YouTube link, crediting the creator and giving access to the public user profile. Walz describes the project, "I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly." Inspecting the code, you can see Walz uses an API to fetch a random video, and allow users to "play" and "pause", and go "forward" or "back" to look at the videos they have already viewed.

Although this project does not tackle a specific group of people, it does represent one of the ways people are brought together through platforms. There is a particular demographic that can be surveyed from the videos, Generation X (born in 1965-1980), and Millennials (born in 1981-1991) . These age groups were the first to experience social platforms including YouTube, with its release in 2005. There was not much awareness for how the Internet functioned and its capabilities of storing data for what could seem like many lifetimes. It is unknown if the creators of these videos were aware of the widespread and unlimited access people would have to their videos. There is also uncertainty if the creators of these videos still have access to them, or if the people in the videos even remain alive. These videos shared would, unknowingly, circulate the internet forever.

I wanted to critique and reflect on this digital project as it highlights a key topic we have discussed in class about digital archives as well as some notions of surveillance assemblage. Many, if not all of the videos on Walz's project are of people, with little to no connection to who they are. The functionality of YouTube and its endless media pool of videos is unimaginable; this collection of image files shows just how deep the rabbit hole goes. Questions of privacy can be explored through this digital project. The personal videos published on the platform some nearly a decade ago are free to access and being displayed for artistic and critical purposes. Is this harmful? Legal? What about copyright? YouTube has the rights to videos published on their platform, however the regulations of YouTube has changed drastically over the years. This project draws draw attention to the power YouTube holds over user's videos and public accessibility. The project also reflects on the evolution of YouTube as a platform and content creation, and the shift between the age of the "home video" to more highly curated content. Through data art, and by compiling these videos and creating a space for them outside of YouTube, reflects some of Haggerty and Ericson's notions of surveillance assemblage. We begin to notice the patterns and fluid bodies of data emerging from the billions of videos published on YouTube, rather than leaning into the desire for what is new and trending. IMG_0001 shows that there are data similarities within the archives. Could this be a form of data activism? Visualizing and creating links that were once invisible could be a sort of act of rebellion, rejecting complacency as cogs in the surveillance machine.

Despite not being outwardly groundbreaking as a project or a highly accredited data set, it combines many of the themes we have explored of data art and the usage of archives as a medium. It reminded me of pieces like Nadia Myre's Indian Act, and Spirit is a Bone by Broomberg and Chanarin, and Travesty Generator by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram. Spirit is a Bone was an art installation project in the British art show from 2015-2017. It was a series of portraits of citizens from Moscow created by a facial recognition system. Using archives for artwork can be an incredibly powerful medium, often the most simple works can inspire the most discourse. Removing archives from their original context and pretenses into gallery spaces and creative artistic approaches such as IMG_0001 challenges positions of power in companies. This demonstrates how open data isn't just found through portals, but its all around us, you just have to know where to look for it.

I think that the visualization of this project is incredibly creative and intuitive. Not having a way for users to access all the videos as they must surf the website themselves simulates the difficulty of finding these videos in the abundant sea of YouTube videos. It also gives importance to each video on their own. Users can see who's account each video belongs to, providing some level of credibility and identification. However its not outwardly displayed in the project unless you look for it. The audience acts as a form of surveillance, because the videos are old enough to exist as fragments of the internet without interaction.

I think that there could be room for more personal objectives of the project coming from the artist. The minimalistic qualities leave it open for personal interpretation, where the project can be taken at face value or analyzed through a critical lens. I think projects like this should be studied more in terms of archival memory and surveillance art, because it prevents us from falling into this depressive spiral of remixing and rebooting, its using what we already have to say something different than what's already been said.

Bertram, Lillian-Yvonne. Travesty Generator. 2019.

Broomberg, Adam and Chanarin, Oliver. "Spirit is a Bone", Broomberg & Chanarin, May 2014, https://www.broombergchanarin.com/spirit-is-a-bone-1

Chayka, Kyle. "The Artist Exposing the Data We Leave Online" The New Yorker, 18 December 2024, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-artist-exposing-the-data-we-leave-online.

Haggerty, Kevin D. and Ericson, Richard V. The Surveillant Assemblage. 15 December 2003.

https://doi.org/10.1080/00071310020015280

Hosch, William L. "YouTube", Brittanica, 21 March 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube

McKenna, Amy. "Generation X", Britannica, 21 March 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Generation-X

Wallace, Ben. "IMG_0416", ben-mini, 3 November 2024, https://ben-mini.com/2024/img-0416

Walz, Riley. "IMG_0001", Riley Walz, 2024. https://walzr.com/IMG_0001

"Week 7 –Nadia Myre, Indian Act  (2000-2002) (detail)", McGill Department of Integrated Studies in Education. https://www.mcgill.ca/dise/research/facultyresearchprojects/zhigwe-myre-indianact

Zelazko, Alicja. "Millennial", Britannica, 18 March 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/millennial