Net Art Extinction Timeline

Documenting how dependency changes — API shutdowns, plugin end-of-lifes, browser removals — break digital artworks.

Live site: extinction.zkm.de

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev      # http://localhost:4321
npm run build    # Static output in dist/
npm run preview  # Preview production build

Architecture

• Framework: Astro (static site generation)
• Visualization: D3.js (client-side SVG timeline)
• Content: Markdown files with validated frontmatter (Astro Content Collections)
• Hosting: Docker (nginx) behind Traefik, deployed via GitHub Actions to Harbor

Directory structure

src/
  content/
    events/       # Extinction event entries (Markdown + frontmatter)
    artworks/     # Artwork entries (Markdown + frontmatter)
  components/
    timeline/     # D3 timeline visualization
    ui/           # Shared UI components (badges, cards, header, footer)
  layouts/        # Base HTML layout
  lib/            # Utilities (date parsing)
  pages/          # Astro page routes
  styles/         # Global CSS + timeline styles

Content model

Events document a specific dependency change (e.g., "Flash Player blocked"). Each event references zero or more artworks that were affected, with per-artwork severity and status.

Artworks are canonical records of digital works (title, artist, year, URL, medium).

Deployment

On push to main, GitHub Actions builds a Docker image and pushes it to harbor.zkm.de/mutech/extinction-timeline. Portainer auto-deploys the new image. Traefik handles SSL.

Required secrets: HARBOR_USERNAME, HARBOR_PASSWORD.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to add events and artworks.

License

Content: CC BY 4.0. Code: MIT.

Maintained by Marc Schütze at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.