[artinfo] The MediaArtResearch Thesaurus is online

[Image Science]

THE MEDIA ART RESEARCH THESAURUS IS ONLINE!

<file://org2/COMMON/TEAM/DBW/PR_Marketing/Mailinglisten/MailinglistenPostings/www.digitalartarchive.at>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 
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