[spectre] Fw: Media art database (call for works)

[Ana Peraica]

Hello everyone, 

forwarding a call from Media art database

best
Ana 

***

Dear Artists,
Dear Friends,

my inquiry concerns your contribution for the M.A.D. – Media Art Database, with its main purpose of bringing together information on media art (art using electronic media) in a thoroughly accessible and research-compatible pool.  

The first part of the M.A.D. – about 1.100 documented Media installations, -performances, and –films as well as internet projects – is based on the results of our research published partially in the reference-scale book “Closed Circuit Video Installations. A Contribution to the History and Theory of Media Art. With Modules for an Encyclopaedia of Artists” (published in German in December 2004). This time we would like to present the actualised Information medium-fairly, without any content-, language-, geographical or other restrictions.

I would be delighted if the project found your interest and would look forward very much to having you provide me the following:

1)
your Copyright-permission for the publishing of the images/documents/photographs/diagrams of your artworks for the sole purposes of academic and historic documentation within the M.A.D.-Media Art Database. M.A.D. has no commercial interests at all. At the same time, M.A.D. develops an information-exchange-tool and –pool for Media Artists, -producers, -distributors as well as curators and academics, where they might offer their knowledge, opinions, critics and their services as well.

2)
we would therefore be grateful, if you could send us an actual version of your CV, including the list of works / projects / projects in progress, and – if wished – the contact-information or the appropriate Internet-Link.

3)
About the details concerning the implementation of the wished video documentation and other materials in video format, we would like to inform you separately, as soon as you express your wish to integrate the digitalized video files in the M.A.D.-Database.


We expect to have the M.A.D. online-free accessible by December 2007 at the latest. The general information about the main purpose, goals, building up, systematics, quality, setup, design, and structure of M.A.D. you will find further down as a part of this message. You are very welcome to bring in your suggestions and ideas and thus to take over the joint responsibility for the planned information system for media art, that should remain transparent in its structure.

I would be glad to answer any questions you have concerning my inquiry and our prospective collaboration on the M.A.D.-project.

Yours faithfully,

Slavko Kacunko
M.A.D.-Team













M.A.D. – Media Art Database


THE MAIN PURPOSE
The main purpose of the M.A.D. – Media Art Database is to bring together information on media art (art using electronic media) in a thoroughly accessible and research-compatible pool. 
Creating lucid links between such multimedia archives as already exist and the indices maintained by distribution and production sites will engender a virtual archive that, among other effects, will permit research work to be done directly in situ in the archive environment. The basis will consist of the extant information systems or those under construction, of existing scholarly/scientific literature, exhibition catalogues and other available material. Together with the meta-information (records, descriptions, indices, reference terms/headings), the archive matter will be at the disposal of the research community, students and teachers and the public at large via an online interface. 

GOALS
The M.A.D. Media Art Database is to provide a pool of information on media art, sound and sustainable in that it places particular emphasis on gathering substantial, precise descriptions – a resource hitherto given only little attention. Various authors’ written ‘summaries’, consisting of extant descriptions of individual works and projects or again, completed specifically for the M.A.D. Media Art Database , are to be open to supplementation with a series of data which in turn will form a reliable and quotable resource of as yet impartial ‘meta-data’ for the compiling of new ‘summaries’, scholarly texts and critiques. 
The M.A.D. Media Art Database is designed to be a reliable, competent and sustainable curator of data on media art thanks to the input of an international network of researchers, artists and ‘agents’ in the widest sense. In the course of establishing the M.A.D. Media Art Database, a scheme to bring together the widely dispersed authorities in the field of media art will set informed priorities in order to optimise what are currently uncoordinated and therefore painfully uneconomical archiving efforts pursued by institutions and interest groups working in relative isolation. The aim is to enable the gradual growth of a more transparent system of information that does justice in equal measure to the work of production, distribution and data archiving sites and of individuals occupied with the creation and scholarly processing of information on and the theory of media arts. 

BUILDING UP
With the M.A.D. Media Art Database it is hoped to establish an Internet facility to present media art in as broad and up-to-date a range as possible. Besides pooling the secondary information of academic, verbal and written as well as multimedia records relating to the works and projects, to the artists and their approaches and to the technological and social relevance of media art in general, the Database will also show the primary matter, the works of art themselves. The main aim, however, is to present as comprehensive a resource of information as possible on artists and works, institutions and private collectors along with their respective collecting focus. Permanent updating of the cross-references links will make it easier to locate specific videotapes and media installations, performances and Internet projects accurately as well as facilitating ‘browsing’ in the course of curatorial and scholarly cross-referencing work. As another aid in that area, the Database will al
 so tend a permanently updated and expanding index. The structure of the M.A.D. Media Art Database is geared to enable a network of relevant data on various servers, thus offering instruments for effective searches, automatic indexing and arranging elements into groups. 

SYSTEMATICS
As in any similarly ambitious information system, the most difficult and at the same time the most crucial issue of keeping it up to date, of sustaining its quantitative and qualitative expansion and maintenance, continues to depend on an at once flexible and well-thought-out workflow and on establishing and maintaining the ‘community’. Only then can the meaningful expansion of the system be a realistic prospect. 
Previous experience across the world has shown that the highly demanding task of keeping a database of this kind current requires a media-art community that participates in reviewing and consolidating the information kept and in its cultivation overall. The M.A.D. Media Art Database, therefore, is to put structures at the disposal of selected individuals and working groups to edit or extend the database appropriately. 
The choice of these editors is likewise to be generated out of the (fundamentally open) community, so that an editorial system both discerning and varied can develop, its hierarchic structure to be permanently open to change, its areas of competence to be flexible. Thus artists, authors and institutions alike will have the opportunity to ‘publicise’ these areas and so, too, the M.A.D. Media Art Database, with their works, written matter and offers. In using such ‘hierarchies’ and groups, it will be possible to organise the data and information across different archives and to arrange them at will according to the research topic at hand and so on. 

1. The scheme provides for several central administrators who can change everything and incorporate new users at will  - there is to be no central institution nor a permanent ‘up-to-bottom’ controlling committee. The editors elected as competent from case to case are to provide for continual improvements in quality, comparable to some extent to a Wikipedia system. 

2. There are also provisions for administrators for the various subject areas within the system. They will be able to register new users only for their group, thus avoiding the development of any dominating pattern of allocation motivated by the administrator’s personal research interests – currently a flaw in most comparable information systems. One subject area can overlap with others, so that a number of part areas may have access to the artist database. Where possible, it should be open to an administrator to be responsible for a number of groups. 

3. Simple users should have different rights: 
a) Read Only 
b) Creating new sets of data with works of art 
c) Editing data sets 
d) Contributing their writing on works of art, etc. 
e) Combinations of b), c) and d)

A simple user should be permitted to belong to several groups; and it should be possible to have an administrator on call who must ‘approve’ a data set contributed by a user, prior to its publication. As there may be several individuals authorised to make alterations within a subject area, it would be desirable to have at least a basic record of such changes. A version system that enabled a reversion of changes made would be ideal. 
We are also currently working on mechanisms to come into operation in the event of several users working on the same item at once (blocking or similar). 

Such an authentication and authorisation system will ensure that no unauthorised users can access data permanently or temporarily copyrighted or that such data are only accessible through the local archives against payment. By implementing standardised protocols and formats, access to the archives will also be possible via the familiar Internet work stations. 

In this way it will be possible to access data in different archives (information distributed in different systems and at different physical locations) via the M.A.D. Media Art Database in a transparent fashion so that every intersection involved or linked in the archive retains full control of its own data and information. 

QUALITY
The quality of the M.A.D. Media Art Database is to be vouchsafed and maintained not least by minimising editorial provisos in order to maximise the input in the shared areas of competence. 
This kind of ‘first-hand data-gathering’ can be expected to call for less effort in settling questions of copyright than is the case in comparable projects. The sustained minimising of costs thus effected and the high speed with which data can be obtained are among the most important priorities of the M.A.D. Media Art Database; they are also the preconditions for its ‘ultimate’ aim of sustainability in both the information and the discourses it serves. 

SETUP
The starter module for the M.A.D. Media Art Database is an archive representing some 1,100 media installations, augmented initially by some few characteristic media performances, video tapes and pieces for Internet, and texts on media art. 
The great number of artists and works presented, along with the pertinent descriptions (‘Summaries’), represent great ‘initial value’ on two counts, as a first introduction to the historical and current diversity of media art and as an apt base for the planned widening and deepening of the extant areas of information. 
Access to the majority of the information and data is to be free and open. However, previous experience has shown that licence considerations, particularly in relation to video tapes presented in full length, make it necessary to restrict access to these to a defined circle of users only – the research community, corresponding institutions and private licensees. 
The system is to be based on existing Open-Source solutions which will have to be adapted for the purposes of the project. 

DESIGN
The general structure of the ‘front end’, the design, currently presented in provisional form, is to be optimised as finances allow, making it a user-friendly working environment. The emphasis in developing the user interface will be on making the system as simple and intuitive as possible to use whether it be by art historians or the interested public, including users without special technical expertise. 
During the trial period, the interface will be tested by students and their feedback taken on board in the design process in order to ensure that the product accords to the needs of the end users. 

STRUCTURE
The information on media art is organised according to the characteristics of perception of the respective form and the specifics of interaction with it. 

1.	‘The Cinematic” (video, film, 3-D-animation, both analogue and digital) 
Works oriented markedly on time/diachronic in structure. The option of archiving items as streams in preview (i.e., not the highest) quality is planned. The best possible quality is to be available via the direct links with the commercial and non-commercial providers, institutions and via individuals indirectly. 

2. ‘Internet Projects’ 
Chiefly works existing and functioning only on the Internet. By way of an initial response to the difficult question of recording artistic Internet projects, there are to be direct links to the art websites themselves and to the relevant online archives, presentation and review platforms. 

3. ‘Installation-based work’ 
Works of a mainly spatial/environment/site-specific aspect – ‘media installations’, on record in available multimedia material. 

4. ‘Text-based items’ 
Text by researchers, artists and critics, collectors and promoters of art; but also original works of media art perceptible exclusively or chiefly as text.

5. ‘Performative works’ 
Performativv based works like Performance, Action, Media Theater, Video-Dance, Happening etc.






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