Photo: virtualart.at ZOOM

Mikami: "Gravicells"

Even though interactive installations of digital have during the past two decades been greatly appreciated by the audience on the occasion of exhibitions and art festivals and determined the theoretical debate of the art of present times more than ever, the systematic collection of this contemporary form of art has been neglected for a long time. Concepts for the protection and appropriate storage of digital artwork which is exhibited worldwide lack nearly entirely.
The pioneer project virtualart.at which was developed by the expert on media arts history, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Oliver Grau, and has recently settled at the Department for Image Science of Danube University Krems has risen to this challenge. Many famous artists of the present time – such as Jeffrey Shaw, Christa Sommerer or Paul Sermon have been convinced to take part in this innovative project.


Scientific documentation of process-relatedness
The core of this database forms a scientific documentation system being based on open-source technologies that are tailored to the specific requirements of media arts and has been presented among other at the Louvre and the Stanford University. Whereas traditional art concepts were substantially oriented at the object-relatedness of the artwork and harmonized to a large extent with statistic models of documentation, the artwork of the present time is nowadays for example instable, process-related, fleeting, multi-medial, interactive and dependent on the context. Due to their differentness they require a modified, extended concept of expansion. The recently developed thesaurus, the peripheral entry of artwork as well as the strategic expansion of the database by a video option to ensure an optimal rendering of the process-related nature of the interactive works makes allowances fort his.

The main goal of the database is to give a better overview of the volatile development on this sector of digital art and its sub-categories in order to make a contribution to the preservation of this type of art. The publishing of documents always requires the consent of artists so that in contrast to various other projects no legal problems might arise.


“Unlike no other type of art digital art is subject to the ephemerality of its storage media and the permanent change of operating systems so that works which have been created not even ten years ago may as a rule no longer be presented in these days. Unfortunately the database virtualart.at is therefore increasingly becoming the only testimonial of a decaying form of art, unless endeavours for the preservation of the same are made as prompt as possible” underlines the initiator of the database, Oliver Grau.


Innovative interlacing of research, media documentations and teaching
The archive for teaching and research which has been initiated at the Department for Image Science at Danube University is of particular importance. By means of incentives that are generated from projects and the extra occupational master course of studies “MediaArtHistories“ the documentation tool may constantly be expanded and provided to students, artists and researchers as a valuable resource.