DATABASE OF VIRTUAL ART
at the Department of Art History / Humboldt-University Berlin

Interactive media art, telematic art and especially virtual art create
entirely new forms of perception and aesthetics, and enjoy a great
response from audiences of festivals and international exhibitions.
Museums have nevertheless in the main failed to systematically collect
and document art of this kind. Because of a general deficit of
information among museum professionals, it is at present only partially
possible to support curatorial and conservational recourses.
Consequently longterm concepts for the collecting of virtual art,
especially in cooperation with computer centers, do not at this point in
time exist.

Essential to the nature of digital art works is that their electronic,
physical carriers quickly become anachronistic. It is not an
exaggeration to say that a full decade of international media art is in
danger of being lost. Only with intense effort can the growing gaps in
collecting media art be filled again. In order to counter the increasing
complex of difficulties, and in view of the current active developments,
it is necessary to make information readily available as soon as
possible.

The project:

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) therefore supports an
initiative of the art-history department of the Humboldt-University in
Berlin to build up an international archive of virtual art. A high-
capacity internet database able to accomodate large numbers of users is
being developed in cooperation with the University's computer center.
The goal of the project is to both give an overview and to
scientifically document the developments in media art, an ouevre created
by artists who are themselves actively engaged in complex international
research networks. A research and information-center linked to museums
and scientific institutions does not currently exist. The archive
collects an array of information on art works: their construction,
settings, places of exhibition and especially their technical hard and
software configurations.

The archive has already become in its period of foundation a reference
point for museum curators and organizers of congresses. The most
important international journals of media art, as well as organizations
of media art, related educational institutions, mailing lists and the
press will receive information about the database.

Data needed to be included:
+ concepts (in both sketch and text form)
+ graphics of the installations' structures
+ hardware and software configurations (lists and diagrams)
+ video documentations
+ lists of exhibitions (places, dates, names of works)
+ biographies
+ interviews and sound documents
+ articles and publications written by yourself
+ articles from journals and newspapers
+ academic literature on your work

Our technical basis consists of: SUN-Server, SQL-Server, Oracle
Datenbank, Quicktime-Video. u.a.

We would like to thank everybody for future cooperation and are happy to
receive any suggestions or comments.