Rhizome is a company Wattenburg cofoundend, and the functional purpose of this website is to provide an artistically represented digital archive of emails for Rhizome's email discussion list.
While NET ART ANTHOLOGY doesn't depict the original website's artistic expression, I believe they recognize this as NET ART ANTHOLOGY states "Users could navigate among them by selecting assigned keywords, which would draw “constellations” connecting related emails in the database."
The original site idea was revolutionary at the time and the start of interactivity in websites. A problem I see with this form of interactivity is that when the database of people using the website, that the glow of the stars may become too strong, rendering the website unnavigable.