Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research (AT.MAR)

This grant will evolve a cutting edge scientific online tool (AT.MAR) helping to overcome the problematic isolationbs of media art research from art historic online archives and support a profound theoretical analysis of the current image revolution. The proposed project seeks to contribute to a better understanding, wider accessibility and systematic integration of media art in our scientific systems and cultural institutions. By developing a bridge- building meta-thesaurus between traditional/historical art and media art, for the first time large-scale research from the Renaissance until today will be possible. The steps to reach this goal are: a.) Developing of an innovative meta- thesaurus and connect as test bed the largest online archive of media art documentation (DVA) with a unique art historical online archive (GSSG), b.) Implementing web 2.0 strategies to promote collaborations and offer an interactive and collective research tool for the humanities. Although there is an increasing interest in media art with numerous exhibitions, festivals and conferences, it still lacks adequate documentation and preservation strategies as recently expressed in an international declaration, signed by more than 400 scholars and leading artitst to date, and has not arrived in our societies, museums and educational institutions. (The proposed project will set the framework that enables the highly needed international, systematic preservation policy of media art. The urgency for such a strategy is shown in the declaration of MediaArtHistories 2011. See: "Media art needs global networked organisation and support International declaration" http://www.mediaarthistory.org/ and http://idw- online.de/de/news451610.) As media art depends entirely on digital storage methods, which are in a constant state of change and development, many artworks can no longer be exhibited and we will soon face the loss of an important art form from the earliest times of our post-industrial digital societies. Historically, most documentation projects developed keyword systems apart from art historical databases, which resulted in an increase of the dramatic isolation of media art from our larger cultural heritage. To provide a remedy for this separation of media art, a common context is needed to enable research within a larger historical framework. Given the unique potential of linking the DVA (most complex ongoing scientific archive of media art) with the GSSG (largest collection of Renaissance and Baroque prints in Austria) through the proposed development of an innovative research tool based on a specially developed meta-thesaurus, which can be used for other archives too, sub-history of recent decades of media art and the "Nachleben" of historic art and media forms can be analyzed for the first time systematically. Further web 2.0 strategies with user oriented applications and a bottom-up structure will be incorporated into the database, enabling collective scientific exchange between artists, engineers, researchers and the public to foster interdisciplinary and global collaborative analysis and a proactive process of knowledge transfer. A scientific research platform like the proposed "Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research (AT.MAR)" is essential for the future of media art research within image science and would be an imperative breakthrough for the digital humanities.

The research project Interactive Archive and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research (AT.MAR) led by Professor Oliver Grau (2013-2016) focused on improving the insufficient situation of Media Art research and archives in order to contribute to a better understanding, wider accessibility and systematic integration of Media Art in our scientific discourses and cultural institutions with an interdisciplinary and comparative image science approach.To reach this goal, two intertwined strategies were conducted: (1) development of innovative web 2.0 features for the novel collaborative archive for Media Art and (2) the compilation of a meta-thesaurus that builds a bridge between traditional art and Media Art and shows the correspondences, but also the breaks with regard to contents and aesthetics in image media transformation in detail.(1) The advanced web 2.0 features were installed in a pioneering archive, the former Database of Virtual Art (DVA) that has been completely revised, redesigned and renamed Archive of Digital Art (ADA). The research oriented data model of the DVA, with special consideration of technical hard- and software, artists inventions, displays and interface design, could be further developed in the AT.MAR project. Now, not only artists and their works, but also scholars and curators and their publications, lectures and exhibitions are documented in detail. Differing considerably from simple comment and sharing functions, the new web 2.0 functions allow a collective, sustainable documentation of Media Art while fulfilling high scientific standards and citeable information. In addition to this innovative collaborative data entry system, a message system, contact information/lists, and upload mirroring were implemented. These social media applications increase the visibility and usability of research but also provide the possibility of mutual control.(2) The meta-thesaurus provides a historic framework for Media Art research that benefits from new ADA archive materials and the extensive Graphic Collection Abbey Göttweig of around 30.000 prints. Based on the newly developed keyword index, the meta-thesaurus semantically links the documentation on these databases and allows to comparatively analyse the meaning of art historical themes, aesthetics and technologies in contemporary Media Art and to identify not only developments but also discontinuities.