Deliverable 1.

1
Inventory of relevant research trajectories in the field of unstable media
1. Introduction
When defining appropriate strategies for capturing unstable media works (or electronic
artworks), we need to understand the associated practice of electronic art, as it becomes
manifest through the activity of different institutions and initiatives. Which organizations are
active in the field of electronic art, in its documentation and preservation? Which preservation
initiatives already exist in this field, and which strategies do they apply? By making an
inventory of relevant, existing initiatives and trajectories, it becomes possible to outline and
position the specific problematic preservation issues that are covered in the research project
Capturing Unstable Media.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

2. Focus of the inventory

This short inventory of the current 'state of the art' in documentation and preservation of
electronic art will focus on the following aspects.
1. First, it is necessary to explore the field and practice of electronic art and its
institutions. Which initiatives and institutions offer access to which electronic and
digital works? What kind of media art practices are they involved in? Do they have
workspaces to (co-) develop these practices?
2. Next, it is important to investigate how these initiatives and institutions describe and
document these practices. Which components of these practices are described and
documented, and how? Do these initiatives adopt international descriptive metadata
standards or does the specificity of the field of electronic art require different
description methods?
3. The following step of the inventory is to determine whether the different initiatives
have adopted a strategy and/or a theoretical model to deal with (problematic)
preservation issues. Is the institution's focus on documentation or preservation?
(How) Are they managing different types of metadata in these
preservation/documentation processes?
4. As a final step, V2_'s archive will be positioned in this field. Where can we find
common characteristics and approaches, where is V2_ following a different direction?
The first three steps of this inventory (practice, documentation and preservation) will be
covered in the next chapter. Preservation initiatives mentioned there will be elaborated
further in chapter 4, where some other significant preservation projects will briefly be
described. V2_'s activities will be positioned in chapter 5.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

3. Overview of initiatives
A. Selection criteria
Recently, researchers like Stephen Wilson1 and Michael Naimark2 have written broad and
systematic inventories of institutions in the field of electronic art. For an inventory in the
context of Capturing Unstable Media, a narrower inventory is needed; in order to facilitate a
restricted and verifiable overview, a selection was made from organizations maintaining an
archive database that is accessible online. The collections were selected according to the
following criteria:
- Geographic diversity: the inventory includes collections from Europe
(Netzspannung, Ars Electronica), Canada (Daniel Langlois Foundation) and the
United States (Walker Art Center, Rhizome).
- Disciplinary diversity: 20th century media art (Walker Art Center), net.art
(Rhizome), electronic art (Ars Electronica, Netzspannung).
- Diversity in content focus: online archives focusing on art objects (Walker Art
Center, Rhizome), activities (Netzspannung) and documentation (Daniel Langlois
Foundation).

B. Selected initiatives
(1) Netzspannung.org3
Practice
Internet platform for media art, science and technology. Netzspannung.org is part of a
research and development project of Media Arts Research Studies (MARS), a German
interdisciplinary research group focusing on human presence in and experience of new
technologies. The MARS Lab experiments with demonstrators/prototypes of communication
environments (like Netzspannung), develops instinctive interfaces to connect
body/mind/space and extensions for existing VRML based browsers, creates tools, an online
journal and networks and organizes events and the Digital Sparks competition. All this
research and the associated media art practices accumulated in the knowledge portal
Netzspannung.org, which visualizes relations between media art and culture, science and
technology.
Documentation
Netzspannung offers media art practitioners the possibility to present, communicate and
archive their projects in different ways. The portal features:
- Netzkollektor: a showcase for artists, producers, designers and researcher and their
activities and projects, with a timeline, semantic and traditional list interface.
- Mediathek: an online archive containing video recordings of lectures, workshops and
symposia organized by MARS.
- Cast 01: an online archive of the conference Living in Mixed Realities with thematically
arranged conference proceedings (project/research) and information (keynotes and
screenings/demos) on projects/research and speakers.
1

Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2002.
2
Naimark, Michael. Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Money: Technology-Based Art and the Dynamics of
Sustainability. May 2003. 31 December 2003 <http://www.artslab.net/>.
3
Netzspannung. December 2003. MARS Exploratory Media Lab, Fraunhofer Institute for Media
Communication. 31 December 2003 <http://www.netzspannung.org/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

Digital Sparks: competition for (student) projects in German-speaking countries, with map
of places.
- Netzwerk: documentation on information channels on media art, maps of places for
media art education and production and professional profiles of media artists, scientists,
technicians and theorists.
Netzspannung.org tries to cover the whole field of media art and digital culture in Germanspeaking countries and works on a tool for relating content of media art archives. Data of
different nature (texts, technical drawings, locations, keynotes) and in different formats
(Kasenna Mpeg1-streams, RealMedia-streams,) are disseminated in suitable ways. Their
data structure includes a flat list of keywords (topics, formats, technology, supplementary)
and is structured around the following data types:
- project: media art work, research project, theoretical study.
- event: performance, music, conference, exhibition, etc.
- tool/product: software, hardware, systems, interfaces.
- announcement: scholarships, competitions, call for papers, call for proposals.
- report: report, article, review.
- website: URLs.
Netzspannung focuses on the documentation of its activities and does not build an actual
collection of physical objects.
-

Preservation
Frauenhofer Insitut, the umbrella-organization of Netzspannung.org, participates in the
Database of Virtual Art (see chapter 4).
(2) Ars Electronica Archive4
Practice
Museum, festival and center for electronic art in Linz (A). AEC presents the latest
developments in digital media arts, prototypes and practical applications in new technologies
within the framework of thematic focal points. The annual Ars Electronica Festival features
an exhibition, project presentations, and a competition (Prix Ars Electronica) with an expert
jury. The R&D department, Futurelab, develops hardware and software applications,
focusing on augmented reality, design of exhibition spaces and digital surfaces.
Documentation
The practices, development and history of AEC are well documented, both off- and online.
The offline part consist mainly the festival catalogues and AEC publications (books, videos
and CDs). The online part (Archives) is more extensive and covers documentation on the
festival, the Prix Ars Electronica, material on Futurelab and artists-in-residence projects as
well as biographies of the artists and theoreticians who took part in them.
The online archives (German/English) are thematically subdivided in sections:
- Festival: all texts from festival catalogues + program texts from 1979 and festival sites
(screenshot + URL) from 1995
- Prix: descriptions (text + thumbnail) of all works and projects that have received a Golden
Nica or Honorable Mention since 1987 + category descriptions + biographies of artists
and jury members and jury statements.
- Futurelab: flat alphabetic list of products and projects developed by lab + descriptions
(text + several images) + related projects, people or links.
- CenterInstallations: temporal list of all installations shown in the center's exhibition space
from 1996 + descriptions (text + several images) + related projects, people or links.
4

Ars Electronica Archive. December 2003. Ars Electronica Center. 31 December 2003
<http://www.aec.at/en/archives/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

A special tool, the Database Navigator, allows you to browse through people, projects or
publications over the years. This tool visualizes objects and their relations in the database of
AEC and shows the underlying relational structure of that database. These objects (people,
projects or publications) are also directly accessible as a list:
- Publications Archive: temporal list of all print, audio and video materials released in
conjunction with Ars Electronica + minimal descriptions (text + thumbnail of cover)
- Project Archive: flat alphabetic list of all artworks created in conjunction with AEC +
minimal description.
- Personnel Archive: flat alphabetic list of all people involved in AEC + minimal description.
The data structure does not include keywords and is loosely structured around:
1. the different sections: Festival, Prix, Center, Futurelab & Archiv
2. data types:
- projects
- people
- events
- news
- press
Preservation
Ars Electronica Center is currently not involved in any specific preservation-related initiatives.
(3) Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology5
Practice
Research center with online data collections of documentation on media art and of events in
the field of media art. Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology (DLF) is a
non-profit organization, based in Montral (CA), which focuses on exploring and defining the
field of investigation for media arts and creating the resources needed to study this field. DLF
offers different funding programs, supports research and art projects and makes this
information public through publications, presentations and online activities.
Documentation
DLF operates a Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) to document history,
artworks and practices associated with electronic, digital media arts. One of the centres
goals is easy on-line access to documents of all kinds (articles, photographs, video, audio),
particularly documentation on the works and research projects supported by the Foundation
and documentation drawn directly from its archives.
The CR+D documentation database includes (1) a documentation collection covering the
major trends, practices and research that have emerged in electronic and media arts from
the early 1960s to today, and (2) an extensive on-line resource directory of research tools
and resources on art, science and technology.
1. Documentation collection:
- CR+D Database: search engine to browse through all documents or all events in the
collection. Documents can be searched by type (digital document, text on a website,
website etc.) and/or subject (art, science, humanities with subcategories), with an iconic
indication of the document as copy or original. Events can be searched by type (program,
festival, multidimensional event etc.).

Daniel Langlois Foundation Centre for Research and Documentation. December 2003. Daniel
Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology. 31 December 2003 <http://www.fondationlanglois.org/e/CRD/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

Archives and special collections: Images du future collection, Steina and Woody Vasulka
fonds, Collection of Documents published by Experiments in Arts and Technology,
Collection of Films on Frank J. Malina.
Researcher in residence: information on the projects and their findings.
CR+D acquisitions: monthly update of new acquisitions in the collection.

2. On-line resource directory:

- Directories / Databases
- Collections of texts and documents
- Lexicons/glossaries/dictionaries
- Description of archives and documentation collections
- Electronic distribution lists
- Funding, subsidies and grants
This on-line resource directory contains URL references and a flat list of terms, the 'data
sheet', which describes language, topics (artistic practice, perspective, theoretical field) and
types of resources (lexicon, collection of texts, timeline etc.) of the resource in question. The
data structure of the documentation collection includes keywords of the disciplines art,
science and humanities and is structured around document or event types.
Preservation
The Daniel Langlois Foundation is involved in the Variable Media Network (see chapter 4).
(4) Walker Art Center6
Practice
20th Century modern art museum in Minneapolis (USA), focusing on visual, performing and
media arts. Walker Art Center organizes exhibitions, events, programs and lectures and
takes a multidisciplinary approach to the presentation, interpretation, collection and
preservation of art. The Walker Art Center has been involved in several experimental (online)
projects concerning presenting/preserving digital arts (New Media Initiative, Telematic Arts).
Documentation
The collection of Walker Art consist of various types of art objects and materials, like film,
video, sculptures, paintings and websites, and of various types of documentation, like press
reviews, video registration of performances, audio streams of radio programs, biographies
etc. Collections and Resources is the main portal to the collection designed for a general
public. It features object-relation-based information (artworks, events, artists and resources)
on several art disciplines, including sculpture, video work, performance and net.art. It
consists of a large database of objects in the Walker Art Collection, with artworks, events,
artists and resources related to keywords. Search options are: 1) online only 2) arts and
artists 3) archives and events 4) educational resources. Each centralized object has a title, a
unique identification number, a description, sometimes a thumbnail picture and other
attributes, which depends on the type of object. However, the object is not only defined by
this core information, but also described in relation to other artworks, artists, events or
resources. The distinction between this relational information and the core (or field)
information is sometimes fuzzy. There are two interesting features:
- distinction between online and offline objects
- object details (especially those for Net.art) like Dimensions, Inscriptions, Edition,
Classification, Physical Description, Hard and Software specification

Walker Art Center Collections and Resources. December 2003. Walker Art Center. 31 December
2001 <http://collections.walkerart.org/>.
Walker Art Center New Media Initiatives. December 2003. Walker Art Center. 31 December 2001
<http://www.walkerart.org/nmi/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

The data (items) of the collection are structured around the data types Object, Events,
Archive, Agent and the data type Concepts including subjects from an interactive associative
keywords list.
Preservation
Walker Art Center is involved in Archiving the Avant-Garde (see chapter 4).
(5) Rhizome.org7
Practice
Online platform for the new media art community. Rhizome is a nonprofit organization based
in New York (USA), whose program and activities support the creation, presentation,
discussion and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies, including
software, databases, network protocols and multimedia tools. It offers a web-based archive
and open repository of internet-based artworks (Artbase), of a mailing list discussion
(Textbase) and a calendar of events. The goal is to provide an online platform for new media
artists to present their work within a context of relevant critical discourse and online
discussions, and to preserve their work for the future.
Documentation
The Artbase is Rhizome's online archive of new media art. Initially conceived and developed
as an archive of net.art projects exclusively, the scope has since been expanded to other
forms of new media art, such as software art, games and web-based documentation of
installation and performance work. All works must be accessible via a Universal Resource
Locator (URL) on the Internet. Artists who want to upload their work, can either choose
between documenting their work (Linking) or preserving their work (Cloning).
- Linked objects: consist of metadata only: the artists statement and bio, a description of
the artwork, a thumbnail image, keywords and other indexing information, and a link to
the art work (in the form of a URL). Linked objects do not include a copy of the work
itself.
- Cloned objects: include an archival copy of the artwork stored on the Rhizome server.
This archival copy, or clone, serves as a backup in case the original version becomes
inaccessible (due, for example, to a hard disk crash). The cloned version also serves as
a snapshot of the artwork as it existed when submitted.
In addition to that, Rhizome assembles information via an artist questionnaire, specifically
related to the artworks technical make-up (platforms, browser, code, file formats and client
side tech, plug-ins, user input, bandwidth and display, server side tech and databases) and
the artists intentions for the future of the project (emulation, migration etc.).
The Textbase is an online list of informative texts of interest for the new media community
and posted by this community. Includes different types of texts, like announcements, calls for
proposal, essay, interview, comment, listed either by keyword or date.
Rhizome strives to build a representative collection of 'important' Internet artworks and a
representative collection of text and interviews. Both collections have a Dublin Core based,
relational database structure, using MySQL, with data types such as creator, date, places,
types, genre and keywords, structured around the art or text objects. One of Rhizome's
objectives for the near future is to implement DAMD (Digital Asset Management Database) in
order to structure and share their data8.
7

Rhizome Artbase. December 2003. Rhizome. 31 December 2003 <http://rhizome.org/fresh/art/>.

Rhizome Text. December 2003. Rhizome. 31 December 2003 <http://rhizome.org/fresh/text/>.
8
Rinehart, Richard. Preserving the Rhizome Artbase. September 2002. Rhizome. 31 December 2003
<http://www.rhizome.org/Artbase/report.htm>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

Preservation
Rhizome's Artbase was specifically set up for preservation purposes; Richard Rinehart9
wrote a report with recommendations in 2002. Rhizome is also involved in Archiving the
Avant-Garde (see chapter 4).

Ibidem.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

4. Preservation initiatives
A. Variable Media Initiative10
Initiative
Network of cultural heritage organizations dedicated to inventing and sharing approaches to
preserving art in new media. It proposes an unconventional new preservation strategy, the
Variable Media Paradigm, that has emerged from the Guggenheims efforts to preserve its
collection of conceptual, minimalist and video art and that is supported by the Daniel Langlois
Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. The aim of this affiliation is to help build a
network of organizations that will develop the tools, methods and standards needed to
implement this strategy.
Strategy
Centered on an artwork's creator rather than its medium, the variable media paradigm pairs
artists with museum and media consultants to provoke comparison of artworks created in
ephemeral mediums. They are engaged in case studies to imagine ways to outwit the
obsolescence that often besets technological art forms and to test whether the works'
integrity can survive creative translations from one medium to another. The initiative aims to
define each of these case studies in terms of medium-independent behaviors and to identify
artist-approved strategies for preserving artworks with the help of an interactive
questionnaire.
Behaviors
- Installed: artwork's physical installation depends on exhibition space. Questionnaire
tracks issues of site-specific placement as well as scale, public access, and lighting.
- Performed: works for which the process is as important as the product, including dance,
music, performance. Questionnaire tracks cast, set, and props as well as
original instructions.
- Interactive: installations that allow visitors to manipulate, interact with or take home
components of an artwork. Questionnaire tracks types of interface, method by which
visitors modify the work and the form in which traces of such input are recorded.
- Reproduced: copying of the original master of the artwork results in a loss of quality.
Such recording media include analog photography, film, audio, and video.
- Duplicated: work can be copied without loss of quality. Include digital media and works
comprised of industrially fabricated or mass-produced components.
- Encoded: work is written in computer code or some other language that requires
interpretation (e.g. dance notation).
- Networked: work designed to be viewed on an electronic communication system,
whether a LAN or the Internet. Include Web sites and streaming audio and video.
Preservation
The variable media paradigm asks artists to choose the most appropriate strategy for dealing
with the inevitable slippage that results from translating to new mediums:
1. Storage: store a work physically (hardware/equipment or archive digital files on disk).
However, the artwork will expire once these ephemeral materials cease to function.
2. Emulation: imitate the original look of the piece by completely different means.
Disadvantages are prohibitive expensive and inconsistency with the artist's intent.
3. Migration: upgrade equipment and source material of the work. However, the original
appearance of the artwork will probably change in its new medium.
10

Variable Media Initiative. December 2003. Variable Media Network. 31 December 2003
<http://www.variablemedia.net/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

4. Reinterpretation: reinterpret the work each time it is re-created. It is a dangerous

technique, when not warranted by the artist, but it may be the only way to re-create
performance, installation, or networked art designed to vary with context.

B. Rhizome's Artbase11
Initiative
As a forerunner of the global new media art community, Rhizome has committed itself to
exploring new grounds and methodologies in preserving new media art. These explorations
build on Rhizome's Artbase, their existing system for the submission, storage and display of
artworks and their accompanying metadata. A key part of this system, the Artbase Artist
Questionnaire, gathers information necessary for guiding future preservation measures, in
analogy of the Variable Media Initiative.
Strategy
Taking the Artbase initial impetus into the next phase, Richard Rinehart wrote Preserving the
Rhizome Artbase12. In this report he maps Rhizome's contribution to the larger effort to
preserve new media artworks and outlines the key steps Rhizome should consider taking in
the long term for emulation/re-creation. Rinehart identifies three types of metadata:
descriptive, administrative and technical, which Rhizome should capture or create, once for
the artwork and again for the technology needed to run it:
1. artwork metadata
a. descriptive metadata (creator, date, genre etc.) used for discovery and display.
b. administrative metadata (legal rights, general structure of work, location of files).
c. technical metadata (function of technologies which are used to run the work).
2. technology metadata
a. descriptive metadata (creator and type of software, date and current version).
b. administrative metadata (rights to run/modify codes, time limitations, platform
limitations, location of application files, other software required for running).
c. technical metadata (bottom-level code used to create software).
These two categories of information should be maintained separately, not only for emulation
purposes but also to keep clear the distinction between the original artwork and the
mechanisms used to represent it. The distinctive relationship between content/vehicle and
original/derivative is similar in both cases. It is recommended that the tool for managing both
sets of metadata be constructed as a relational database with two separate tables.
Rinehart proposes an interoperable metadata schema with a set Dublin Core elements and a
crosswalk of other current metadata standards, which also allows for works, which have
either or both digital and physical components such as gallery installation or robotic
components. A full record exists in the Artbase for one work, including all the metadata
elements such as creator, type, rights, format etc. Links extend from the one field in that
record to the many related records in the technology database, which also comprise full
records of creator, type, rights etc.13 Conversely, the technology database should have
records for each instance of software, with links to all artworks that use that software.
The best solution for managing these data would be using two tools: one for metadata
gathering and public access online; another for internal metadata management. The "Digital
11

Rhizome Artbase. December 2003. Rhizome. 31 December 2003 <http://rhizome.org/fresh/art/>.

Rinehart, Richard. Preserving the Rhizome Artbase. September 2002. Rhizome. 31 December 2003
<http://www.rhizome.org/Artbase/report.htm>.
13
Rinehart, Richard. Preserving the Rhizome Artbase. September 2002. Rhizome. 31 December 2003
<http://www.rhizome.org/Artbase/report.htm>.
12

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

10

Asset Management Database" (DAMD), developed by the Berkeley Art Museum and the
Museums and the Online Archive of California (MOAC)14 consortium offers a promising
approach, including two interesting features. First the DAMD architecture includes a complex
rendering of the structure of a work. New media artwork records benefit from being broken
down into component parts, with the appropriate technology/software records being linked
into the appropriate components. DAMD allows records to be exported into standard based
formats, such as EAD and XML, allowing the data to be shared outside the boundaries of
any one organization.

C. Archiving the Avant Garde15

Initiative
Collaborative project to develop, document and disseminate strategies for describing and
preserving non-traditional, intermedia and variable media art forms, such as performance,
installation, conceptual and digital art. This joint builds on existing relationships and the
previous work of its founding partners in this area, like the Variable Media Initiative and the
Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online (CIAO)16 Consortium. Archiving the Avant Garde
takes ideas and strategies developed in these previous efforts and tests these models for
cataloging, accession, and, in the case of digital art, emulation in practical, real-world
environment of museum and arts organizations.
Strategy
Archiving the Avant Garde is concerned with developing new practices and metadata
standards consistent with other metadata standards in the arts and cultural heritage
communities. Context and relation is crucial for understanding conceptual and intermedia
arts collections that are comprised of multiple objects in one performance, or that combine
documentation with artifacts to exhibit process over product. Their objectives are manifold:
1. Formalize, document and contribute to the Variable Media Questionnaire.
2. Establish a set of descriptive elements, which include a core description (catalog record)
that can be used to manage variable media works of art.
3. Develop a set of standard vocabulary terms and contribute them to Getty's Art &
Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).
4. Initiate the development of an experimental computer emulator to test the emulation
strategy.
5. Develop a preservation model for digital art that is based on the Open Archival
Information System (OAIS).
6. Initiate the development of an open source tool to capture the necessary information to
manage and preserve variable media works and to manage the digital files which
comprise these works (extension of DAMD). Museums and the Online Archive of
California (MOAC)17 already developed similar tools, Archiving the Avant Garde will
benefit from that work.

14

MOAC Museums and the Online Archive of California. University of California, Berkeley Art
Museum & Pacific Film Archive. 31 December 2003 < http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/moac/>.
15
Archiving the Avant Garde. December 2003. Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. 31
December 2003 <http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/about_bampfa/avant_garde.html>.
16
CIAO Conceptual and Intermedia Arts Online. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum &
Pacific Film Archive. 31 December 2003 <http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/ciao/>. CIAO is a
collaboration founded by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Walker Art Center and
Franklin Furnace to develop standardized methods of documenting and providing access to
conceptual and other ephemeral intermedia art forms.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

11

Their proposed metadata scheme is highly interoperable with existing cultural heritage
standards used in the United States, so that records of work of digital art can be integrated
with records of works from other variable media (installation, performance) and traditional art
forms (painting, sculpture). This scheme has been used as a framework for the metadata
scheme of Rhizome's Artbase, proposed by Richard Rinehart, as outlined in the previous
paragraph.

D. Database of Virtual Art 18

Initiative
Research project to provide for the appropriate documentation of virtual art, as a prerequisite
for conservation and collection. Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and
the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, Dr. Oliver Grau of the Humboldt-Universitaet
zu Berlin works on an information resource and web-based showcase for media art. This
specially developed database model allows artists and researchers to post their material
themselves so that it can document in detail the development of this art form and the
uniqueness of these works, which are often the result of long years of experience and
research.
Strategy
The Database of Virtual Art focuses on the process-based, interactive and contextdependent nature of virtual art, as it is created by artists at research institutes and shown in
different forms at festivals and exhibitions. It strives to make transparent developments in the
field of virtual art and its subgenres (virtual reality, genetic and telematic art) as well as to
present the rapidly growing oeuvre of the artists that create it. The Database of Virtual Art
proposes a modified, expanded concept of documentation, supplementary to existing
preservation strategies like emulation and recreation. Works are documented within a
context of systematically organized complex information and thus prepares the ground for
conservation. It records, apart from the works core information:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Biographical and bibliographical information about the artist.

Work and list of exhibitions (title, date location, funding).
Graphic images of the installations structure.
Digital image documents (in various formats, JPG, GIF, TIF, etc.).
Information on the software used (programs, file sizes) and hardware configuration.
Video material received from the artists on VHS, PAL, NTSC, DVD, or digital files is
streamed in QuickTime format.
7. Technical instructions (blueprints).
8. Type of interface and display.
9. Audio documents, interviews, visitors comments.
10. References and literature about the artists.
11. Information about the technical staff.
12. Institutions of media art.
13. Subject index.
14. Copyright.
Database of Virtual Art has established interdisciplinary cooperation with art academies and
research laboratories (ISEA/Leonardo, Fraunhofer Institut, ZKM, Stanford University etc.) for
sharing information on (research) funding, technical inventions and on the movement of
18

Grau, Oliver. Database of Virtual Art. December 2003. Kunsthistorisches Seminar Humboldt
Universitt Berlin. 31 December 2003 < http://www.arthist.huberlin.de/arthistd/mitarbli/og/database.htm>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

12

technical staff from lab to lab. In addition to that the database presents personal connections
and affiliations and shows reminiscences of virtual art in the forms of its predecessors
through a thematic index (for example, the panorama).
The database uses PostgreSQL, the open source multi-user database. With JAVA's JSP
technology a browser-based editing and publishing environment is being created, which
allows editing, server and database to be platform independent. By the time Capturing
Unstable Media was finished, a first version of the database went on-line19.

19

Grau, Oliver. Database of Virtual Art. January 2003. Kunsthistorisches Seminar Humboldt
Universitt Berlin. 31 January 2003 <http://virtualart.hu-berlin.de/>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

13

5. Positioning V2_'s approach

A. Historical note
It is the technological functioning of the machinery itself that moves us esthetically.
You literally see only technology until you overcome your diffidence and you step in,
join in, play along: then another realm of experience opens up to you.20
By the late 1980's, V2_ began transforming itself from a multi-media organization into a
centre for media technology. Instead of exposing an audience to 'mass-media' events like
concerts, performances and movies, it started to explore the dynamics of unstable media and
the active role audiences play in mediated environments21. This transition was accompanied
by the Manifesto for the Unstable Media, issued by V2_ in 198722. The manifesto laid down
the theoretical principles of V2_, also known since that time as the Institute for the Unstable
Media. Unstable Media are characterized as follows:
"WE MAKE USE OF THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, THAT IS, ALL MEDIA WHICH MAKE
USE OF ELECTRONIC WAVES AND FREQUENCIES, SUCH AS ENGINES,
SOUND, LIGHT, VIDEO, COMPUTERS, AND SO ON"23
Though an historical document, most of what is in the Manifesto is still crucial for the work of
the organization. However, in this research, the terminology from the Manifesto is updated to
current times. The more common term 'electronic art'24 is used as equivalent for 'Unstable
Media art'.
V2_ expands on its activities as a platform for electronic art in 1998 by opening a special
research and development department, the V2_Lab. It functions as a workplace for artists,
scientists and technicians, where meeting and exchange between various disciplines takes
place. From that moment on,V2_ is also involved in the realization of electronic art projects,
in which the creative process of the work stays at the forefront, characterized by
multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary collaboration (aRt&D25). As a result the (research)
context of projects becomes a point of special interest for V2_.

B. Practice
Like Netzspannung.org and Walker Art Center, V2_ takes a multidisciplinary approach to the
creation, presentation, interpretation and preservation of art. In the projects of V2_'s art,
20

Mulder, Arjen and Maaike Post. Book for the Electronic Arts. Amsterdam/Rotterdam: de Balie/V2_,
2000, p. 4.
21
Mulder, Arjen and Maaike Post. Book for the Electronic Arts. Amsterdam/Rotterdam: de Balie/V2_,
2000, p. 49 64.
22
Adriaansens, Alex et al. Boek voor de Instabiele Media. Den Bosch: V2_, 1992, p. 11
23
V2_Organisation. Manifesto for the Unstable Media. 1987. V2_Organisation. 31 December 2003
<http://www.v2.nl/browse/v2/manifesto.html>.
24
The term "electronic art" is part of the name of three major festivals in this field: Ars Electronica in
Linz <http://www.aec.at/festival/>, the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF) organized by V2_
<http://deaf.v2.nl/> and the meetings of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA)
<http://www.isea-web.org/>. See also Besser, Howard. Longevity of Electronic Art. February 2001. 31
December 2003 <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Papers/elect-art-longevity.html>.
25
Nigten, Anne. Human factors in artistic research and development in
multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations. 2002. V2_Lab. 31 December 2003
<http://lab.v2.nl/home/_docs/nigten_2002_humanfactors.pdf>.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

14

research and development (aRt&D) department, the artists bring in knowledge from less
technically oriented areas; existing technical applications are re-used or combined in other
constellations or for other purposes. Related to their interdisciplinary nature, the projects are
often very hybrid in themselves - for example, a CD-ROM presented in the context of an
installation with specific computer hardware, or a performance involving audience
participation, audio and wearable hardware.
One of V2_'s objectives is to present all V2's past and present projects (comparable with the
Ars Electronica's effort to document its history) within the context of relevant critical
discourse, like Rhizome does, and to preserve the projects for the future. Unlike Rhizome's
Artbase, V2_'s archive only documents the works or projects, but does not collect them. V2_
focuses on the field of electronic art and its relation to society, which comes closest to DLF's
field of investigation. Like DLF and Netzspannung, V2_ supports research and art projects
and makes this information public through publications, presentations and online activities.

C. Documentation
V2_'s archive of unstable media art has grown organically out of activities (exhibitions,
festivals, symposia and performances) of V2_Organization. As a result the archive reflects a
broad set of creative projects and practices employing or responding to new, electronic,
technologies, including software, robotics, streaming media, network protocols, databases
and hardware. These practices take many forms, from performances, installations,
workshops, publications and software tools and applications to web sites, concerts and
online experiments with live streams. They are therefore described in the archive in various
ways, by various media: an interactive installation is documented with different images,
flyers, textual descriptions, video and audio clips or even preparatory technical drawings and
manuscripts. All these data of different nature and in different formats need to be
disseminated in the best suitable way.
The archive focuses on V2_ 's history and offers an extensive off- and online documentation
on, rather than a collection of, artworks, much like the archive of Ars Electronica. However,
V2_ 's electronic art projects are often developed and presented within a larger context.
Artworks may be shown during and adapted to specific programs in a certain thematic
framework and are part of longer-term developments for artists and institutions. In fact, the
presentation of each work can be seen as part of a broader context and story, in the way as
the Database of Virtual Art proposes. For this very reason, V2_'s archive is not built as a
traditional, record- and object-based documentation archive. Instead, it is a cloud of objects
and relations, describing works and actors, events and activities (the organization's history),
keywords and themes, as a broad context for the art projects, similar to the Collections and
Resources of Walker Art Center.
A public interface for this archive was implemented as one of the deliverables of this project
(see Deliverable 2.2). V2_'s archive and web team has, during the last few years, researched
several visualization methods for the archive's content, including timelines and semantic
maps, similar to the interfaces that were implemented by Netzspannung.org.
Until 2003, V2_Archive has developed an object-relation data model, supported by the
content management system MMBase, in which relatively small objects can be combined
through relations in a flexible way. A hierarchical structure of classes (of types, for example
'philosopher', 'festival', interactive installation') specifies the rough first subdivision of objects
in object types. V2's detailed terminology resources (the hierarchical class structure and a
keyword thesaurus) are unique for the field of unstable media art, although DLF's subject
index in their CR+D Database extends to the keyword thesaurus. V2_'s data includes so-

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

15

called categories, themes, domains and keywords (based on Getty's Art and Architecture
Thesaurus).
Standard groups of objects and relations (for example, an installation with all its
documentation and metadata on its creator) are clustered through flexible XML-formatted
'relation models' or relmodels. These relmodels are an adaptable XML framework to
formulate rules according to which objects and relations can be recombined for example for
the creation of web pages as one possibility, or for exporting a part of the database to the
Dublin Core or another interoperability standard as another one.
From mid-2003 on, V2_ has been researching the possibility to create an entirely XML-based
data management model, which becomes independent from database applications. With
such an extensive XML framework, it would become easier to use different tools for
structuring the data. Furthermore, the XML framework makes transformations of V2_'s data
possible. This is an excellent basis for interoperability with other archival systems. For more
information on these developments, please refer to Deliverables 2.1 and 2.2.

V2_Organisation Capturing Unstable Media

16