That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go.

March 7, 2024 6:32 PM

"As of 2024, UbuWeb is no longer active. The archive is preserved for perpetuity, in is entirety."
Ubuweb, founded by poet Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996, was the best repository of avant-garde material in the Internet. Over the decades it accumulated an unparalleled collection of poetry, mp3's and video.

“Don’t bookmark. Download. Hard drives are cheap. Fill them up with everything you think you might need to consult, watch, read, listen to, or cite in the future.” - Kenneth Goldsmith.

posted by thatwhichfalls (18 comments total)

The announcement that the archive is preserved is amazing, but yes, download.

I might go to Costco and buy the biggest cheap hard drive they have right now and just download all of UbuWeb. I'm pretty sure that's possible.
posted by hippybear at 6:56 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

Wow. So much amazing stuff there. A real treasure trove.

Time for wget or cURL
posted by Ayn Marx at 6:58 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

It is a big site, but do check out this retrospective of women in electronic music by Babara Golden and Jon Leidecker (aka wobbly).

ubuwebs' deactivation feels inevitable and also bums me out more than I was prepared for.
posted by german_bight at 9:50 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]

.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:58 PM on March 7

That's amazing german_bight - what is the best way to download it all? I didn't see any obvious clickable on first sight.
posted by dutchrick at 1:33 AM on March 8

.
That's unfortunate. It was always a pleasure.
posted by coolxcool=rad at 2:51 AM on March 8

Oh wow, UbuWeb changed my life. When I was a teen in Iceland, it could be so hard to find the avant-garde weirdness I was attracted to, and there was so much available even by the time I found it, which would probably have been 1999-2000. This archive capture is really giving me a falling-through-time feeling.

I'm sad that it's no longer being updated, but extremely happy that it will be preserved.
posted by Kattullus at 4:58 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Shit UbuWeb, shit!
posted by Homemade Interossiter at 6:56 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Do I have it correct that a hard drive is less permanent physically than a book?
posted by Pembquist at 7:21 AM on March 8

Aha, People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) have an ubu page, too.
posted by german_bight at 7:56 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Thinking about it for two minutes, I feel like there are enough standalone Metafilter posts baked into Goldsmith's site to last for years. Hm.
posted by german_bight at 7:58 AM on March 8

Do I have it correct that a hard drive is less permanent physically than a book?

Yes.

The data on that hard drive, though, is capable of being preserved perfectly in perpetuity - as long as it's stored with enough redundancy to overcome bit rot and enough attention is also paid to preserving the software required to interpret it.

Does anybody here know what the total data size is for the Ubuweb archive?
posted by flabdablet at 9:41 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Shit. UbuWeb was one of the best sites on the Web. The depth of it and the breadth. A real RIYL The Wire magazine or Harry Smith videos or Dial-a-Poem poets or...

So, yes, please, nthing the request for how a not-particularly-tech-savvy Mac person might capture the site. Thanks in advance.

.
posted by the sobsister at 9:42 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

Seems to me that if the data volume isn't completely insane, creating one or several BitTorrent swarms for it would go a long way toward getting it preserved and distributed without the archive server operators suffering excessive outbound bandwidth costs.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Oh damn. Ubuweb was one of the great resources of the early web, back when the potential of the Internet as a communications and scholarly tool kind of dazzled me. I did not see what it would become, despite early and dire warnings about it becoming the world's biggest shopping mall, etc.

I've already downloaded, piecemeal, bits and pieces of the site material over the years, and will always be grateful for the effort involved in its creation and maintenance. Thank you Ubuweb.

.
posted by jokeefe at 10:10 AM on March 8 [2 favorites]

I discovered UbuWeb through the 365 Days project, which they only did for two years. There are some real gems buried in there!
posted by snortasprocket at 10:13 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Merdre! At least they're keeping the site up. Lots of goodies on there. Nothing but gratitude for Goldsmith and company.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:32 PM on March 8

Radically changed my brain in high school/college and functioned as a necessary resource for high-minded weirdness at zero cost that impacted my view of the world and understanding of art. Found some of my favorite poets and far-out work there before I even considered getting a degree in something silly. A relic of a written internet with a focus on dispensing previously guarded knowledge to people across the planet. Completely indispensable. Every library should have a copy.
posted by StopMakingSense at 11:10 PM on March 8 [2 favorites]