You've probably come across it doing media art research on the web, as entries from the site Media Art Net/Medien Kunst Net seem to have (and justifiably so) extremely high page rankings. The project, conceived by Dieter Daniels (now of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research ) and Rudolf Frieling (now Curator of Media Art at SFMOMA), is a curated collection of original scholarship, reprints, photos, videos and other links that has been available on the web since 2003. The easy to navigate structure allows you to search specifically by artist, author, exhibition, art work or more loosely on themes and theoretical constructs such as 'Aesthetics of the Digital,' 'Cyborg Bodies' or 'Generative Tools.' Each document is available in both English and German, is extensively cross referenced and footnoted, and contains enough links (both within and outside the site proper) to remind us of why people were originally so captivated by the potential of 'hypertext' writing years ago. The site provides numerous texts by notable scholars, including an excellent essay entitled 'Social Technologies: Deconstruction, subversion and the utopia of democratic communication' by Inke Arns (now curator at Hartware Medien Kunst Verein in Dortmund). This smart, clear, and very dense text provides a rich sense of the history of social activism and media art. Additionally, the links imbedded within the text allows one to follow their own trajectory through the works of Guy Debord, Bertolt Brecht or Valle Export (to name only a very few). As this is only one of many illuminating and relevant essays on the site, Media Art Net is truly invaluable resource for the field. - Caitlin Jones

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/
Image: Knowbotic Research, IO_dencies, 1997