<nettime-ann> The MediaArtResearch Thesaurus is online

["Image Science" <Image.Science@donau-uni.ac.at>]

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THE MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS IS ONLINE!

www.digitalartarchive.at

 

The ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART is pleased to announce the official publication of the MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS, the innovational achievement of a 3-year project supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)!

 

Just accepted by Leonardo (preprint)

https://www.academia.edu/33653398/Documenting_MediaArt_A_WEB_2.0-Archive_and_Bridging_Thesaurus_for_MediaArtHistories

 

 

DOING KEYWORD-BASED MEDIA ART HISTORIES

 

Based on a newly developed keyword index of terms selected by expert critique, the MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS enables the comparative analyses of contemporary Digital Art and its art historical predecessors. The THESAURUS’ cross-database search function, for what is called federated or meta-searching, makes visible the genealogical conflictions and correspondences between Digital Art’s 1) AESTHETICS, 2) SUBJECT, and 3) TECHNOLOGY.

 

With the robust semantic interoperability of the THESAURUS, user queries link simultaneously across resources (including an expanded documentation of digitized image, text, and video); domains (the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART, as well as the online graphic print collection of GÖTTWEIG ABBEY–with further historical databases coming soon!); and communities (of both artists and scholars). Innovated as an effective tool for DIGITAL HUMANITIES, this keyword-‘bridging’ THESAURUS supports researchers at the intersection of art, science, and technology in creating original MEDIA ART HISTORIES.

 

 

USING THE THESAURUS

 

The MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS encompasses keywords both at the cutting edge of Digital Art–a field also known as Media Art or ‘New’ Media Art–as well from ‘traditional’ art history. Organized into a ‘tree-like’ taxonomical structure, the broad comprehensive categories of the THESAURUS divide into increasingly specific subcategories–as in the manner of genus/species, whole/part, or class/instance. As exemplified in the “Panorama” case study sketched below, a user’s search path might trace “Aesthetics” > “Panoramic,” “Subject” > “Arts and Visual Culture” > “Panorama,” or “Technology” > “Display” > “Electronic Display” > “Projection Screen.” Users can depart from any individual keyword location, discovering terms higher, lower, or related, as defined by the hierarchical order of the controlled vocabulary, in scope notes, and through case studies.

 

As metadata, the THESARUS’ keywords allow for content indexing (in) and content retrieval (from) the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA), as well as the online graphic print collection of GÖTTWEIG ABBEY (GSSG). Each keyword links image JPEG–, text PDF–, and video MP4– formatted resources, and in ADA a ‘expanded concept of documentation’ spanning from installation iterations, and production processes, to information and schematics under the broad category of TECHNOLOGY with specific subcategories for SOFTWARE, HARDWARE, INTERFACE, and DISPLAY.

 

Users of the THESAURUS, in performing cross-database keyword searches, create and re-create database resources from the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART and GÖTTWEIG ABBEY. Keyword metadata together with these information objects semantically represent MEDIA ART HISTORIES, such that the initial critical analysis of the THESAURUS structure naturally entangles image, text, and video documents with notions such as cause, subject, and time. Thus, user queries navigate combinatorial narratives and new MEDIA ART HISTORIES that can be saved on a visual pin-board or LIGHT BOX feature, and published in an online exhibition for a wide variety of applications from scientific or art-based research to educational or public outreach.

 

 

DEVELOPING THE THESAURUS

 

As a hierarchically organized semantic classification schema, the THESAURUS explicitly represents the relationship between diverse ranges of cross-cultural, inter-disciplinary, and trans-historical terms. To best describe its specific knowledge domain of Media Art, the THESAURUS is limited in scope to 400 individual terms for a field comprehensiveness that also promotes usability. The continuously fluxing terminologies of Digital Art, such as “Interface” or “Panoramatic,” are included along with relatively fixed lexicons of classical art history, like “Body” or Landscape.” Thus, the THESAURUS serves a bridge-building function between the art forms such as Bio, Net, and Virtual Art and those like lithography, painting, and textile.

 

To develop the THESAURUS, our experts surveyed four primary resource groups: 1) ‘Traditional’ art history vocabularies, such as Iconclass, Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Warburg Subject Index demonstrated, respectively, an alphanumeric classification scheme designed for the iconography of art, a structured thesaurus used for describing items of art, architecture, and material culture that contains only generic terms, and an index of iconographical terms. 2) Digital Art databases established since year 2000 then provided a field-specific expansion of these art historical terms and concepts, though The Dictionnaire des Arts Médiatiques, GAMA, Daniel Langlois Foundation, and Netzspannung, have all either lost key researchers, had funding expired, or were eventually terminated. 3) As forums and catalysts for the contemporary discourses and innovative technologies central to Digital Art, festivals such as Ars Electronica, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), and Transmediale, and their range of materials from official publications to professional interviews, were taken into account. And, lastly, 4) premier literature from the leading publishers of Digital Art was evaluated on the basis of its indexes, peer-reviewed keywords that ‘map’ some of the most valuated topics in the field.

 

 

CASE STUDY: PANORAMA IN DIGITAL AND GRAPHIC ART

 

The THESAURUS semantically links artworks on the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA) as well as the online graphic print collection of GÖTTWEIG ABBEY (GSSG), and serves as user interface. Given the GSSG’s curation and content, a provenance of ideas for Digital Art can be singularly traced through its graphic prints. These document resources are viewable not only as artworks, but information-carrying visual media. In their day central to the production of knowledge, the graphic prints of the GSSG collection represent many of the inspirations, innovations, and inventions in disciplines such as architecture, astronomy, biology, botany, medicine, and psychology that preceded Digital Art.

 

Systematically archived in the early 18th century from across Europe by Abbot Gottfried Bessel, conservationist, diplomat, and patron of the arts, Renaissance and Baroque woodcuts, engravings, and lithographs constitute the heart of the GÖTTWEIG ABBEY COLLECTION.  With over 30,000 prints, this preserves not only one of the most encompassing private holdings in Austria, but realizes the Enlightenment ideal of encyclopaedic knowledge.

 

To introduce you to the keyword search function on ADA and the MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS, we present you with the keyword “Panorama” and its Histories:

 

Virtual Reality, immersive spaces of knowledge, memory theatre, and digital games – the idea of panoramic illusion is omnipresent in Digital Art. Renowned digital artists from Jeffrey SHAW in his immersive ceiling projections to Char DAVIES’ immersive virtual spaces, Maurice BENAYOUN to KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, all investigate the panorama in their work. And now, through the MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS, researches are able to investigate these Digital Artworks as documented on the ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART in discourse with classic art historical objects.

 

In 1787, Irish painter Robert Barker patented the process that later came to be known as the pan-orama (“all-view”). Based on a military precise view, he developed a system of curves on the concave surface of a picture so that the landscape, when viewed from a central platform at a certain elevation, appeared accurate and undistorted. Yet, blurring the boundary between real and illusionary space is a pictorial process but a fascination, an idea seen throughout European art history from the early Renaissance all the way to the Digital Art of today!

 

Research on ADA and the MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS

 

+ FIND art works from Graphic prints to Digital Art for the Keyword ‘panorama’ on MediaArt research Thesaurus!

+ BROWSE through ADA’s bibliography for literature on ‘panorama’!

+ SEARCH for artists, artworks and events related to ‘panorama’ on ADA!

 

The ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART   www.digitalartarchive.at

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