Documenting Mediaart L a R E N E G ©2017 ISAST with Thisissue
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
g e n e r a l a r t i c l e documenting media Art An Archive and Bridging Thesaurus for MediaArtHistories o l i v e R g R A u , S e bast i A n H A l l e R , J A n i n A H o th , v i o l A R ü hs e , d e v o n S ch i l l e R a n d m i cha e l A S e i S e R While Media Art has evolved into a critical field at the intersection advance the mission of ADA, the AT.MAR project was fol- of art, science and technology, a significant loss threatens this art form lowed through in two stages: First, the implementation of due to rapid technological obsolescence and static documentation social Web 2.0 features is to foster the engagement of both strategies. Addressing these challenges, the Interactive Archive and ABSTRACT Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research was developed to advance an the artists and scholars of the ADA community, as well as to Archive of Digital Art. Through an innovative strategy of “collaborative facilitate the comparative analysis of media artworks there archiving,” social Web 2.0 features foster the engagement of the archived. Second, the instituting of a “bridging thesaurus” international media art community and a “bridging thesaurus” linking with a hierarchical structure of semantic connections will the extended documentation of the Archive with other databases of function as a linguistic representation for the extensive “traditional” art history facilitates interdisciplinary and transhistorical knowledge domain of media art. For research into contem- comparative analyses. porary MediaArtHistories as well as historical predecessors, the controlled vocabulary of this thesaurus indexes individ- As an innovative solution to challenges in the documentation, ual works of “new” media on ADA with those of “traditional” indexing and research of media art, the Interactive Archive art history on other databases, such as the artworks in the and Meta-Thesaurus for Media Art Research (AT.MAR) Graphic Collection of Göttweig Abbey (GSSG). has been developed as a strategy for “collaborative archiving” [1]. Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and Hard HumAniTieS: mediA Art conducted at the Department of Image Science at Danube HistoRieS And imAge SCienCe University, AT.MAR is an advanced conception of the Ar- Over the last five decades, Media Art has evolved into a signifi- chive of Digital Art (ADA) [2]. Formerly called the Database cant contemporary field at the intersection of art, science and of Virtual Art (DVA), this pioneering and longest-running technology. It encompasses art forms produced, modified or archive for works at the intersection of art, science and tech- transmitted by means of the very digital technologies that are nology celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2015 [3]. ADA was fundamentally revolutionizing our world—as well as how we established as a collective project in cooperation with re- perceive and interact with images—through globalization, the nowned international media artists, researchers and institu- Internet, social networks, Web 2.0 and 3.0, and so on. Unlike tions for the integration of a sustainable exchange between with painting or sculpture, graphic printing or even photogra- artists, experts and users. Comprehensive and open access, phy, media artists make use of emerging technologies that not ADA is a cost-free and financially independent database. To only originate from a scientific, military or industrial context as their media, or image-carrier, but have this technology as Oliver Grau (researcher, administrator, principal investigator), Department for their explicit image-subject as well [4]. Thus, media art can Image Science, Danube University, Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Straße 30, 3500 Krems, Austria. take highly disparate forms and includes such genres as bio/ Email: [email protected]. genetic, database, digital animation, game, glitch, installations, Sebastian Haller (research associate), Department for Image Science, Danube University. nanotechnology, net art, telepresence and virtual reality. Janina Hoth (research associate), Department for Image Science, Danube University. Image science (Bildwissenschaft in the German tradition), Viola Rühse (research associate), Department for Image Science, Danube University. and its sister discipline, visual studies (or visual culture, as it is Devon Schiller (research associate), Department for Image Science, Danube University. called in the Anglo-Saxon tradition), encourages a “reading” Michaela Seiser (research associate), Department for Image Science, of artistic images that is interdisciplinary, as is essential with Danube University. media art. This approach presupposes that scientific work See www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/leon/52/5 for supplemental files associated with images must include their definition, archiving and a with this issue. familiarity with a large quantity of images. Although there ©2017 ISAST https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_01482 LEONARDO, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 435–441, 2019 435 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon_a_01482 by guest on 02 October 2021 have been a number of historic forerunners to the image science method, Aby Warburg is most frequently cited as the discipline’s “fa- ther.” Famously intending to develop art his- tory into a “laboratory of the cultural studies of image history” that would widen the fi eld to “images . in the broadest sense” (German original: “Bilder . im weitesten Sinn”), by in- cluding many forms of images in his iconic Mnemosyne image atlas of 1929, Warburg redefi ned art history as medial bridge build- ing [5]. Yet, defi nitions of the image such as those by Gottfried Böhm, James Elkins, Klaus Sachs-Hombach and W.J.T Mitchell [6] have Fig. 1. Archive of Digital Art, screenshot (detail, home, 4 May 2016): www.digitalartarchive.at /nc/home.html (© Department for Image Science, Danube University Krems) become problematic in the context of the in- teractive, immersive, telematic and generative digital image. Th ese challenges have fueled interdisciplinary a condition intensifi ed by the potentially many iterations debate as to the status of the image and its function in media of a work generated through the interactive platforms for art, with protagonists such as Andreas Broeckmann, Oliver and interventions of users. As such, to document individual Grau, Jens Hauser, Erkki Huhtamo, Martin Kemp, Gunalan media artworks to academic standards necessitates the “re- Nadarajan, Lev Manovich and Barbara Staff ord [7]. cording” of various aspects, including specifi c appearances, Th rough the innovation of methodologies in media art, production processes, exhibitions, distribution, institutional the study of MediaArtHistories, and its social evaluation as contexts, observer response, publications and research. art, discourses of media art investigate the most immediate Since the turn of the third millennium, there has cer- sociocultural questions of our time: from body futures, in- tainly been evident promotion of conferences, lexicons and formation society and media (r)evolution to environmental platforms in the endeavor to document media art. Th is is interference, fi nance virtualization and surveillance culture. specifi cally the subject of the MediaArtHistories conference While the critical lexicons of classical art history are relatively series, which with its premiere in 2005 represented and ad- fi xed, the classifying language of media art is defi ned with dy- dressed the many disciplines involved in the then-emerging namic terminologies that are continually in fl ux, or so-called fi eld [11]. A number of preservation projects have also been fl oating signifi ers. Th us, the forums and catalysts for media established. While many continue to exist online, each has art rhetoric take place in a vibrant knowledge ecosystem re- lost key researchers, has had funding expire, or has been ported in collaborative projects for database documentation eventually terminated [12]. And as recently expressed in an supported by institutional and social agencies, international international declaration [13], signed as of 2018 by more than festivals with peer-reviewed awards and globally publicized 500 scholars and leading artists from 40 countries, there is interviews, and new literatures published by leading scien- an urgent need to create a stable international platform of tifi c and university presses [8]. interoperable archives. Yet, even with such progress in the Yet, despite such worldwide recognition, programs for study of media art, programs for documenting this “art of documenting the “art of our times” continue to be met with our times” continue to be met with serious challenges within serious challenges within the memory institutions of our so- the memory institutions of our societies. Indeed, it is no ex- cieties. Th is is due fi rst and foremost to the essential form of aggeration to state that, as a postindustrial information so- media art itself. As media artworks frequently have function- ciety in the digital age, we continue to be threatened with a alities across variable media substrates, and these constituted signifi cant loss of this critical art form, both in the archives by the latest technologies as well as characterized by rapid ob- of art history and for the accessibility of future scholarship. solescence, the work of media artists complicates both object- oriented preservation methods as well as static indexing mediA ART (R)evoluTion strategies. Consequently, artworks originating even 10 years And THe ARCHive oF digiTAl ART ago can oft en no longer be exhibited. As debated since the Before the Archive of Digital Art (ADA), no concerted and 1990s, museums rarely include media art in their collections, sustainable strategy either governmental or institutional and those that do struggle to sustain fi nance, expertise and existed for the documentation of media art. Since the year technology for the preservation of artworks through strategies 2000, ADA has been one of the most complex research- such as migration, emulation and reinterpretation [9]. Fur- oriented resources available online as a platform for both ther, that media artists engage the most contemporary digi- scientifi c information and social communication.